Nomadic peoples arrived in this region around 15000 years ago.  These petroglyphs found in the regions north west of San Sebastian show scenes of everyday life as hunters and gatherers.  The Huichol Indians of Nayarit and coastal Jalisco still tell stories of happier days as free men wandering the countryside instead of tethered to the work of the field. 

These petroglyphs were documented in the 1980’s by the University of Guadalajara and are indicated on the map.

Around 7,000 years ago crops were domesticated and small villages were established in the valleys near rivers and streams.   Pottery and art forms appeared frequently in this area around 3500 years ago.  

 

Examples of these were found northwest of San Sebastian as indicated on the map here.

Here are some examples of early work done by the natives of this region.

Some of these  jugs were uncovered in old wells dating to around 1000 BCE.  The other forms and vessels are from around the 0 to 100 AD and were discovered in shaft tombs.  The use of shaft tombs is unique to this area. No other cultures in Mexico used them. This was a tradition in the Teuchitlan culture which dominated the region from around 350 BCE to 500 CE. 

See Map of the extent of their influence:

Archaeologically defined culture named after the town of Teuchitlán, northwest of Guadalajara and north east of San Sebastian. The largest Teuchitlán culture site, Los Guachimontones, is one of several dozen sites in the region, but is most notable for the number and size of its ceremonial buildings. Like many other Mesoamerican cultures, the Teuchitlán culture lacked a writing system. Archaeologists do not know what they may have called themselves or what language they may have spoken.

 

Here is how a Teuchitlan village looked:

Obsidian was plentiful in the valley of Guadalajara and so it drew the interest of other cultures into the area.

 

Around 600 CE the influences of the Toltec and Teotihuacan cultures is seen as evidenced by articles from central Mexico discovered in this region. Inscriptions by the Toltecs describe a dominion of Xalisco in 618 CE. established probably west of San Sebastian, in the fertile valleys below. In fact Jalisco was called Xalisco (which means “over a sandy surface” in Nahuatl) until 1836. The Indians in this area spoke a language related to Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. 

 

By 1112 CE., the tribes in Jalisco rebelled against the Toltecs and became independent but by 1129 the Chichimecas (a Nuhuatl term for barbarians from the north) invaded and dominated the region. The Aztecs themselves were a related migration to the north. 

 

By 1320's CE., the Purepecha Indians from Michoacan (who held their independent kingdom distinct from the Aztecs, the emerging power of central Mexico), occupied portions of the southern part of the state. 

 

 When the Spaniards started exploring Jalisco and Zacatecas in the 1520s and 1530s, they encountered several nomadic tribes occupying the area which they referred to as La Gran Chichimeca . The Aztecs collectively referred to these Indians with the all-encompassing term, Chichimecas . All of the Chichimeca Indians shared a primitive hunting-collecting culture, based on the gathering of mesquite, acorns, roots and seeds, as well as the hunting of small animals, including frogs, lizards, snakes and worms. Within the present-day boundaries of Jalisco, the Caxcanes, Guachichiles, Tecuexes and Guamares were considered to be Chichimecas.

 

Nephew of conquistador Hernán Cortés, Francisco Cortés de San Buenaventura was born in 1499 or 1500, apparently in Medellín, Extremadura, the same city as his uncle. According to Don Manuel Orozco y Berra, he was among the Spaniards who consummated the conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521. In addition to this, Francisco had an important relationship with our region, which he would begin a few years later.

 

In 1524 he was lieutenant governor of the town of Colima, from where he left, by order of Hernán, to explore the lands to the north. After passing without problems through Zapotitlán and Amula, he arrived with his army at Autlán where, according to Don Rubén Villaseñor Bordes, the inhabitants offered resistance, which was defeated without much effort.

