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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Acaxee Rebellion | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Mexican Indian Wars | |||||||
 A map of Mexico showing the location of the Acaxee in Sinaloa and Durango states. | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Spaniards |
Acaxee Tepehuanos Xiximes | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 450 | 500-1,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 56 killed | 48 executed | ||||||
The Acaxee Rebellion was an insurrection against Spanish rule in Mexico by Acaxee Indians, in 1601. The Acaxee attempted to expel the Spanish from their lands, regain their independence, and retain their traditional culture which was threatened by forced labor and Jesuit missionaries imposed upon them by the Spanish. They killed about 50 Spaniards and shut down silver mining operations in their territory for two years. In 1603, a Spanish army with Indian allies defeated the Acaxee and captured and executed most of their leaders. Subsequent smallpox epidemics killed most of the surviving Acaxee.
The Acaxee spoke a Uto-Aztecan language and lived in the mountains, the Sierra Madre Occidental, and canyons of east central Sinaloa and western Durango, east of the city of present-day city of Culiacan. Their territory was about 125 miles north to south and 50 miles east to west. The area was called Topia and Tepehuana by the Spaniards.[1] The Acaxee and their neighbors shared common features of culture identified by scholar Susan M. Deeds as
the cultivation of corn, beans, squash, chilies, and cotton adjacent to small villages and settlements…; frequent warfare with associated ritual cannibalism; polytheism and worship of idols; the presences of shamans or ritual specialists…; and a decentralized political structure that relied on the leadership of elders in peacetime and on war leaders to deal with outsiders.[2]
The dispersed village culture of the Acaxee at the time of the first Spanish contact in the late 16th century may have been the remnant of a more complex hierarchical society that had been decimated by disease earlier in the same century.[3] An epidemic swept the region in 1576–1577, killing many thousands of Indians including possibly many Acaxee, and additional epidemics broke out in 1590 and 1596–1597.[4] Thus, by the time of the rebellion the Acaxee probably numbered only a few thousand. Furthermore, their capacity to resist the Spanish was adversely impacted by their endemic warfare with the Xixime to their south and the Tepehuan to the east.
The Spanish discovered silver deposits in Acaxee territory in the 1580s and established several mining camps. Several hundred Spaniards, African and Indian slaves, and Indian laborers migrated into the Acaxee country. They needed additional labor to work in the mines. Through the encomienda system the Indians were forced to work in Spanish mines. However, the dispersed nature of the Acaxee settlements was a hindrance to utilizing Indian labor.[5]
Jesuit missionaries assisted in concentrating the Acaxee in larger settlements, a Spanish policy called reductions, to Christianize, control, and exploit the labor of the Indians. In the "Peace by Purchase" plan to resolve the Chichimeca War in 1590 the Spanish had recognized the utility of missionaries in the pacification of the northern frontiers of Nueva Espana. The Jesuits were relative newcomers to Mexico and the Indians of Sinaloa and Durango were their first major missionary efforts. In 1600, the missionary Hernando de Santarén toured the region with a local encomendero, Captain Diego de Avila. Together they made the Acaxee accede to Spanish demands which included relocating to where the Spanish told them, building churches, cutting their long hair, wearing clothing, and destroying their religious images and idols. In return, the Spaniards promised to protect them from their enemies and provide tools, seeds, and schools for their communities. Indians who resisted the Spanish demands were beaten according to Deeds.[6]
An Indian leader named Perico initiated the rebellion in late 1601. Using a mixture of Spanish and Indian religious practices, he promised his followers that the Spanish could be exterminated. The rebellion "was characterized by messianic leadership and promises of millennial redemption during a period of violent disruption and catastrophic demographic decline due to disease." The rebellion aimed "to restore pre-Columbian social and religious elements that had been destroyed by the Spanish conquest."[7]
Indian attacks over the first few weeks killed about 50 Spaniards. The Acaxee burned Spanish mining camps and buildings, including 40 churches, and besieged 40 Spanish in a church at San Andres. The siege was raised when reinforcements arrived from Durango. The priest Santarén led a peace delegation but several members of his group were killed as were members of another delegation led by a bishop.[8]
The Acaxee took up strong positions in the mountains and shut down most silver mining and other economic activities in their homeland for nearly two years. In 1603, the Spaniards gathered an army of encomenderos and Indian allies and suppressed the Acaxee, executing Perico and 48 of their leaders and selling others into slavery.[9]
In the aftermath of the war the Jesuits assumed even greater influence, consolidating the Acaxee into a few settlements, appointing their leaders, and attempting to educate Indian children and remove them from the influence of their parents, attempting to stamp out Acaxee culture. In 1607, a smallpox epidemic combined with the simultaneous appearance of Halley's Comet, a portent of disaster, seems to have erased most remaining traces of the Acaxee independence movement, although a few joined the Tepehuán Revolt in 1616.[10][11]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Acaxee Rebellion was an insurrection against Spanish rule in Mexico by Acaxee Indians, in 1601. The Acaxee attempted to expel the Spanish from their lands, regain their independence, and retain their traditional culture which was threatened by forced labor and Jesuit missionaries imposed upon them by the Spanish. They killed about 50 Spaniards and shut down silver mining operations in their territory for two years. In 1603, a Spanish army with Indian allies defeated the Acaxee and captured and executed most of their leaders. Subsequent smallpox epidemics killed most of the surviving Acaxee.
