They considered themselves a superior race, not just for the color of their skin, but for the power of their arms. They subjugated and enslaved the natives for their own private services. Nineteen years after the founding of the mission in Tepehuanes at the start of the 17th century, a rebellion by the Tepehuans began, led by the violent and bewitching Quautlatas who martyred several priests, along with 70 black slaves, 200 Spaniards of all age and condition, and the countless converts who embraced their faith so much they chose death over renouncing it. Orientation Ódami The Northern Tepehuan refer to themselves as "Ódami." Although the etymology of the name "Tepehuan" is still a matter of contention, the word almost certainly stems from tepetl, the Nahuatl word for "mountain." The Northern Tepehuan are scattered over sparsely settled high woodlands and canyons in the southwestern corner of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. The Southern Tepehuan are separated from the Northern by several hundred kilometers, and are found in the rugged country of southern Durango. The upper perimeter of Northern Tepehuan land is the Río Verde, flowing westward into Sinaloa and carving deep gorges into this remote part of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The average elevation is around 2,350 meters, but widely varying elevations make for a craggy terrain that is strikingly harsh and isolating. Travel into and within the coarsely contoured region is arduous; the few roads provide only limited accessibility. At the higher elevations are the pine-covered uplands referred to locally as the tierra templada (the temperate zone). Downslope is the tierra caliente (the warm country), the canyon expanses of poorer soil covered with shrubs and grasses. Aside from linguistic similarity and some sharing of a type of communal organization, the Northern and Southern Tepehuan now differ remarkably in sociocultural attributes. This separation of two groups bearing the same name and sharing a parallel and arguably liminal position in the threshold between the Mesoamerican and the Southwestern cultural areas has propagated a mystique that has yet to be cleared up by definitive research. As of this writing, these groups, whose homeland is rugged and remote, remain little known and studied. Demography There are approximately 10,000 Tepehuan presently living in Chihuahua. (The 1990 census recorded 2,980 speakers of Tepehuan aged 5 years or older in Chihuahua.) Because of the difficulties of travel and the insufficiency of government services, an accurate