 

From here, the expedition of Francisco Cortés went to the region of Tenamaxtlán and Tecolotlán, Etzatlán, Ameca and present-day Nayarit, where he starred in one of the best-known passages of his brief existence: being in the vicinity of the current Banderas Valley, the Spanish They were left facing a force of around 10,000 indigenous people, dressed for war precisely with flags and feather decorations. Given the number of enemies, Cortés spoke with his captains to consider the decision to withdraw from the place, to which one of them, Ángel de Villafaña, raised his voice to demand that they face the danger "like brave Spaniards". . This was done, the natives were defeated and, by the way, Captain Cortés was left like a coward before his men.

 

On his return to Colima, passing through Tomatlán, Chamela and the valley of the future Villa Purificación, he returned to pass through the Autlán valley, acting as visitor to the town of Tecomatlán on March 10, 1525. It was Francisco Cortés who entrusted the Indians from Autlán to Hernán Gómez and Hernán Ruiz de la Peña when he defeated them during his first stay here and who ordered the latter to leave to settle Autlán when he returned to Mexico City in 1525, thus establishing the first Spanish settlement in the town.

 

After participating in political intrigues in ancient Tenochtitlan in later years, Francisco Cortés again participated in an expedition, this time by sea, together with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. They weighed anchor from the port of Acapulco on May 30, 1532 and sailed north, with the order of Hernán Cortés to discover new lands in that direction.

 

The brig led by Francisco Cortés ran aground on the current coast of Jalisco, apparently near Chacala, very close to this region. There he was killed by the natives, at no more than 33 years of age, along with almost all of his crew.

 

Because of the fierce resistance of the natives in the region a second force was launched to subdue the area for Spain. 

 

In December 1529, Nuño de Guzmán, left Mexico City at the head of a force of five hundred Spaniards and 10,000 Indian soldiers. According to J. Lloyd Mecham, the author of Francisco de Ibarra and Nueva Vizcaya , “Guzmán was an able and even brilliant lawyer, a man of great energy and firmness, but insatiably ambitious, aggressive, wily, and cruel.”  

 

In a rapid and brutal campaign lasting from February to June, 1530, Guzmán traveled through Michoacán, Jalisco, and southern Zacatecas. The historian Peter Gerhard writes that “Guzmán's strategy throughout was to terrorize the natives with often unprovoked killing, torture, and enslavement. The army left a path of corpses and destroyed houses and crops, impressing surviving males into service and leaving women and children to starve.”

Once Guzmán had consolidated his conquests, he ordered all of the conquered Indians of Jalisco to be distributed among Spanish encomiendas. 

 

The individual receiving the encomienda, known as the encomendero, received free labor and tribute from the Indians, in return for which the subjects were commended to the encomendero's care. It was the duty of the encomendero to Christianize, educate and feed the natives under their care. However, as might be expected, such human institutions were prone to abuse and misuse and, as a result, some Indians were reduced to slave labor.

 

Taking formal possession of the conquered areas, Guzmán named his conquered territory “Greater Spain.”   However, twelve years later, the Spaniard administration renamed the region as Nueva Galicia (New Galicia). Reports of Guzmán's brutal treatment of the indigenous people got the attention of the authorities in Mexico City. Two years later, he was returned to Spain in chains to stand trial. He spent some time in prison and died in Spain around 1558. 

 

The Mixton Rebellion (1540-1541)

In the spring of 1540, the Indian population of western Mexico began a ferocious rebellion against Spanish rule. The indigenous tribes living along today's Three-Finger border region between Jalisco and Zacatecas led the way in fomenting the insurrection. In the hills near Teul and Nochistlán, the Indians attacked Spanish settlers and soldiers and destroyed churches.

 

By April of 1541, the Cazcanes of southern Zacatecas and northern Jalisco were waging a full-scale revolt against all symbols of Spanish rule. The map on the following page shows the location of the areas in which the native peoples rose in rebellion within a three-state region.

Map of the Towns of Nayarit, Zacatecas and Jalisco That Rose Up in Arms During the Mixtón War (March 16, 2009).]

 

It took the better part of two years to contain the Mixtón Rebellion. 

