 On their part, the Tepehuán fought to return to their traditional ways of life, hoping that worshiping their old gods and practicing their old culture would halt the horrific loss of life due to European diseases and their virtual enslavement by the Spanish priests, miners, and encomenderos.On November 16, 1616, a wagon train traveling to Mexico City was attacked by the Tepehuán just outside Santa Catarina de Tepehuanes, a small village in the eastern foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental.Thus began what Jesuit historian Andrés Pérez de Ribas called the revolt Before it was finished four years later, more than 200 Spaniards, 10 missionaries, an unknown number of Indians, Black slaves, and mestizos allied with the Spanish, and perhaps 4,000 Tepehuán died, many of hunger and disease, with destruction to property valued as much as a million pesos.