File No. 312.115R39/57
Consul Simpich to the Secretary of State
Guaymas, December 11, 1917.
Sir: In further compliance with the Department’s telegraphic instructions of December 8 at 4 p.m., I have the honor to report as follows upon the Yaqui situation in Sonora:
A comprehensive sketch of the origin of all Yaqui and Yaqui land troubles in Sonora, and an exhaustive analysis of the causes leading up to the repeated Indian raids upon the colonists in the Yaqui Valley, is contained in my despatch No. 473, of February 5, 1916,2 dated at Nogales, Mexico, to which reference is respectfully made. The general situation has not been changed since the detailed report just cited was written, except that the Indians are now operating in larger bodies than heretofore, and are believed to be led by Villistas or other renegade Mexicans. And for the past three weeks the Yaquis have waged war against the Mexican troops instead of the Mexican troops hunting the Yaquis. In the three most important fights of this last annual campaign, to wit: at Suaqui Grande, Bacojori and Esperanza the Yaquis inflicted greater punishment upon the Mexicans than they themselves suffered at the hands of the State troops.
The situation has become quite serious and the State Government is much alarmed. The actual number of armed Yaquis in the field is difficult accurately to estimate; Mexicans familiar with the Yaqui problem through long residence here, place the number of armed men at 1,200 to 1,500; others say it is much higher. There are probably more than 4,000 men in the hills but it seems fairly well established that they have not arms in the tribe to equip all these men.
The Mexicans now have in the field approximately 4,000 men of all arms, opposing the Yaquis. But, because of the wide distribution of the Yaquis throughout the sparsely settled region of southern Sonora, and because of the amazing mobility of the Indians, it is humanly [Page 1034] impossible for the Mexicans (with their limited means of transportation) to make long, quick movements of troops and to check every Indian raid, especially since the Indians may strike to-day at one place and a few days later strike unexpectedly at another remote and unprotected point. The Sonora troops have at least 40 machine guns and plenty of rifles; they are short of horses, and much money which is supposed to go for forage and soldiers’ pay is dissipated.
Lately a system of registration of tame or noncombatant Yaquis was instituted. Those now found unregistered are punished. More than 1,200 including women and children and aged Indians have been deported to the south. A few, suspected of communicating with the wild Indians in the hills, have been shot. These executions and deportations are said to have roused the fury of the hill Indians and led them to adopt a policy of murder without quarter. Mexican army officers say that the present Yaqui war probably will last all winter.
On December 6 a band of Yaquis estimated at from 600 to 800 attacked the town of Esperanza, where an American corporation called the Richardson Construction Company has its headquarters and near which some thirty or forty American colonists are settled. A detailed description of this fight is made in the report to the said company by its auditor, Mr. W. Ian Hamilton, a copy of which is herewith enclosed.2
To-day a few scattered bands of Yaquis are still camped in the bosque or jungle between Esperanza and the coast although the main body which delivered the attack on Esperanza withdrew to the north. A garrison of about 1,000 mixed Mexican and Indian troops now holds the town of Esperanza but the Americans who are scattered through the valley are constantly exposed to the risk of being killed or at least of haying their farms raided. My candid opinion is that there are not enough troops in Sonora adequately to protect these American settlers; and that, bearing in mind the impoverished and unstable condition of the Mexican Government, it is impracticable to expect that the Government of Sonora can do much more than it is already doing to quell the Indians. Hundreds of Mexicans have been killed in the past few years by Yaquis and it is only fair to say that the foreign settlers receive as much military protection as do the native farmers, slight though it is. As was the case with our own Apaches, extermination or segregation seems the only solution of the Yaqui menace; and the immediate attainment of either of these ends is entirely unlikely under the State Government, as at present conducted.
In the fight at Esperanza on December 6 five foreigners were captured by the Yaquis and killed. They were: Lee Rasmussen, Lucas Vogelmut, Fred Hahn, Jacob Eppler and Henry Tamm. Rasmussen is said by American settlers to have been an American; his nationality is under investigation, not having been definitely established. In baggage supposed to have belonged to him was found the following addresses: Edward Rasmussen, Richfield, Utah; and Joe Hemen, Danville, Nevada. I am communicating with these addresses in an effort to establish the nationality of Rasmussen. Persons for whom Eppler had worked say that he was a German who had [Page 1035] once lived on a farm near San Francisco, California, and that he had taken out his first American naturalization papers. It has been established by the German Consular Agent here that Vogelmut and Hahn were Austrians and that Tamm was a Swede. Because of the continued presence of Indians in that part of the Valley where these men were cut and beaten to death it has been impracticable to bury the bodies. In due time, when the evidence is all in, form 192 will be prepared in the case of Rasmussen.
I respectfully repeat the recommendation contained in my telegram of December 8 to the effect that an American naval vessel be allowed to remain in Guaymas harbor for a reasonable time. More than two hundred Americans live in the exposed hamlet of Empalme where the Mexican garrison is often as low as fifty or a hundred men; within the past two weeks Indians have killed Mexican woodchoppers, vegetable peddlers and others in the outskirts of Empalme and Guaymas and I believe the presence of an American vessel here would have a certain moral effect.
The American colony in the Yaqui Valley has twice in the last three days telegraphed to me its appeal for aid and protection; obviously, there is nothing I can do to save them from the Indians except to insist as emphatically as I may in communications to the Governor, that he send more troops to the valley. Yet I well know that other threatened points in the Indian country are also calling for troops and that still more troops are needed in the Sahuaripa district to repel possible invasion by Villistas from Chihuahua.
I have [etc.]