 

Antonio de Mendoza, who had become the first Viceroy of Nueva España in 1535, quickly assembled a force of 450 Spaniards and 30,000 Aztec and Tlaxcalan warriors. In a series of short sieges and assaults, Mendoza gradually suffocated the uprising. By December, 1541, the native resistance had been completely crushed. The aftermath of this defeat, according to Peter Gerhard, led to thousands of deaths. In addition, he writes, “thousands were driven off in chains to the mines, and many of the survivors (mostly women and children) were transported from their homelands to work on Spanish farms and haciendas.” Fortunately, some of these people were allowed to return home a decade later.

 

Decline of the native population in the region through Epidemic Disease

 

The physical isolation of the Indians in the Americas is the primary reason for which disease caused such havoc with the Native American populations. Their physical isolation from Europe and Asia resulted in a natural quarantine from the rest of the planet and from a wide assortment of communicable diseases. When smallpox first ravaged through Mexico in 1520, no Indian had immunity to the disease.

From the Florentine Codex Book 12, 1520's (Acquired by the Medici and held in Florence).

 

During the first century of the conquest, the Mexican Indians suffered through 19 major epidemics. They were exposed to smallpox, chicken pox, diphtheria, influenza, scarlet fever, measles, typhoid, mumps, influenza, and cocoliztli (a hemorrhagic disease). Peter Gerhard has estimated the total native population of Nueva Galicia in 1520 at 855,000 people. By 1550, this number had dropped to 220,000.

 

In two decades, the populous coastal region north of Banderas Bay witnessed the greatest population decline. By the late 1530s, the population of the Pacific coastal plain and foothills from Acaponeta to Purificación had declined by more than half. Subsequently, Indians from the highland areas were transported to work on the cacao plantations. When their numbers declined, the Spaniards turned to African slaves. In spite of the epidemics, several areas of Jalisco were less affected by contagious disease. 

 

The Coras

The Coras inhabited an area that is now located in present-day Nayarit as well as the northwestern fringes of Jalisco where San Sebastian del Oeste now lies. The Cora call themselves Nayarit , a tribe belonging to the Taracahitian division of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family. The Cora developed agricultural methods that included the building of terraces to control erosion. Today, the Coras, numbering more than 20,000 people, continue to survive, primarily in Nayarit and to a lesser extent in Jalisco. The Cora Indians have been studied by several historians and archaeologists. One of the most interesting works about the Cora is Catherine Palmer Finerty's “ "In a Village far From Home: My Life among the Cora Indians of the Sierra Madre” (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000). 

 

The Cuyutecos or “Tecos”

 

The Cuyutecos ‒ speaking the Nahua language of the Aztecs ‒ settled in southwestern Jalisco, inhabiting Atenquillo, Talpa, Mascota, Mixtlán, Atengo, and Tecolotlán. The population of this area ‒ largely depleted by the epidemics of the Sixteenth Century ‒ was partially repopulated by Spaniards and Indian settlers from Guadalajara and other parts of Mexico. It is believed the Cuyuteco language may have been a late introduction into Jalisco. 

University of Florida, Brad Morris Biglow noted that, while the Cora Indians fought aggressively to resist acculturation, the Huichol response was primarily to “flee” to more remote locations in the Sierra Madre. According to Aguirre Beltran, the Huichol retreat into the Sierra created a “region of refuge” and enabled the Huichol to “resist the acculturative pressures around them.”  Consequently the Hichol Indians are more well known in the area traditionally occupied by the Cuyutecos and the Coras.

 

After the Mixton Rebellion was crushed the roads were more secure from Indian raids. This resulted in the expansion of mining in the region. The mayor's office of the Real de Minas de San Sebastian was integrated under the jurisdiction of Hostotipac in 1542. (It is now called Real Alto de Oxtotipac, it is a nearby mining town of around 800 inhabitants). The Royal Mining Mayor's Office was established in San Sebastián at this time. 

