Cajemé (Yaqui for 'he who does not drink'), born José Maria Leyva was a Yaqui leader who lived in the Mexican state of Sonora in the late 1800s. He united the eight Yaqui towns into a small republic and led the Yaqui in a war against the Mexican state, and against the white race itself. The war was long-lasting due to the skill of the Yaqui in battle and particularly brutal, with atrocities on both sides but much larger-scale slaughter on the part of the forces of the Mexican government of Porfirio Díaz. In 1886 the Yaqui suffered a major defeat when the Mexican army destroyed the fort (El Añil) they had built.
In 1887 Cajemé was finally captured and shot to death by the Mexican Army. Following this much of the Yaqui nation was enslaved and sent to work in the Yucatán peninsula, where many of them died by the hundreds.
