The Vilisar Times

Thursday, 08 September 2005
We are finally getting the hang of blogger.com. Thanks to Gwen Holbrow who designed it four years ago and has been waiting for me to start blogging. There are still a lot of technical things we are learning about using the site. And we are having trouble getting photos on the website. However, we hope to solve these problems soon. (Of course, it would help if we had a digital camera too. We’re workin’ on it!)
There was a lot going on around here yesterday. First, about mid-afternoon, Simon and I saddled a large reddish-brown stallion called, I think, Alazan. Simon told me that he was well-behaved and didn’t buck. I hadn’t saddled or ridden for years. After that little refresher lesson I think I can now saddle the horse myself. Of course, capturing it might be more of a challenge. I asked Simon to give me a refresher in lasso-throwing. He laughed.
I used to ride a lot when I was a young subaltern stationed at the Artillery School in Camp Shilo, Manitoba (25 miles from Brandon) back in the mid-1960’s. A coupe of retired warrant officers, both of them old sodbusters, had set up a livery stable. They made most of their money, I recall, by collecting the urine from pregnant mares that in turn was used to produce oestrogen for birth-control pills. At first just a customer, I got to ride for free when I offered to exercise strings of quarter horses every morning, especially in the winter when there were no drop-in customers and no teenage girls to do all the grunge work gratis.
I would saddle a palomino quarter horse called, I think, Sally; she stood stock still until you put one foot in the stirrup to mount at which point she would begin to canter on the spot. This made getting aboard interesting. She continued to canter on the spot until you touched her with your heels. Then her wish was to streak off out of the corral towards the horizon. She just loved to run and had lots of pent-up energy.
I tried riding a stallion for a few days. But he and I were apparently at odds about who was in overall command of the string of six to 12 mares and he would reach around to bite me. We tied a rope so that he couldn’t quite reach around. But riding him was anyway like riding a rock compared to almost any mare I have ever ridden. A hard ride and a constant fight! I gave up on him after a few days and left him whinnying in a separate corral as we disappeared down a sandy road through a forest of small alders or Manitoba maples.
I used to do the exercising of the horses in the early morning before I had to be on parade at 0800. That far north summer days begin very early and it was not so difficult to get back in time. But in the winter it is still dark at 0800. The exercise ride took place anyway. Manitoba in the winter has to be the coldest place in all of Canada. Warm Pacific air drops all its rain on Prince Rupert and Vancouver in order to be able to rise over the Coastal Mountains. After descending the eastern side of the Rockies near Calgary and Edmonton, also cold, cold cities, the dry air masses are trying to pick up water all across the semi-arid prairies or high plains. In the summer the weather is sunny and dry and quite hot. In the winter it is sunny and dry and damned cold. Riding out in the winter meant layering up and wearing something to keep your feet from freezing. On top of everything I wore a long cavalry greatcoat that one of the warrant officers still had from his days as a Boy Soldier in the Horse Artillery before the Second World War. It was large enough to be pulled over my anorak.
Off we would go, the horses plodding along in the darkness, their breath streaming out around them in the frozen stillness of the forest. Although still night, it was bright enough to see easily because of the snow everywhere; the trees were not closely packed together either. Even the cold was tolerable too because there was no wind once we got inside the woods. We never galloped or cantered because the air was too frigid to be sucked into lungs without being first warmed. That could only happen when we walked. Also, a basic rule of survival in the Arctic is never to get overheated, not to sweat: “You’ve got to be cool to be warm”; sweating cools you down too much when it evaporates and your body temperature is lowered. So, I never wanted to overheat the horses and have to spend hours walking them cool when I got back. It had to be a nice balance between exercise and overheating.
Nevertheless, when we arrived back at the log stables on those dark winter mornings, every horse including Sally looked like a ghost. Breath vapour was frozen all around the head of each horse and back along its neck as far as the withers. Actual icicles dangled from their nostrils. I even had little icicles hanging from my Army moustache. Fortunately, since there was no wind, neither the horses nor I ever got frostbite.
So, when I finally get into the saddle aboard Alazan here at Rancho el Nogal, I am not a complete novice. But it has been a long, long time. I climb carefully into the heavy stock saddle and start off on a nice quiet ride out into the large open area behind the corral. As that open space gets close to the mountainside, there are more trees. But although the trees look like a forest from a distance, when you get into them are by no means closely spaced. It is easy to ride among them.
Alazan is obedient but keeps trying to turn left and circle back to the corral. I decide that, for this ride, I would not dismount to open barbed-wired fences but would patrol only around the big fenced-in area. I am out for a total of about ninety minutes and cover everything including riding up into the wooded areas and along sometimes quite deep arroyos. I suspect that, if I had just keep heading away from the ranch-house complex, Alazan would eventually have settled down. But I just walk the horse and enjoy the surroundings, watching the cattle staring at me as we go by, noting interesting and colourful songbirds that pop up out of the trees or grass, and soak up the sun in the mid-70’s air temperatures. Unless you compare it with a city, this is about as far as you can get from a sailboat and bluewater cruising as you can get. And, whereas down in San Carlos we did everything we could to avoid the direct rays of the sun, with the temperatures here a mile high in the mid-seventies, I am happy to be in them. We do break briefly into a canter once or twice; it’s easy enough if in any way we start heading for home. But I do not on this first outing want to get too rambunctious, get Alazan -or me for that matter- all lathered up, and I know that I will be stiff enough anyway from the unaccustomed exercise without overdoing things. As you get older, after all, you get more cautious.
The horse and I come back after having enjoyed a little mild exercise. I arrive back pleased that I had not forgotten everything about western-style riding and that I am only mildly stiff. I would like to be out there every day if I can and at some point ride out for a few hours with Simon when he is working livestock on horseback.
As darkness approaches, Kathleen goes out to do the evening chores. Suddenly she is back to say that there is a strange horseman at the corral gate, and, Oh, yes! Schnautze and Porky are out of the pigpen again. I rush out to help. It is rather difficult to talk to Jose-Luis while simultaneously trying to shoo pigs back into a pen. He is trying not to smile. We can’t entice the pigs with a bucket of food because they have already been fed and are ready for some out-of-pen action. Jose Luis watches with, I think, suppressed amusement but little facial expression on his dark Indian face under his Stetson as we circle the pigs waving our arms to drive them towards the sty. Are there such people as “pigboys” there way there are “cowboys”? Too bad Cody is out with Simon; he would have nipped at their heels and driven them along in the right direction. Eventually, as darkness falls, Schnautze and Porky settle the whole matter by finally disappearing over the steep drop into the underbrush heading towards the river. They will just have to make it on their own tonight and we can only hope that they show up in the morning. (Which they do; Schnautze is the first back this morning and goes into the sty to get at the food there; Porky shows up later - like the last time, tired and footsore. I spend some time making the gate more swine-proof. Pig-chases are not my thing! Pigboy, indeed!)
Jose Luis, we decipher, has been hired by Bob (Roberto) to work on the ranch to ride fence in order to get the big mesa pasture prepared to receive cattle. He has ridden over from San Antonio in about six hours and was expecting to find Roberto here. We ourselves have been expecting Bob back since Tuesday at the latest. Maybe the road is now so badly washed out by the heavy rains that he can’t drive it. The telephone doesn’t work here at the moment although we have email.
Having established his bona fides, we invite Jose Luis in for coffee and something to eat. With a little luck Simon will not be so late this evening. Before coming inside, Jose Luis unsaddles his horse and hobbles it by tying the two forefeet together with a simple rope. The animal can get to grass but can only do so by hopping forward. It won’t go far during the night and can easily be captured in the morning. We drink coffee and eat together and struggle with our Spanish to make conversation. We find out that Jose Luis, perhaps about 50 years old, is a full-blooded Pima Indian and one of the few dozen that still speak the language. He is also a Pentecostal minister in San Antonio. Like Simon, he is very mild-mannered. Unlike Simon, who can joke around, Jose Luis is more serious; he smiles but doesn’t laugh and chortle the way Simon does.
Eventually Simon arrives back way after dark. After putting up his mule, he comes in for dinner. He is pleased to see another man here as the work is getting to be too much for him alone. We get some bedding for Jose Luis and eventually the two men go off to the cowboy bunkhouse.