The jurisdiction of the Real de San Sebastián included the reales of San Sebastián, Real de los Reyes, Jolapa, Real de Santiago, San Nicolás, among other silver mines.

By 1608 the town of San Sebastian grew in support of the many small mining towns in the hills and the parish in the name of San Sebastian was dedicated. (Saint Sebastian is a saint from Milan who was executed twice by Emperor Maximian of the Roman Empire in 250 CE.. First killed by arrows he revived and had to be killed again by flogging). The original church was built of large stone blocks still in view today. 

 

Between 1774 and 1779 the streets of the town were laid out which remain in the same configuration today which accounts for their narrow pathways built to accommodate horse drawn carts and carriages and not cars, trucks and ATV's.

 

By 1785, ten gold and silver reduction haciendas and nearly 30 mines had been established in the area.

 

In 1812 the town of San Sebastian was officially incorporated. 

 

Independence from Spain (1823)

 

By the early part of the Nineteenth Century, very few people living in Jalisco still spoke indigenous languages. In fact, a large number of the original languages ​​spoken in Jalisco had disappeared from the face of the earth. However, the descendants of the original Indians still lived in Jalisco and many of them still felt a spiritual, cultural and physical bond to their Indian ancestors. On June 23, 1823, the Department of Guadalajara was proclaimed the “El Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco” (The Free and Sovereign State of Jalisco). It was around this time that the Hacienda Jalisco was built in it's current form. 

 

By 1825 the town of Real de San Sebastián had a town hall and belonged to the department of Mascota in the 6th Canton of Autlán. The police stations included were: Real de Hostotipac, Real Santiago and Real de Avillas; as well as the ranches of Colesio and Santa Ana. The town had around several thousand inhabitants. 

Indigenous Discontent (1825-1885)

 

Unfortunately, independence did not bring stability to Jalisco, nor did it bring economic reform to the descendants of Jalisco's indigenous peoples. The historian Dawn Fogle Deaton writes that in the sixty-year period from 1825 to 1885, Jalisco witnessed twenty-seven peasant (primarily indigenous) rebellions . Seventeen of these uprisings occurred within one decade, 1855-64, and the year 1857 witnessed ten separate revolts. According to Ms. Deaton, the cause of these “waves of unrerest, popular protest, and open rebellion” rose “out of the political and social struggles among classes and between classes.” She further explained that the “commercialization of the economy,” especially in agriculture, had led to fundamental changes in the lifestyles of the peasants and thus brought about “the seeds of discontent.”

In the chronicle, "Leyendas de la Paroquia de San Sebastian del Oeste, Jalisco", Jose Duran states that "The Indians of Zapotlan attacked the town of San Sebastian with frequency.", prompting the townspeople to form defense forces and build fortifications. One of these fortified towers "El Gariton", is still in tact behind the hotel Pabellon, an old hacienda. This shows that as late as the 1800's, despite a decline in Native American languages ​​and cultures, the divide between classes was often described in terms of race.

 

In 1821 Independence was won from Spain by Agustín de Iturbide 's Army of the Three Guarantees .  This made Iturbide Mexico's first emperor, and madeJalisco one of a number of "departments" which answered directly to Mexico City. This act broke Nueva Galicia's tradition of relative independence and provoked support for federalism.  

 

A proposal for a "Republic of the United States of Anahuac" circulated in Guadalajara which called for a federation of states to allow for the best political union in Mexico. Much of these principles appeared with the 1824 Constitution which was enacted after Iturbide was dethroned. Under this Constitution, Colima, Aguascalientes and Nayarit were still part of Jalisco. Its first governor was Prisciliano Sánchez. The new state was divided into eight cantons: Autlán, Colotlán, Etzatlán, Guadalajara, La Barca, Lagos, Sayula, and Tepic.  San Sebastian lay in the canton of Autlan.

 

The construction of the current church in town was begun after a fire burned the former temple in 1871. You can still see the foundation stones of the former church in its construction. By this time the town's population had swelled to almost 20,000 inhabitants. 

