Quautlatas
| Quautlatas | |
|---|---|
| Born | ? Tepehuánes, Durango |
| Died | ? Durango |
| Nationality | Tepehuán |
| Occupation | Religious leader (of the Tepehuán Revolt) |
Quautlatas (Northern Tepehuán pronunciation: /quäutlˈätäs/) was a Tepehuán religious leader who inspired the bloody Tepehuán Revolt against the Spanish in Mexico in 1616. Quautlatas was known as "The Tepehuán Prophet".
The Tepehuán were an agricultural people who lived primarily in the future Mexican state of Durango on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Early Spanish explorers described them as numerous but, apparently, a series of epidemics of introduced European diseases reduced their numbers by more than 80 percent. By the time of the revolt their numbers may have been only about 10,000 Spanish silver miners and ranchers began settling in the Tepehuán lands in the 1570s and Jesuit missionaries began work among them in 1596. The Tepehuán seemed relatively receptive to the missionaries and by 1615 a Jesuit could declare that the Tepehuán “showed great progress and were in the things of our holy faith very Hispanic.
What the Jesuits and other Spaniards did not fully comprehend was that the Tepehuán were a people under enormous stress. The recurrent epidemics impoverished them and destroyed their faith in their traditional culture. The missionaries tried to convert them to Christianity by abolishing their religious practices, replacing their leaders with Christians, and introducing Spanish customs. Both missionaries and encomenderos demanded their labor in the mines and the missions and on the ranches. The missionaries perceived they were doing God’s work by baptizing Indians dying of disease; the Indians equated baptism with death.
In early 1616, an elderly traditional religious leader, Quautlatas, rose to leadership among the Tepehuán and promised to lead them out of bondage. Quautlatas had been baptized a Christian and his message to his people had Christian elements in it. He called himself a bishop and carried a broken cross as his idol. To placate the gods, he said, the Tepehuán “would have to cut the throats” of all Christians. “It they did not do this they would receive a terrible punishment in the form of illnesses, plagues, and famine. But if they obeyed him, he promised them…victory over the Spaniards. Even if some of them should die in battle, he promised them that within seven days they would be resurrected….God would create storms at seas, sinking the Spanish ships and thus preventing additional Spaniards from reaching these lands.”
...
Wikipedia