This morning about 0800, to my surprise, another cowboy shows up at the corral. This place is becoming like Grand Central Station! I thought it was supposed to be remote. This is Roberto, a much younger and taller man with a friendly smile full of good white teeth and a white straw Stetson. Roberto apparently also works riding fence. Who knew? He has come in to pick up a gasoline-powered chain saw for use, I think, to make fence-posts on the spot. The engine however refuses to work properly. Before he can go back out again he has to pull the engine apart and get it working. The other men have to stand around and wait, not knowing how long this is going to take and therefore not really able to start anything else.
When I was out for my ride yesterday, I notice that there are lots of branches and even whole trees lying on the ground. Most of them have been cut but some have been blown down. The trees are not really very tall or thick in the semi-arid climate here, and I wonder if some of this can’t be recovered for use in the fireplaces and cooking ranges. It would just have to be cut up and stacked. Looking around the complex I don’t see any stacks of wood. Maybe I should offer to do that. It would be good exercise and useful work. Of course, bringing in bottles of propane, the current cooking fuel, is a lot easier and cheaper probably than paying somebody to fetch, cut and stack firewood. But there are three power saws around here in one storeroom or another. So maybe I shall take on the job. I’ll discuss it with Bob when he eventually shows up.
While I am puttering about the place Greta and the other dogs start barking and looking out to the north. I wander over to the ravine and see an elderly man riding slowly across the little creek and point his grey horse’s head up the step hill towards me. Eventually he arrives accompanied by two dogs. We talk for a minute while he sits in the saddle, his woven-leather quirt in his right hand, his hands folded over each other and resting on the brass pommel of his stock saddle. He must be well over seventy and exudes a certain calm dignity. His skin is dark from years in the sun, one eye has an incipient cataract and he has only a few teeth left in his lower jaw. He is wearing a black baseball cap, a black t-shirt and dark blue-jeans darned visibly at one knee. Like all the other cowboys I have seen here, he is not wearing cowboy boots but only crepe-soled work shoes. Only Roberto wears spurs that I have seen so far; only Roberto and Israel have been wearing Stetson hats, the white straw variety you see so often in Mexico.
I offer him my hand, invite him to dismount and offer to get him some water to drink. He dismounts and drapes the two reins of his horse’s bridle over something; the horse will stand as if tied firmly. He sits down on under the eaves in the Herraria (smithy) in the shade while I get some cold water. As far as I understood him, he has ridden over to Rancho el Nogal from somewhere north of here, and that he worked for nine years (or did he say ninety) on this ranch, riding the perimeter and doing all the cowpunchers normal tasks on a working cattle ranch. Gesturing to all the hills around he seems to be saying that he knows them all from his work here. He seems just to want to say hello to Señor Roberto (Bob); this is a courtesy call, I gather. I explain that Roberto is coming mañana o mas tarde. (I don’t really know when he is coming but I am trying to be polite in my limited Spanish). It could be that, like Jose-Luis, Bob has hired him to work here. He is old but he’s probably tough enough still. I listen while he talks about his past here. Of course I only get some of it but I can now guess at a lot. When he finishes one part and I stay silent, he begins to sing under his breath, a sort of little Indian-sounding chant that perhaps is meant to fill in the conversational spaces. After chanting quietly for a while he would pick up another topic to do with his life here. Eventually he stands and says something that might mean that he has to go and moves to his horse. I wave to him as he rides through the fence and out of sight over the lip of the arroyo.
So far the only persons we have met on the ranch other than Cindy and Bob and their two boys have been Pima Indians. They have without exception been reserved, soft-spoken, polite and friendly, clean though wearing old work clothes. I had of course heard of Apaches and Yumas; they were both from around here too. In fact, the name of the village of Yepachic nearby is the Spanish way of spelling Apache. But I had never heard of the Pima Indians before. So I looked for some information about them on the internet. Since all up and down the coast of Alaska, British Columbia (including the Queen Charlotte Islands), and Washington State we had many encounters with native peoples (called First Nations in Canada) and had become intensely interested in their histories and cultures and especially by the history of the encounters between whites and natives. This story of the Pima Indians is different in that they were an agricultural and not a warrior people. Nevertheless, they were as badly treated as every other aboriginal group, their land grabbed, their language and culture suppressed, the people themselves brought close to extermination in what was basically an attempted and almost completely successful genocide.

Pima Indians
An important tribe of Southern Arizona, centering along the middle Gila and its affluent, the Salt River. Linguistically they belong to the Piman branch of the widely extended Shoshonean stock, and their language, with dialectic variation, is the same as that spoken also by the Pápago and extinct Sobaipuri of southern Arizona, and by the Navome of Sonora, Mexico. In Spanish times the tribes of the Arizona group were known collectively as Pimas Altos (Upper Pima), while those of Senora were distinguished as Pimas Bajos (Lower Pima), the whole territory being known as the Pimería. The tribal name Pima is a corruption of their own word for "no", mistaken by the early missionaries for a proper name. They call themselves simply 'Aàtam, "people", or sometimes for distinction 'Aàtam-akimûlt, "river people". Notwithstanding their importance as a tribe, the Pima have not been prominent in history, owing to their remoteness from military and missionary activity during the Spanish period, and to their almost unbroken peaceable attitude towards the whites. It was at one time claimed that they were the authors of the ruined pueblos in their country, notably the celebrated Casa Grande, but later investigation confirms the statement recorded by Father Garcés as early as 1780 that they were built by a previous people connected with the Hopi.
The real history of the Pima may be said to begin with the German Jesuit missionary explorer, Father Eusebio Keno (Kühn), who in 1687 established a missionary headquarters at Dolores, near the present Cucurpe, northern Senora, Mexico, from which point until his death in 1711 he covered the whole Pimería in his missionary labours. In 1694, led by Indian reports of massive ruins in the far north, he penetrated along the Gila, and said Mass in the Casa Grande. In 1697 he accompanied a military exploration of the Pima country, under Lieutenant Bernal, and Captain Mange, baptizing nearly a hundred Indians. In 1701 he made the earliest map of the Gila region. He found the Pima and their cousins the Pápago most anxious for teachers. "They were, above all, desirous of being formed into regular mission communities, with resident padres of their own; and at many rancherías they built rude but neatly cared-for churches, planted fields, and tended herds of livestock in patient waiting for the missionaries, who, in most cases, never came " (Bancroft). From 1736 to 1750 Fathers Keller and Sedelmair several times visited the Pima, but no missions were established in their country, although a number of the tribe attached themselves to the Pápago missions. The revolt of the southern tribes in 1750 caused a suspension of the work, but the missions were resumed some years later and continued under increasing difficulties until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, at which time the whole number of neophytes in Arizona, chiefly Pápago, was about 1200. In the next year the Arizona missions were turned over to Franciscans of the College of Queretaro, who continued the work with some success in spite of constant inroads of the Apache. Although details are wanting, it is probable that the number of neophytes increased. The most noted of these latter workers was Father Francisco Garcés, in charge of the Pápago at San Xavier del Bac (1768-76). In 1828, by decree of the revolutionary government of Mexico, all the missions were confiscated, the Spanish priests expelled, and all Christianizing effort came to an end.
About 1840 the Pima were strengthened by the Maricopa from the lower Gila, who moved up to escape the attacks of the Yuma, the common enemy of both. Both tribes continue to live in close alliance, although of entirely different language and origin. Their relations with the United States Government began in 1846, when General Kearney's expedition entered their territory, and met with a friendly reception. Other expeditions stopped at their villages within the next few years, all meeting with kind treatment. With the influx of the California gold hunters about 1850, there set in a long period of demoralization, with frequent outrages by the whites which several times almost provoked an outbreak. In 1850 and 1857 the hostile Yuma were defeated. The Apache raids were constant and destructive until the final subjugation of that tribe by the Government. In all the Apache campaigns since 1864 the Pima have served as willing and efficient scouts. In 1857 a non-resident agent was appointed, and in 1859 a reservation was surveyed for the two tribes, and $10,000 in goods distributed among them as a recognition of past services. In 1870 the agency was established at Sacaton on the reservation, since which time they have been regularly under government supervision. The important problem of irrigation, upon which the future prosperity of the tribes depends, is now in process of satisfactory solution by the Government. As a body the Indians are now civilized, industrious as farmers and labourers, and largely Christian, divided between Presbyterian and Catholic. Presbyterian work was begun in 1870. The Catholics re-entered the field shortly afterwards, and have now a flourishing mission school, St. John the Baptist, at Gila Crossing, built in 1899, in charge of Franciscan Fathers, with several small chapels, and total Catholic population of 600 in the two tribes, including fifty Maricopa. The 5000 or more Pápago attached to the same agency have been practically all Catholic from the Jesuit period.