 

In 1888 there was a miner's strike led by Felipe Preciado and Francisco Ochoa. The terms for ending the strike were reached locally here in San Sebastian but the mining company owners in New York would not approve the wage increases and work changes proposed by their own local representative, Mr. Becker, and so shut down the mines. They reopened only to be closed again a few decades later during the revolution.

During this period the indigenous speaking population of the State declined considerably. The 1895 census showed that only 4,510 people spoke an indigenous language, representing 0.38% of the state's total population. 

Nationally opposition to the Díaz regime was not organized in the state with only isolated groups of miners, students and professionals staging strikes and protests. Presidential challenger Francisco I. Madero visited Guadalajara twice, once in 1909 to campaign and the other in 1910 to organize resistance to the Díaz regime.

During the Mexican Revolution , most of the rural areas of the state supported Venustiano Carranza , with uprisings in favor of this army in Los Altos, Mascota, Talpa, Cuquío, Tlajomulco, Tala, Acatlán, Etzatlán, Hostotipaquillo, Mazamitla, Autlán, Magdalena, San Andres and other places. However, these were isolated incidents and did not coalesce into an organized army to confront the federal government.

 

Carranza vied for power in the state with Álvaro Obregón and Francisco Villa during the early part of the war with skirmishes among the various forces, especially between those loyal to Carranza and Villa.

 

Although much was made of wealth redistribution during the revolution and much destruction and chaos during this time resulted in the taking of property from the wealthy, no real organized efforts on a national level appeared until the Presidency of Carranza.

 

 When he won the Mexican presidency in 1915, he put into place various social and economic reforms such as limits on Church political power and redistribution of agricultural lands. One major consequence of the Revolution was the 1917 Constitution . This put severe constraints on the Church including the secularization of public education and even forbade worship outside of churches. One other result was the creation of Jalisco's current boundaries.

 

The 1921 Census: Racial Classifications

 

In spite of the fact that most Jaliscans had lost their native language connection, the bond that many Jaliscans felt towards their indigenous ancestry continued well into the Twentieth Century. It is clearly manifested in the 1921 Mexican census. At the time of this census, which was tallied after the end of the devastating Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), 199,728 Jalisco natives identified themselves as being of “indígena pura” (pure indigenous) descent , representing 16.8% of the entire state's population .

 

In a true testament to the mestizaje of Jalisco's inhabitants, 903,830 Jaliscans classified themselves as “indigenous mixed with white” , representing 75.8% of the total state population. 

By 1935, the ideals of the revolution were finally codified into federal law. Various agricultural lands were redistributed in the form of ejidos and other communal land ownership. The lands in this area are all under the jurisdiction of an ejido.  

However as mining has re-emerged as a lucrative concern in the area the town of Santiago not San Sebastian has emerged as the center of the industry. 

 

The Canadian Mining Company, Endeavor Silver Corp., has financed the takeover of the San Sebastian government and incorporated most of the surrounding hills into its jurisdiction in order to control access to those mining rights. 

 

Present

 

The Cora people of this region, like the Huichol from the west, have survived in isolation, occupying mountains and valleys within the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain range. The vast majority of the 15,380 Cora speakers in 2000 lived in the State of Nayarit, Jalisco's northwestern neighbor. In 2000, only 162 Cora speakers lived within Jalisco's borders. By 2010, the number of Cora speakers in Jalisco had dropped to 116.

 

Most of the inhabitants in San Sebastian are of mixed Spanish descent having come from outside the area to work the mines or supply the miners. Unlike much of central Mexico or even the coast, the mining towns of San Sebastian show few human remains of the native inhabitants, having long ago enslaved, deported or assimilated them both biologically and culturally.

 

After the mines were closed during the revolution no new roads were extended into the mountains in this area until the 1980's when opportunities for tourism and mining attracted the government's attention. 

 

In 1983 the town was officially renamed, San Sebastián del Oeste having formally been referred to as San Sebastian ex-10th Canton of Mascota.