Among Mexico's indigenous populations, the Yaqui Indians of Sonora have most successfully repelled threats to their identity, land, and community. Interested in explaining how the relatively "small" nation withstood four centuries of contact with white culture, Evelyn Hu-DeHirt focuses here on the Indians' response to shifting environmental pressures in the period 1820 to 1910 an increasingly violent, and ultimately decisive, chapter in their lives.