Sonora: The Elusive Site, the Debated Name, and Various Designations

AbstractA place named Sonora appears in seventeenth and eighteenth century documents and on later maps. Two sources place this site north of the present-day town of Huépac. Other sources place the site south of Huèpac. All of these sources place it on the east side of the Río Sonora, but use various designations. This paper analyzes documentary, cartographic, and geographic evidence and concludes that there were actually two places named Sonora. One was a relatively late Spanish mining settlement south of Huépac, but on the west side of the river, and known today as San Felipe de Jesús. The other place named Sonora was an ancient Ópata settlement called Sonota located at a spring on the east side of the Río Sonora north of Huépac. Correcting misunderstandings, mispronunciations, misspellings, and differences in Spaniards’ native language fluency over a century point to the river, valley, and state being named after this early site.Un lugar llamado Sonora aparece en documentos de los siglos XVII y XVIII y en mapas posteriores. Dos fuentes ubican este sitio al norte del actual pueblo de Huépac. Otras fuentes sitúan el sitio al sur de Huèpac. Todas estas fuentes lo sitúan en el lado este del Río Sonora, pero usan varias designaciones. Este artículo analiza evidencia documental, cartográfica y geográfica y concluye que en realidad existieron dos lugares denominados Sonora. Uno fue un asentamiento minero español relativamente tardío al sur de Huépac, pero en el lado oeste del río, y conocido hoy como San Felipe de Jesús. El otro lugar llamado Sonora era un antiguo asentamiento Ópata llamado Sonota ubicado en un manantial en el lado este del Río Sonora al norte de Huépac. La corrección de malentendidos, malas pronunciaciones, faltas de ortografía y diferencias en la fluidez del idioma nativo de los españoles durante más de un siglo apunta a que el río, el valle y el estado llevan el nombre de este sitio primitivo.KEYWORDS: SonoraSonotaReal de SonoraSeñoraOjo de AguaHuépacSan Felipe de JesúsRío Sonora Valley AcknowledgmentsWe thank Richard Flint and Adán Benavides for providing valuable translations of, and insights into sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish documents; Dale Brenneman who helped retrieve a few documents from the Documentary Relations of the Southwest, The University of Arizona; the faculty and staff of the Escuela Secondaria Technica #17 for their gracious hospitality and guidance around the campus; Gayle Hartmann for commenting on an earlier version of this paper; and the reviewers whose insightful comments improved this manuscript.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Historical documents contain many different spellings of place names (e.g., Guepaca, Huepaca). Present-day place names are used throughout this article.2 Use of “digo” was standard scribal procedure of the day. It was used for correcting an error at the time of composition in order to guard against falsification (Flint and Flint Citation2005:689, fn 598). “Persona” is the erroneous word written by either the author or the copyist, who immediately corrected himself by writing “digo senora,” or “I mean Sonora.”3 A reviewer pointed this out, thereby initiating a search on our parts into various linguistic texts that might provide a clue as to how Señora became Sonora. The texts examined are (Dávila Garibi Citation1950; Mason Citation1912; Pennington Citation1984:10–16; Pimentel Citation1874:305–307; Shaul Citation1983:97–99, Citation1989, and Citation2010:259–262). Unfortunately, our search proved fruitless.4 San Juan Bautista mine began operating in 1657 (Borrero Silva Citation2009:244) and was abandoned in 1750 due to flooding (West Citation1994:46, 48).Additional informationFundingThis research was carried out with personal funds.