Gabriel's Rebellion was a planned slave rebellion in the Richmond, Virginia, area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt was leaked before its execution, and Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith who planned the event, and twenty-five of his followers were hanged. Gabriel's planned uprising was notable not because of its results—the rebellion was quelled before it could begin—but because of its potential for mass chaos and widespread violence. Afterward, Virginia and other state legislatures passed restrictions on free blacks, as well as prohibiting the education, assembly, and hiring of enslaved people, to restrict their ability and chances to plan similar rebellions.
Nat Turner's Rebellion, historically known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, United States, in August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, the rebels, made up of enslaved African Americans, killed an estimated 55 White people, making it the deadliest slave revolt in U.S. history. Nonetheless, the rebellion was effectively suppressed within a few days, at Belmont Plantation on the morning of August 23, but Turner survived in hiding for approximately ten weeks afterward: six weeks only leaving his hiding place "in the dead of night" for water; two weeks eavesdropping on the neighborhood at night for the purpose of gathering intelligence, and returning to his hiding place before dawn; and two weeks being "pursued almost incessantly", having been discovered by a dog. There was widespread fear among the White population in the rebellion's aftermath. Militias and mobs killed as many as 120 enslaved people and free African Americans in retaliation. After trials, Virginia executed eighteen enslaved people accused of participating in the rebellion, including Turner himself; many Black people who had not participated were also persecuted in the frenzy. Because Turner was educated and a preacher, Southern state legislatures passed new laws prohibiting the education of enslaved people and free Blacks, restricting the right of assembly and other civil liberties for free Blacks, and requiring White ministers to be present at all worship services.
A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of slaves have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past. A desire for freedom and the dream of successful rebellion is often the greatest object of song, art, and culture amongst the enslaved population. These events, however, are often violently opposed and suppressed by slaveholders. Ancient Sparta had a special type of serf called helots who were often treated harshly, leading them to rebel. According to Herodotus (IX, 28–29), helots were seven times as numerous as Spartans. Every autumn, according to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 28, 3–7), the Spartan ephors would pro forma declare war on the helot population so that any Spartan citizen could kill a helot without fear of blood or guilt in order to keep them in line (crypteia). In the Roman Empire, though the heterogeneous nature of the slave population worked against a strong sense of solidarity, slave revolts did occur and were severely punished. The most famous slave rebellion in Europe was led by Spartacus in Roman Italy, the Third Servile War. This war resulted in the 6,000 surviving rebel slaves being crucified along the main roads leading into Rome. This was the third in a series of unrelated Servile Wars fought by slaves against the Romans. In Russia, the slaves were usually classified as kholops. A kholop's master had unlimited power over his life. Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. During the 16th and 17th centuries, runaway serfs and kholops known as Cossacks, ("outlaws") formed autonomous communities in the southern steppes. There were numerous rebellions against slavery and serfdom, most often in conjunction with Cossack uprisings, such as the uprisings of Ivan Bolotnikov (1606–1607), Stenka Razin (1667–1671), Kondraty Bulavin (1707–1709), and Yemelyan Pugachev (1773–1775), often involving hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions. Between the end of the Pugachev rebellion and the beginning of the 19th century, there were hundreds of outbreaks across Russia. One of the most successful slave rebellions in history was the Haitian Revolution, which saw self-emancipated slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue overthrow the colonial government and repulse invasion attempts by the French, Spanish and British to establish the independent state of Haiti. In the 9th century, the poet Ali bin Muhammad led imported East African slaves against the Abbasid Caliphate in Iraq during the Zanj Rebellion. Nanny of the Maroons was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons who led them to victory in the First Maroon War. The Quilombo dos Palmares of Brazil flourished under Ganga Zumba. In the United States, the 1811 German Coast Uprising in the Territory of Orleans was the largest rebellion in the continental United States; Denmark Vesey and Madison Washington both launched slave rebellions in the U.S. as well.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.