Religion
Though now based in Christian teachings, dominantly Catholicism, the culture of the Pascua Yaqui has remained rich in native Indian elements. The Tribe has accepted political integration into American society, but has retained their former religious and cultural way of life.
The Yaqui people have used oral traditions to pass their history from one generation to the next. This is the history of the Yaqui as told by Ernesto Quiroga Sandoval, Historian, Pascua Yaqui Tribe:
"The Creator made ocean animals and allowed some to emerge onto land. Some evolved into a short human form: the Surem. These are the early ancestors of the Yaquis. The Surem lived in a time out of mind and were a peace-loving, gentle people who had no need for government. Life in the Sonoran desert was a harmonious perfection for the Surem until God spoke through a little tree and prophesied about new horticultural techniques, Christianity, savage invaders, and disunity. The Surem became frightened about parts of this message and transformed into taller, defensive farming people called Yaquis (Hiakim) or Yo'emem (The People)"
Read more about this topic: Pascua Yaqui Tribe
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“I read ... an article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children to be skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“They live together without king, without government, and each is his own master.... Beyond the fact that they have no church, no religion and are not idolaters, what more can I say? They live according to nature, and may be called Epicureans rather than Stoics.”
—Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512)
“As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)