In their primitive condition the Pima were agricultural and sedentary, living in villages of lightly-built dome-shaped houses, occupied usually by a single family each, and cultivating by the help of irrigation large crops of corn, beans, pumpkins and native cotton, from which the women spun the simple clothing, consisting of a breech-cloth and head-band for the man, and a short skirt for the women, with sandals or moccasin for special occasion and a buckskin shirt in extreme cold weather. They also prepared clothing fabrics from the inner bark of the willow. The heavier labour of cultivation was assumed by the men. Besides their cultivated foods, they made use of the fruits of the saguaro cactus, from which they prepared the intoxicating tizwin, and mesquite bean, besides the ordinary game of the country. They painted and tattooed their faces and wore their hair at full length. Their women were not good potters, but they excelled as basket makers. Their arms were the bow, the club, and the shield, fighting always on foot. Their allies were the Pápago and Maricopa, their enemies the Apache and Yuma. The killing of an enemy was followed by an elaborate purification ceremony, closing with a victory dance. There was a head tribunal chief, with subordinate village chiefs. Polygamy was allowed, but not frequent. Descent was in the male line. Unlike Indians generally, they had large families and welcomed twins. And unlike their neighbours, they buried in the ground instead of cremating their dead. Deformed infants were killed at birth, as were at later times the infants born of white or Mexican fathers. They had, and still retain, many songs of ceremony, war, hunting, gaming, love, medicine, and of childhood.
According to their elaborate genesis myth, the earth was formed by "Earth Doctor", who himself evolved from a dense cloud of darkness. He made the plants and animals, and a race of never-dying humans, who by their increase so crowded the earth that he destroyed his whole creation and made a new world with a new race subject to thinning out by death. Another hero god is "Elder Brother", and prominent place is assigned to Sun, Moon, Night, and Coyote. The myth also includes a deluge story. Although the linguistic relations of the Oima are well known, all that is recorded in the language is comprised chiefly in a few vocabularies, none exceeding two hundred words, several of which in manuscript are in the keeping of the Bureau of American Ethnology (See KINO; PÁPAGO INDIANS.)

This write-up came from the Catholic Encyclopaedia so might be a little slanted towards church history. Cindy Tolle told me that the Pimas came here as scouts and auxiliaries for the US Army when they were fighting the Apaches and Yumas in the mid-1850’s. Pimas were an agricultural and peaceful people, always got along well with the white man and were eager to help the US Army defeat the warring tribes. The Pimas share a reservation in Southern Arizona with the Maricopa Indian, who although they were only distantly related, were also being harassed by the Apaches and Yumas. Of course, their support for the US did not protect them from depredations by the incoming settlers and betrayal by every level of government. Treaties signed even by a US president were often breached within six months. A type of genocide was initiated when the water the Pimas required for their crops was siphoned off upstream by white settlers. According to Simon, only a few dozen now still speak the Pima language.
I wanted to find some information from the Pima Indians themselves that might give me some indication about how they saw themselves. The following came from the Pima Indian Reservation website in Southern Arizona:

A Pima Past
by Anne Moore Shaw
Archaeology reveals that around the year 300 B.C. a group of Indian people migrated to the Gila River Valley of Arizona. They settled near the ever-flowing Gila, which shimmered and meandered through the dry desert land. They were fanners and found ways and means to irrigate their crops by diverting water from the river with an elaborate irrigation system that featured hundreds of miles of canals. Most of these canals were about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. They were dug with wood and stone implements, and the dirt and debris were carried away in large baskets by the women.
A thriving civilization farmed the desert along the canals until around A.D. 1200, when they vanished with no trace or explanation of their disappearance. Old Pima legends say they were driven away by enemy tribes from the east.
As you glance at many areas along the Salt and Gila valleys near the junction of the two rivers, some parts of the canals are still visible. Potsherds can be found lying on top of mounds where once a proud race had its dwellings. Excavations have brought to light basketry, stone axes, seashells, grinding stones, pit houses, and ramadas that attest to open-air living. From these findings, the theory has developed that the Pima and Papago tribes are descendants of these people, whom the Pimas call Huhugam (Those Who Are Gone). That the two tribes have common ancestors may be correct: it is true that they speak the same language with only a slight difference in the Papago dialect.
The famous Casa Grande ruins, still shrouded in mystery, were built sometime in the thirteenth century by a small ancient band sometime called the Salado, who drifted into the region and mixed with the Huhugam. They stayed only until about 1400, and then they too moved away.
According to Pima legends, Siwani Wa!akih, an ancient wise man, lived in the Big House. Its walls were four stories high and built from caliche that hardened like cement. Once it was surrounded by a city of considerable size. Ruins of houses are still visible around the famous Casa Grande, now a national monument. Modern generations call this amazing structure the first skyscraper.
When the first Christian missionary to the Pimas and Papagos came to the Southwest, the native Pima guides told him about the Casa Grande ruins near the Gila River. In 1694 Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, Keno or Kuehn, a German Jesuit) rode a dusty trail to visit the Big House. What a great surprise awaited Padre Kino! The Indians were nearly naked, wearing only breech cloths, and they had long hair and tattooed faces. The gentle padre asked them, "Who built the Case Grande?"
"Huhugam," the Pimas must have answered.
Padre Kino held mass inside the old Casa Grande walls. His joy was complete when he noticed the Pimas imitating the sign of the cross. The docile Pimas of the Gila Valley readily accepted Father Kino and his Christian teachings. They came to love him and his gentle ways.
When Father Kino came again, he brought seeds of vegetables and fruit. These took their places among the favorite foods of the Papago, Pima and Maricopa tribes. But the main little seed was wheat. As soon as the padre introduced it, wheat became an important part of the Indian economy. During the time of the pioneer, it saved the life of many a white tenderfoot and soldier.
Father Kino also introduced horses and cattle and helped the Indians to become better farmers. But as in the days of the Huhugam, the Gila River continued to play an important part in the lives of the natives, who were so dependent on water. Like the Nile, the Gila and Salt rivers used to overflow their banks, depositing rich loam. Men and women cooperated and went to the farms to plant seeds. A wooden gihk, or shovel, with a sharp end, was used to dig holes. When the tiny seed was thrown in the hole, bare heels were ready to shove the dirt over the seed.
This method of planting also was used by the Egyptians in the Nile Valley. And once a maize basket similar to those used by the Pimas was found on the island of Crete. Could it have belonged to the beautiful goddess of Pima legend, the White Clay-Eater, who left the Gila Valley to mourn for her departed twin sons and lived on an island in a distant land? The Pimas have cause to wonder if their ancestors might have wandered from Southeast Asia. Could the Pimas be the lost tribe of Israel?
After Padre Kino set his feet on the Pima desert soil, a wide door was opened for the Mexicans and Europeans. "Now the peaceful Pimas will protect us from the Apaches," they thought. Some came on foot, others on horseback and in ox carts, through southern Arizona, and then a part of Mexico. This first group of settlers had little effect on the primitive Pima way of life. It is true that many Indians now had a Spanish name as well as an Indian name, but the Pimas clung to their ancient values and legends. They continued to live in their brush round houses, called olas kih. People helped each other and worked together in harmony. The land belonged to everyone: a man could farm as much as he could clear and work. To keep things going smoothly, each village had a chief, who allied himself under a head chief when enemies were threatening.
In 1854 the Gadsden Purchase made southern Arizona an American territory. Now a new group of strangers came to the desert country of the Pimas: white soldiers and traders and Indian agents. The rich Pima farms provided these newcomers with food, and soon the growing Pima villages formed themselves into a pattern similar to that of today.
