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The Chichimeca Jonaz are a group of indigenous people living in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí. In Guanajuato State the Chichimeca Jonaz people live in a community of San Luis de la Paz municipality. The settlement is 2,070 m above sea level. They call this place Rancho Úza (Indian Ranch) or Misión Chichimeca.
In the 2000 General Census by INEGI 2,641 people named themselves as speakers of the Chichimeca Jonaz language. Of these 1,433 speakers lived in Guanajuato, and the other 115 in San Luis Potosí.
Their language belongs to the Pamean sub-branch of the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean language family, the closest relative of the Chichimeca Jonaz language is the Pame language.
Before the arrival of the Spaniards they were a nomadic people roaming North Central Mexico and the Southwestern United States and Sonoran Desert.
Spanish colonization of the Americas
After the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and the ensuing Spanish colonization of the Americas, they fought against Spaniards and Christianized Indians in the Chichimec Wars, along with the Pames and Otomies and other Chichimecan peoples, in the Sonora y Sinaloa Province in the Provincias Internas, then under the jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Guadalajara (Royal Audiencia of Guadalajara) of Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Late in the sixteenth century they settled down in the southern area they now inhabit.