ABSTRACT
The Protohistoric period in the Greater Southwest was a time when native peoples and institutions struggled to hold off an alien cultural system. The incoming Spaniards were ideologically aggressive and superior in political organization and in military and economic power. A Protohistoric period is normally described as one in which literate historical documents can be added to the evidence of archaeology. A century and a half before the Protohistoric, circa A.D. 1300, much of the Southwest had entered what J. O. Brew called a "Golden Age." The region of northern and central Sonora during the Protohistoric period was one of very sophisticated culture. The chapter suggests that the Serrana could be best understood in terms of a series of politically and economically active statelets, each controlling a segment of river valley in the mid-Sonora, mid-Yaqui, Moctezuma, Nuri Chico, Bavispi, and perhaps the San Miguel rivers.