Here a word should be said about the Pimas' friends, the Maricopas. Sometime in the 1700's the Maricopas fought with the other Colorado River tribes. They kept moving eastward until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they settled with the peaceful Pimas along the Gila. But the Yumas of the Colorado River region still bore a grudge against the Maricopas. They came to Pima land to attack their old enemies in 1857. Unfortunately for them, they had not counted on the valor of the Maricopas' new allies. The Pimas and Maricopas thoroughly vanquished the Yumas, leaving almost no survivors.
After the battle, a group of Maricopas came to Pima Chief Antonio Azul and requested a small piece of land on which to build their homes. The chief went into consultation with his counselors and sub-chiefs. It was agreed that the Maricopas could live two miles west on the Sacaton Agency. But they had to promise to help the Pimas in the wars with the Apaches and other enemy tribes. Since then the Pimas and the Maricopas have been loyal allies, friends and neighbors. They still live side by side.
After all that roaming, one would expect the Maricopas to settle down for good. However, in 1877 a murder within the tribe caused a division. One group of dissenters moved to a spot near the junction of the Salt and Gila rivers, while another contingent joined the Mormons at their new colony Lehi, near Mesa. The Mormons were delighted with their Indian neighbors, for they knew that they would help protect them from the marauding Apaches. Thus it was that the Pimas, Maricopa, and Papagos helped the white man to settle the Southwest. Besides providing the newcomers with food and water, they acted as guides, soldiers, and allies to help break the threat of Apache terrorism.
Once the Apaches were conquered, the settlers were free to arrive in great numbers. Over the prairies they came, and it was not long before the old Pima way of life was deeply affected by the white man's ideas and material culture. Some of the new ways were good and the Pimas were glad for them. Blankets, calico, and new foods, tools, and medicines made the hard lives our ancestors had lived a bit easier for us. And of course there was the Christian religion, which became so dear to the Pimas and lightened their sorrows.
But the white man brought bad things too. Liquor has broken up families, and Indian morality has conspicuously declined. Indian values have been abandoned by some of the younger generation, and they are no longer satisfied to stay at home. Many of our arts and traditions have been lost because the white man insisted that we indiscriminately abandon all our Indian ways.
Thus as our old ones have died off the arts of cloth weaving and pottery-making have gone with them. Our children are no longer interested in the ancient legends and ceremonies and songs, so many of these treasures have been lost forever. Diseases which the Pima had never known before came with the white man; tuberculosis struck down many of us because the Indian agents insisted that we live in poorly ventilated adobe houses instead of our airy olas kih. Many of our rich farms along the Gila and Salt Rivers, which supported our ancestors for centuries, have become dry and deserted as the white man has taken the water for his own purpose.
But now we old ones are seeing the completing of the circle. Instead of insisting that we abandon our Indian ways, the white man now asks us to try to recapture our rich culture before it has completely passed away. I am telling the children on the reservation about the Huhugam; I teach them the Pima language and legends.
We women get together to weave baskets in the old designs, and we have started a museum where everyone can see the beautiful artifacts of our proud Pima-Maricopa heritage. But we can never go back to the old way of life. The white man and his cities surround us--we must embrace those of his ways which are good while keeping our pride in being Indians.
Life For Indians Changed As White Men Moved In
by Diane Enos
"And they will do it,
they will kill the staying earth.
But you must not help them,
you will just be feeling fine,
and you will see it,
you will see it."
Thus Elder Brother, culture hero of the Pima Indians, prophesied the destruction of the world in his farewell speech. It might be said that this prophecy has already come to pass.
The world of the indigenous peoples, the Pima and the Maricopa, has in some sense been destroyed in the last hundred years. From all sociological, political and spiritual perspectives that world has unequivocally been altered forever, as the people were forever to adapt to changes wrought by the intrusion of the white man in the Salt River Valley.
Archaeological evidence such as village sites and ancient irrigation systems indicate that the area along the Salt and Gila rivers has been inhabited by humans since at least 300 B.C. Modern-day Pimas, anthropologists say, may be descended from those ancient farmers, the "huhu-kam" which means "those who are gone".
In villages along the Gila River, the Pima and Maricopa grew crops of corn, several types of beans, tobacco and squash, as well as cotton that was woven into cloth. The two tribes had allied themselves against others such as the Apache and Quechan after the 18th century when the Maricopa sought and received asylum with the Pimas.
White military expeditions passing through Pima land found hospitable and industrious villagers who traded wheat, syrup, melons, corn and other surplus crops for needles, buttons, beads, clothes and thread. Lt. Col. Phillip St. George Cooke with the "Mormon Battalion" remarked in his journal on "eating watermelon on Christmas," which the Pimas offered from their storage piles. Another chronicler noted fields "as far as the eye can see" of irrigated, productive land along the Gila River. In 1876, the Pimas sold a surplus of 2 million pounds of wheat.
But by 1871 the Gila was drying up. White settlers upstream around Florence were diverting all of the water, leaving the fields of the Pimas and Maricopas to wither and dry up. Also at this time a drought was beginning.
Stories are told in the Salt River community of this time, when men would run the 30 or so miles up from the Gila, tend their fields and run back at evening. Soon, whole families relocated to the lush edges of the Salt River, where they cleared fields, refilled ancient ditches and began tilling the soil around their new settlements. By 1878, Indian Agent J.H. Stout counted 600 to 700 people living at Salt River.
White settlers were displeased. The Pima and Maricopas "were denounced for this by the committee of the Maricopa Grand Jury and are termed renegades and savage intruders," according to a letter written by Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, for whom Fort McDowell is named. Agent Stout also noted that the "number of whites who want farms of the lands occupied by the Indians has increased to 16", and that they had held a meeting demanding that the Indians be forced back to the Gila.
But Stout, along with others, petitioned the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to add Salt River to the then-existing reservation, citing the Indians' buffering effect against the Apaches, as well as their right to farm the land. Pima and Maricopa had served commendably as scouts for the army.
On January 10, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes enlarged the reservation to include the "Salt River on the west, the San Carlos Reservation on the east." Less than six months later, that executive order was revoked and the current Salt River Pima-Maricopa Reservation (which is now east of Scottsdale) was established, roughly the size it is today.
The people maintained a village system of agriculture, where family homes were located relatively close together for protection from raiding Apaches. They maintained an economic and political system based on mutual help in the production of crops.
Although she was born about 1907, "Nanny" Howard's recollection of community life reflects a continuum of that period. She recalls how families used to help each other at planting. "They'd all go - the women to cook and feed everybody And when it came time to harvest the wheat, some families had Papagos come stay and help for some of the crop because they didn't have any fields down there."
Harvesting the wheat involved the use of horses to trample the stalks, after which women would winnow out the chaff with large woven baskets, according to Howard. "People really helped each other then, not like now," she said.
The governing body was that of a council of "chiefs" and a hereditary "head chief." Decisions were arrived at by consensus, with discussion continuing until everyone agreed. According to Josiah King, now deceased, "the system was more democratic than making decisions by a majority vote, but had the disadvantage of being slow when there were strong opposing opinions."
King had noted that during the early 20th century "strong differences of opinion" created two political factions, the Progressives and the Conservatives. "Meetings in the large council house often ending in fights between the Progressives and Conservatives," he said. "The Progressives were known as Montezuma's Gang after Dr. Carlos Montezuma, a Yavapai who campaigned for Indian rights and urged Indians to become educated, learn from the white man and adopt what was beneficial. The Conservatives favored keeping the Pima way, and at one point the Conservatives tried to kill Chief Hiv Qua."
When Chief Hiv Qua died in 1933, he was about 80 years old. Upon his death, Jose King became the last Pima chief, but according to his son Josiah, by that time the system had broken down.
"The chief's power had been taken away by the government and many people no longer believed in the chief but followed the Indian agent, " said Josiah King.
By 1940, the tribe had elected by popular vote its first president and adopted a constitution and bylaws under the provisions of the federal Indian Reorganization Act, a system in effect today.
Also, at the beginning of this century, the enactment of two major legislative actions involving land and water, central to the Pima and Maricopa, were to unilaterally transform that way of life.
