ABSTRACT
The Tarahumara (Tarahumar, Rarámuri, or ‘runners’) of northwest Mexico occupy the meadows, canyons, valleys, and uplands of central and southern Chihuahua. Numbering some fifty thousand, they have lived in this area for more than two thousand years. They were contacted by Jesuits as early as 1610 (Pérez de Ribas 1944 [1645]). In 1767, at the time of the Jesuit expulsion, they supported nearly thirty missions and more than fifty visitas, small, nearby suburbs of a mission. The Franciscans replaced the Jesuits in northern Mexico, but mission activity declined among the Tarahumara, and many of them retreated into the mountains in the southwest corner of Chihuahua.