The Dawes Act of 1887, applied at Salt River about 1910 had allowed for the division of land into individual "allotments" of 10 acres below the Arizona Canal, and 20 acres of secondary land above the canal, which had no rights to irrigation water from the canal.
The well-meaning intent of the Dawes Act was to create "family farms", but instead the "resulting land use and settlement pattern led to the destruction of village structure and cooperative modes of farming which had enabled villagers to pool their labor and resources," wrote Billman Hayes, Sr., a former chairman of the tribal Land Board several years ago.
White homesteaders in the Salt River Valley had noticed the ancient Huhu-kam canals. Reclearing and use of these canals proved to be profitable. By 1888, they had cultivated 100,000 acres and began to seek more water.
In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Irrigation Act, which paved the way for the construction of dams on the Salt and Verde Rivers and the subsequent diversion of water below the Granite Reef Dam into canals. The Salt River began to dry up.
Though a child at the time, Florence Howard, now near 80, remembers that the "people were kind of scared" when the river stopped. Like other elders she saw the river's green edges of reeds, willow, cottonwood and mesquite slowly shrivel and fade.
The songs of the people began to fade also, says Howard. She spoke of when the all-night circle dances would bring "lots of people, and my father would sing with them 'to make the people dance' and celebrate." Major celebrations such as the "burning of the witch" to mark the historic killing of a child-stealing sorceress, later merged with the Mormon Pioneer Days or various saints’ days as the Pima and Maricopa embraced Christianity.
"Vashi soovak", or the place where a sweet-smelling grass grew abundantly and now is Scottsdale, was mostly chaparral with a few farms about 73 years ago. "Nanny" Howard was a child then, and she remembers that Mr. (Verner) Vanderhoof farmed near Indian School and Pima Roads.
"The Indians would go and work for him, harvesting in wagons," she recalls, "and he would grow a special kind of pumpkin that he knew the Indians liked, the kind that you could cut into strips and dry. He was good to us, when he was through getting what they needed from the fields, he'd let the Indians take what was left."
Then, education of reservation children was required by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Boarding schools like the Phoenix Indian School were the rule of the day since the early 1900's.
Leo Schurz recalls that the military structure of the school required uniforms, drilling and the learning of a trade. He says, "we grew our own vegetables, baked bread for the whole school, raised stock and were trained to be able to get a job doing those things." As part of the training, children were strictly forbidden to speak their tribal languages.
Like most Salt River seniors, Naomi Enos is fluent in her native language. She can recite family kin-ships and anecdotes about earlier tribal members. People like her have seen in their lifetime a total restructuring of the old economy from agricultural self-sufficiency to the mainstream American economy. "We grew everything that we ate," she said. "There was no welfare then, people didn't have a choice, you had to work." When they could no longer grow enough to be self-sustaining, she said people sold wood and women took jobs as domestic help in white homes.
Acculturation through education also brought about a change from the diet of desert and cultivated indigenous crops. Florence Howard laments the loss of such foods as "hunum" or cholla buds, berries and mesquite pods. She says of the past, "they didn't get sick then, it's because of the food they ate, no sugar."
Today, although Pima and Maricopa shoppers favor [the local supermarket] to the field and desert, there are still some gardens of corn, beans and squash seen at Salt River. The old, non–hybrid seeds, like the languages, have survived to some extent and may represent as a symbol those tangible parts of culture persisting in a modern, technological world.
Even so, the water to sprout those seeds and irrigate miles of arable land of the Salt River Reservation remains at issue. A historic water settlement now under negotiation, could resolve several suits bought by the tribe against the government, Valley cities including Scottsdale, the Salt River Project and others. The suits were filed to assert court-determined water rights of the Pima and Maricopa based on prior or first use.
* Quote from ritual oratory collected by George Herzog from Gila River Piman in the 1920s. Piman Texts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Library, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguists), ms. 269.

posted by rjb,
4:27 pm

<$BlogRSDURL$>

		News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
For more pictures of Ron and Kathy Bird and the Vilisar, see these beautiful photos by Albert Pang Click here to e-mail Ron Click here to e-mail Kathy Archives January 2004 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 Vilisar Translation Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty. SachverstÃ¤ndige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; GeschÃ¤ft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.	Friday, September 09, 2005 Thursday, 08 September 2005 We are finally getting the hang of blogger.com. Thanks to Gwen Holbrow who designed it four years ago and has been waiting for me to start blogging. There are still a lot of technical things we are learning about using the site. And we are having trouble getting photos on the website. However, we hope to solve these problems soon. (Of course, it would help if we had a digital camera too. We’re workin’ on it!) There was a lot going on around here yesterday. First, about mid-afternoon, Simon and I saddled a large reddish-brown stallion called, I think, Alazan. Simon told me that he was well-behaved and didn’t buck. I hadn’t saddled or ridden for years. After that little refresher lesson I think I can now saddle the horse myself. Of course, capturing it might be more of a challenge. I asked Simon to give me a refresher in lasso-throwing. He laughed. I used to ride a lot when I was a young subaltern stationed at the Artillery School in Camp Shilo, Manitoba (25 miles from Brandon) back in the mid-1960’s. A coupe of retired warrant officers, both of them old sodbusters, had set up a livery stable. They made most of their money, I recall, by collecting the urine from pregnant mares that in turn was used to produce oestrogen for birth-control pills. At first just a customer, I got to ride for free when I offered to exercise strings of quarter horses every morning, especially in the winter when there were no drop-in customers and no teenage girls to do all the grunge work gratis. I would saddle a palomino quarter horse called, I think, Sally; she stood stock still until you put one foot in the stirrup to mount at which point she would begin to canter on the spot. This made getting aboard interesting. She continued to canter on the spot until you touched her with your heels. Then her wish was to streak off out of the corral towards the horizon. She just loved to run and had lots of pent-up energy. I tried riding a stallion for a few days. But he and I were apparently at odds about who was in overall command of the string of six to 12 mares and he would reach around to bite me. We tied a rope so that he couldn’t quite reach around. But riding him was anyway like riding a rock compared to almost any mare I have ever ridden. A hard ride and a constant fight! I gave up on him after a few days and left him whinnying in a separate corral as we disappeared down a sandy road through a forest of small alders or Manitoba maples. I used to do the exercising of the horses in the early morning before I had to be on parade at 0800. That far north summer days begin very early and it was not so difficult to get back in time. But in the winter it is still dark at 0800. The exercise ride took place anyway. Manitoba in the winter has to be the coldest place in all of Canada. Warm Pacific air drops all its rain on Prince Rupert and Vancouver in order to be able to rise over the Coastal Mountains. After descending the eastern side of the Rockies near Calgary and Edmonton, also cold, cold cities, the dry air masses are trying to pick up water all across the semi-arid prairies or high plains. In the summer the weather is sunny and dry and quite hot. In the winter it is sunny and dry and damned cold. Riding out in the winter meant layering up and wearing something to keep your feet from freezing. On top of everything I wore a long cavalry greatcoat that one of the warrant officers still had from his days as a Boy Soldier in the Horse Artillery before the Second World War. It was large enough to be pulled over my anorak. Off we would go, the horses plodding along in the darkness, their breath streaming out around them in the frozen stillness of the forest. Although still night, it was bright enough to see easily because of the snow everywhere; the trees were not closely packed together either. Even the cold was tolerable too because there was no wind once we got inside the woods. We never galloped or cantered because the air was too frigid to be sucked into lungs without being first warmed. That could only happen when we walked. Also, a basic rule of survival in the Arctic is never to get overheated, not to sweat: “You’ve got to be cool to be warm”; sweating cools you down too much when it evaporates and your body temperature is lowered. So, I never wanted to overheat the horses and have to spend hours walking them cool when I got back. It had to be a nice balance between exercise and overheating. Nevertheless, when we arrived back at the log stables on those dark winter mornings, every horse including Sally looked like a ghost. Breath vapour was frozen all around the head of each horse and back along its neck as far as the withers. Actual icicles dangled from their nostrils. I even had little icicles hanging from my Army moustache. Fortunately, since there was no wind, neither the horses nor I ever got frostbite. So, when I finally get into the saddle aboard Alazan here at Rancho el Nogal, I am not a complete novice. But it has been a long, long time. I climb carefully into the heavy stock saddle and start off on a nice quiet ride out into the large open area behind the corral. As that open space gets close to the mountainside, there are more trees. But although the trees look like a forest from a distance, when you get into them are by no means closely spaced. It is easy to ride among them. Alazan is obedient but keeps trying to turn left and circle back to the corral. I decide that, for this ride, I would not dismount to open barbed-wired fences but would patrol only around the big fenced-in area. I am out for a total of about ninety minutes and cover everything including riding up into the wooded areas and along sometimes quite deep arroyos. I suspect that, if I had just keep heading away from the ranch-house complex, Alazan would eventually have settled down. But I just walk the horse and enjoy the surroundings, watching the cattle staring at me as we go by, noting interesting and colourful songbirds that pop up out of the trees or grass, and soak up the sun in the mid-70’s air temperatures. Unless you compare it with a city, this is about as far as you can get from a sailboat and bluewater cruising as you can get. And, whereas down in San Carlos we did everything we could to avoid the direct rays of the sun, with the temperatures here a mile high in the mid-seventies, I am happy to be in them. We do break briefly into a canter once or twice; it’s easy enough if in any way we start heading for home. But I do not on this first outing want to get too rambunctious, get Alazan -or me for that matter- all lathered up, and I know that I will be stiff enough anyway from the unaccustomed exercise without overdoing things. As you get older, after all, you get more cautious. The horse and I come back after having enjoyed a little mild exercise. I arrive back pleased that I had not forgotten everything about western-style riding and that I am only mildly stiff. I would like to be out there every day if I can and at some point ride out for a few hours with Simon when he is working livestock on horseback. As darkness approaches, Kathleen goes out to do the evening chores. Suddenly she is back to say that there is a strange horseman at the corral gate, and, Oh, yes! Schnautze and Porky are out of the pigpen again. I rush out to help. It is rather difficult to talk to Jose-Luis while simultaneously trying to shoo pigs back into a pen. He is trying not to smile. We can’t entice the pigs with a bucket of food because they have already been fed and are ready for some out-of-pen action. Jose Luis watches with, I think, suppressed amusement but little facial expression on his dark Indian face under his Stetson as we circle the pigs waving our arms to drive them towards the sty. Are there such people as “pigboys” there way there are “cowboys”? Too bad Cody is out with Simon; he would have nipped at their heels and driven them along in the right direction. Eventually, as darkness falls, Schnautze and Porky settle the whole matter by finally disappearing over the steep drop into the underbrush heading towards the river. They will just have to make it on their own tonight and we can only hope that they show up in the morning. (Which they do; Schnautze is the first back this morning and goes into the sty to get at the food there; Porky shows up later - like the last time, tired and footsore. I spend some time making the gate more swine-proof. Pig-chases are not my thing! Pigboy, indeed!) Jose Luis, we decipher, has been hired by Bob (Roberto) to work on the ranch to ride fence in order to get the big mesa pasture prepared to receive cattle. He has ridden over from San Antonio in about six hours and was expecting to find Roberto here. We ourselves have been expecting Bob back since Tuesday at the latest. Maybe the road is now so badly washed out by the heavy rains that he can’t drive it. The telephone doesn’t work here at the moment although we have email. Having established his bona fides, we invite Jose Luis in for coffee and something to eat. With a little luck Simon will not be so late this evening. Before coming inside, Jose Luis unsaddles his horse and hobbles it by tying the two forefeet together with a simple rope. The animal can get to grass but can only do so by hopping forward. It won’t go far during the night and can easily be captured in the morning. We drink coffee and eat together and struggle with our Spanish to make conversation. We find out that Jose Luis, perhaps about 50 years old, is a full-blooded Pima Indian and one of the few dozen that still speak the language. He is also a Pentecostal minister in San Antonio. Like Simon, he is very mild-mannered. Unlike Simon, who can joke around, Jose Luis is more serious; he smiles but doesn’t laugh and chortle the way Simon does. Eventually Simon arrives back way after dark. After putting up his mule, he comes in for dinner. He is pleased to see another man here as the work is getting to be too much for him alone. We get some bedding for Jose Luis and eventually the two men go off to the cowboy bunkhouse. This morning about 0800, to my surprise, another cowboy shows up at the corral. This place is becoming like Grand Central Station! I thought it was supposed to be remote. This is Roberto, a much younger and taller man with a friendly smile full of good white teeth and a white straw Stetson. Roberto apparently also works riding fence. Who knew? He has come in to pick up a gasoline-powered chain saw for use, I think, to make fence-posts on the spot. The engine however refuses to work properly. Before he can go back out again he has to pull the engine apart and get it working. The other men have to stand around and wait, not knowing how long this is going to take and therefore not really able to start anything else. When I was out for my ride yesterday, I notice that there are lots of branches and even whole trees lying on the ground. Most of them have been cut but some have been blown down. The trees are not really very tall or thick in the semi-arid climate here, and I wonder if some of this can’t be recovered for use in the fireplaces and cooking ranges. It would just have to be cut up and stacked. Looking around the complex I don’t see any stacks of wood. Maybe I should offer to do that. It would be good exercise and useful work. Of course, bringing in bottles of propane, the current cooking fuel, is a lot easier and cheaper probably than paying somebody to fetch, cut and stack firewood. But there are three power saws around here in one storeroom or another. So maybe I shall take on the job. I’ll discuss it with Bob when he eventually shows up. While I am puttering about the place Greta and the other dogs start barking and looking out to the north. I wander over to the ravine and see an elderly man riding slowly across the little creek and point his grey horse’s head up the step hill towards me. Eventually he arrives accompanied by two dogs. We talk for a minute while he sits in the saddle, his woven-leather quirt in his right hand, his hands folded over each other and resting on the brass pommel of his stock saddle. He must be well over seventy and exudes a certain calm dignity. His skin is dark from years in the sun, one eye has an incipient cataract and he has only a few teeth left in his lower jaw. He is wearing a black baseball cap, a black t-shirt and dark blue-jeans darned visibly at one knee. Like all the other cowboys I have seen here, he is not wearing cowboy boots but only crepe-soled work shoes. Only Roberto wears spurs that I have seen so far; only Roberto and Israel have been wearing Stetson hats, the white straw variety you see so often in Mexico. I offer him my hand, invite him to dismount and offer to get him some water to drink. He dismounts and drapes the two reins of his horse’s bridle over something; the horse will stand as if tied firmly. He sits down on under the eaves in the Herraria (smithy) in the shade while I get some cold water. As far as I understood him, he has ridden over to Rancho el Nogal from somewhere north of here, and that he worked for nine years (or did he say ninety) on this ranch, riding the perimeter and doing all the cowpunchers normal tasks on a working cattle ranch. Gesturing to all the hills around he seems to be saying that he knows them all from his work here. He seems just to want to say hello to Señor Roberto (Bob); this is a courtesy call, I gather. I explain that Roberto is coming mañana o mas tarde. (I don’t really know when he is coming but I am trying to be polite in my limited Spanish). It could be that, like Jose-Luis, Bob has hired him to work here. He is old but he’s probably tough enough still. I listen while he talks about his past here. Of course I only get some of it but I can now guess at a lot. When he finishes one part and I stay silent, he begins to sing under his breath, a sort of little Indian-sounding chant that perhaps is meant to fill in the conversational spaces. After chanting quietly for a while he would pick up another topic to do with his life here. Eventually he stands and says something that might mean that he has to go and moves to his horse. I wave to him as he rides through the fence and out of sight over the lip of the arroyo. So far the only persons we have met on the ranch other than Cindy and Bob and their two boys have been Pima Indians. They have without exception been reserved, soft-spoken, polite and friendly, clean though wearing old work clothes. I had of course heard of Apaches and Yumas; they were both from around here too. In fact, the name of the village of Yepachic nearby is the Spanish way of spelling Apache. But I had never heard of the Pima Indians before. So I looked for some information about them on the internet. Since all up and down the coast of Alaska, British Columbia (including the Queen Charlotte Islands), and Washington State we had many encounters with native peoples (called First Nations in Canada) and had become intensely interested in their histories and cultures and especially by the history of the encounters between whites and natives. This story of the Pima Indians is different in that they were an agricultural and not a warrior people. Nevertheless, they were as badly treated as every other aboriginal group, their land grabbed, their language and culture suppressed, the people themselves brought close to extermination in what was basically an attempted and almost completely successful genocide. Pima Indians An important tribe of Southern Arizona, centering along the middle Gila and its affluent, the Salt River. Linguistically they belong to the Piman branch of the widely extended Shoshonean stock, and their language, with dialectic variation, is the same as that spoken also by the Pápago and extinct Sobaipuri of southern Arizona, and by the Navome of Sonora, Mexico. In Spanish times the tribes of the Arizona group were known collectively as Pimas Altos (Upper Pima), while those of Senora were distinguished as Pimas Bajos (Lower Pima), the whole territory being known as the Pimería. The tribal name Pima is a corruption of their own word for "no", mistaken by the early missionaries for a proper name. They call themselves simply 'Aàtam, "people", or sometimes for distinction 'Aàtam-akimûlt, "river people". Notwithstanding their importance as a tribe, the Pima have not been prominent in history, owing to their remoteness from military and missionary activity during the Spanish period, and to their almost unbroken peaceable attitude towards the whites. It was at one time claimed that they were the authors of the ruined pueblos in their country, notably the celebrated Casa Grande, but later investigation confirms the statement recorded by Father Garcés as early as 1780 that they were built by a previous people connected with the Hopi. The real history of the Pima may be said to begin with the German Jesuit missionary explorer, Father Eusebio Keno (Kühn), who in 1687 established a missionary headquarters at Dolores, near the present Cucurpe, northern Senora, Mexico, from which point until his death in 1711 he covered the whole Pimería in his missionary labours. In 1694, led by Indian reports of massive ruins in the far north, he penetrated along the Gila, and said Mass in the Casa Grande. In 1697 he accompanied a military exploration of the Pima country, under Lieutenant Bernal, and Captain Mange, baptizing nearly a hundred Indians. In 1701 he made the earliest map of the Gila region. He found the Pima and their cousins the Pápago most anxious for teachers. "They were, above all, desirous of being formed into regular mission communities, with resident padres of their own; and at many rancherías they built rude but neatly cared-for churches, planted fields, and tended herds of livestock in patient waiting for the missionaries, who, in most cases, never came " (Bancroft). From 1736 to 1750 Fathers Keller and Sedelmair several times visited the Pima, but no missions were established in their country, although a number of the tribe attached themselves to the Pápago missions. The revolt of the southern tribes in 1750 caused a suspension of the work, but the missions were resumed some years later and continued under increasing difficulties until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, at which time the whole number of neophytes in Arizona, chiefly Pápago, was about 1200. In the next year the Arizona missions were turned over to Franciscans of the College of Queretaro, who continued the work with some success in spite of constant inroads of the Apache. Although details are wanting, it is probable that the number of neophytes increased. The most noted of these latter workers was Father Francisco Garcés, in charge of the Pápago at San Xavier del Bac (1768-76). In 1828, by decree of the revolutionary government of Mexico, all the missions were confiscated, the Spanish priests expelled, and all Christianizing effort came to an end. About 1840 the Pima were strengthened by the Maricopa from the lower Gila, who moved up to escape the attacks of the Yuma, the common enemy of both. Both tribes continue to live in close alliance, although of entirely different language and origin. Their relations with the United States Government began in 1846, when General Kearney's expedition entered their territory, and met with a friendly reception. Other expeditions stopped at their villages within the next few years, all meeting with kind treatment. With the influx of the California gold hunters about 1850, there set in a long period of demoralization, with frequent outrages by the whites which several times almost provoked an outbreak. In 1850 and 1857 the hostile Yuma were defeated. The Apache raids were constant and destructive until the final subjugation of that tribe by the Government. In all the Apache campaigns since 1864 the Pima have served as willing and efficient scouts. In 1857 a non-resident agent was appointed, and in 1859 a reservation was surveyed for the two tribes, and $10,000 in goods distributed among them as a recognition of past services. In 1870 the agency was established at Sacaton on the reservation, since which time they have been regularly under government supervision. The important problem of irrigation, upon which the future prosperity of the tribes depends, is now in process of satisfactory solution by the Government. As a body the Indians are now civilized, industrious as farmers and labourers, and largely Christian, divided between Presbyterian and Catholic. Presbyterian work was begun in 1870. The Catholics re-entered the field shortly afterwards, and have now a flourishing mission school, St. John the Baptist, at Gila Crossing, built in 1899, in charge of Franciscan Fathers, with several small chapels, and total Catholic population of 600 in the two tribes, including fifty Maricopa. The 5000 or more Pápago attached to the same agency have been practically all Catholic from the Jesuit period. In their primitive condition the Pima were agricultural and sedentary, living in villages of lightly-built dome-shaped houses, occupied usually by a single family each, and cultivating by the help of irrigation large crops of corn, beans, pumpkins and native cotton, from which the women spun the simple clothing, consisting of a breech-cloth and head-band for the man, and a short skirt for the women, with sandals or moccasin for special occasion and a buckskin shirt in extreme cold weather. They also prepared clothing fabrics from the inner bark of the willow. The heavier labour of cultivation was assumed by the men. Besides their cultivated foods, they made use of the fruits of the saguaro cactus, from which they prepared the intoxicating tizwin, and mesquite bean, besides the ordinary game of the country. They painted and tattooed their faces and wore their hair at full length. Their women were not good potters, but they excelled as basket makers. Their arms were the bow, the club, and the shield, fighting always on foot. Their allies were the Pápago and Maricopa, their enemies the Apache and Yuma. The killing of an enemy was followed by an elaborate purification ceremony, closing with a victory dance. There was a head tribunal chief, with subordinate village chiefs. Polygamy was allowed, but not frequent. Descent was in the male line. Unlike Indians generally, they had large families and welcomed twins. And unlike their neighbours, they buried in the ground instead of cremating their dead. Deformed infants were killed at birth, as were at later times the infants born of white or Mexican fathers. They had, and still retain, many songs of ceremony, war, hunting, gaming, love, medicine, and of childhood. According to their elaborate genesis myth, the earth was formed by "Earth Doctor", who himself evolved from a dense cloud of darkness. He made the plants and animals, and a race of never-dying humans, who by their increase so crowded the earth that he destroyed his whole creation and made a new world with a new race subject to thinning out by death. Another hero god is "Elder Brother", and prominent place is assigned to Sun, Moon, Night, and Coyote. The myth also includes a deluge story. Although the linguistic relations of the Oima are well known, all that is recorded in the language is comprised chiefly in a few vocabularies, none exceeding two hundred words, several of which in manuscript are in the keeping of the Bureau of American Ethnology (See KINO; PÁPAGO INDIANS.) This write-up came from the Catholic Encyclopaedia so might be a little slanted towards church history. Cindy Tolle told me that the Pimas came here as scouts and auxiliaries for the US Army when they were fighting the Apaches and Yumas in the mid-1850’s. Pimas were an agricultural and peaceful people, always got along well with the white man and were eager to help the US Army defeat the warring tribes. The Pimas share a reservation in Southern Arizona with the Maricopa Indian, who although they were only distantly related, were also being harassed by the Apaches and Yumas. Of course, their support for the US did not protect them from depredations by the incoming settlers and betrayal by every level of government. Treaties signed even by a US president were often breached within six months. A type of genocide was initiated when the water the Pimas required for their crops was siphoned off upstream by white settlers. According to Simon, only a few dozen now still speak the Pima language. I wanted to find some information from the Pima Indians themselves that might give me some indication about how they saw themselves. The following came from the Pima Indian Reservation website in Southern Arizona: A Pima Past by Anne Moore Shaw Archaeology reveals that around the year 300 B.C. a group of Indian people migrated to the Gila River Valley of Arizona. They settled near the ever-flowing Gila, which shimmered and meandered through the dry desert land. They were fanners and found ways and means to irrigate their crops by diverting water from the river with an elaborate irrigation system that featured hundreds of miles of canals. Most of these canals were about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. They were dug with wood and stone implements, and the dirt and debris were carried away in large baskets by the women. A thriving civilization farmed the desert along the canals until around A.D. 1200, when they vanished with no trace or explanation of their disappearance. Old Pima legends say they were driven away by enemy tribes from the east. As you glance at many areas along the Salt and Gila valleys near the junction of the two rivers, some parts of the canals are still visible. Potsherds can be found lying on top of mounds where once a proud race had its dwellings. Excavations have brought to light basketry, stone axes, seashells, grinding stones, pit houses, and ramadas that attest to open-air living. From these findings, the theory has developed that the Pima and Papago tribes are descendants of these people, whom the Pimas call Huhugam (Those Who Are Gone). That the two tribes have common ancestors may be correct: it is true that they speak the same language with only a slight difference in the Papago dialect. The famous Casa Grande ruins, still shrouded in mystery, were built sometime in the thirteenth century by a small ancient band sometime called the Salado, who drifted into the region and mixed with the Huhugam. They stayed only until about 1400, and then they too moved away. According to Pima legends, Siwani Wa!akih, an ancient wise man, lived in the Big House. Its walls were four stories high and built from caliche that hardened like cement. Once it was surrounded by a city of considerable size. Ruins of houses are still visible around the famous Casa Grande, now a national monument. Modern generations call this amazing structure the first skyscraper. When the first Christian missionary to the Pimas and Papagos came to the Southwest, the native Pima guides told him about the Casa Grande ruins near the Gila River. In 1694 Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, Keno or Kuehn, a German Jesuit) rode a dusty trail to visit the Big House. What a great surprise awaited Padre Kino! The Indians were nearly naked, wearing only breech cloths, and they had long hair and tattooed faces. The gentle padre asked them, "Who built the Case Grande?" "Huhugam," the Pimas must have answered. Padre Kino held mass inside the old Casa Grande walls. His joy was complete when he noticed the Pimas imitating the sign of the cross. The docile Pimas of the Gila Valley readily accepted Father Kino and his Christian teachings. They came to love him and his gentle ways. When Father Kino came again, he brought seeds of vegetables and fruit. These took their places among the favorite foods of the Papago, Pima and Maricopa tribes. But the main little seed was wheat. As soon as the padre introduced it, wheat became an important part of the Indian economy. During the time of the pioneer, it saved the life of many a white tenderfoot and soldier. Father Kino also introduced horses and cattle and helped the Indians to become better farmers. But as in the days of the Huhugam, the Gila River continued to play an important part in the lives of the natives, who were so dependent on water. Like the Nile, the Gila and Salt rivers used to overflow their banks, depositing rich loam. Men and women cooperated and went to the farms to plant seeds. A wooden gihk, or shovel, with a sharp end, was used to dig holes. When the tiny seed was thrown in the hole, bare heels were ready to shove the dirt over the seed. This method of planting also was used by the Egyptians in the Nile Valley. And once a maize basket similar to those used by the Pimas was found on the island of Crete. Could it have belonged to the beautiful goddess of Pima legend, the White Clay-Eater, who left the Gila Valley to mourn for her departed twin sons and lived on an island in a distant land? The Pimas have cause to wonder if their ancestors might have wandered from Southeast Asia. Could the Pimas be the lost tribe of Israel? After Padre Kino set his feet on the Pima desert soil, a wide door was opened for the Mexicans and Europeans. "Now the peaceful Pimas will protect us from the Apaches," they thought. Some came on foot, others on horseback and in ox carts, through southern Arizona, and then a part of Mexico. This first group of settlers had little effect on the primitive Pima way of life. It is true that many Indians now had a Spanish name as well as an Indian name, but the Pimas clung to their ancient values and legends. They continued to live in their brush round houses, called olas kih. People helped each other and worked together in harmony. The land belonged to everyone: a man could farm as much as he could clear and work. To keep things going smoothly, each village had a chief, who allied himself under a head chief when enemies were threatening. In 1854 the Gadsden Purchase made southern Arizona an American territory. Now a new group of strangers came to the desert country of the Pimas: white soldiers and traders and Indian agents. The rich Pima farms provided these newcomers with food, and soon the growing Pima villages formed themselves into a pattern similar to that of today. Here a word should be said about the Pimas' friends, the Maricopas. Sometime in the 1700's the Maricopas fought with the other Colorado River tribes. They kept moving eastward until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they settled with the peaceful Pimas along the Gila. But the Yumas of the Colorado River region still bore a grudge against the Maricopas. They came to Pima land to attack their old enemies in 1857. Unfortunately for them, they had not counted on the valor of the Maricopas' new allies. The Pimas and Maricopas thoroughly vanquished the Yumas, leaving almost no survivors. After the battle, a group of Maricopas came to Pima Chief Antonio Azul and requested a small piece of land on which to build their homes. The chief went into consultation with his counselors and sub-chiefs. It was agreed that the Maricopas could live two miles west on the Sacaton Agency. But they had to promise to help the Pimas in the wars with the Apaches and other enemy tribes. Since then the Pimas and the Maricopas have been loyal allies, friends and neighbors. They still live side by side. After all that roaming, one would expect the Maricopas to settle down for good. However, in 1877 a murder within the tribe caused a division. One group of dissenters moved to a spot near the junction of the Salt and Gila rivers, while another contingent joined the Mormons at their new colony Lehi, near Mesa. The Mormons were delighted with their Indian neighbors, for they knew that they would help protect them from the marauding Apaches. Thus it was that the Pimas, Maricopa, and Papagos helped the white man to settle the Southwest. Besides providing the newcomers with food and water, they acted as guides, soldiers, and allies to help break the threat of Apache terrorism. Once the Apaches were conquered, the settlers were free to arrive in great numbers. Over the prairies they came, and it was not long before the old Pima way of life was deeply affected by the white man's ideas and material culture. Some of the new ways were good and the Pimas were glad for them. Blankets, calico, and new foods, tools, and medicines made the hard lives our ancestors had lived a bit easier for us. And of course there was the Christian religion, which became so dear to the Pimas and lightened their sorrows. But the white man brought bad things too. Liquor has broken up families, and Indian morality has conspicuously declined. Indian values have been abandoned by some of the younger generation, and they are no longer satisfied to stay at home. Many of our arts and traditions have been lost because the white man insisted that we indiscriminately abandon all our Indian ways. Thus as our old ones have died off the arts of cloth weaving and pottery-making have gone with them. Our children are no longer interested in the ancient legends and ceremonies and songs, so many of these treasures have been lost forever. Diseases which the Pima had never known before came with the white man; tuberculosis struck down many of us because the Indian agents insisted that we live in poorly ventilated adobe houses instead of our airy olas kih. Many of our rich farms along the Gila and Salt Rivers, which supported our ancestors for centuries, have become dry and deserted as the white man has taken the water for his own purpose. But now we old ones are seeing the completing of the circle. Instead of insisting that we abandon our Indian ways, the white man now asks us to try to recapture our rich culture before it has completely passed away. I am telling the children on the reservation about the Huhugam; I teach them the Pima language and legends. We women get together to weave baskets in the old designs, and we have started a museum where everyone can see the beautiful artifacts of our proud Pima-Maricopa heritage. But we can never go back to the old way of life. The white man and his cities surround us--we must embrace those of his ways which are good while keeping our pride in being Indians. Life For Indians Changed As White Men Moved In by Diane Enos "And they will do it, they will kill the staying earth. But you must not help them, you will just be feeling fine, and you will see it, you will see it." Thus Elder Brother, culture hero of the Pima Indians, prophesied the destruction of the world in his farewell speech. It might be said that this prophecy has already come to pass. The world of the indigenous peoples, the Pima and the Maricopa, has in some sense been destroyed in the last hundred years. From all sociological, political and spiritual perspectives that world has unequivocally been altered forever, as the people were forever to adapt to changes wrought by the intrusion of the white man in the Salt River Valley. Archaeological evidence such as village sites and ancient irrigation systems indicate that the area along the Salt and Gila rivers has been inhabited by humans since at least 300 B.C. Modern-day Pimas, anthropologists say, may be descended from those ancient farmers, the "huhu-kam" which means "those who are gone". In villages along the Gila River, the Pima and Maricopa grew crops of corn, several types of beans, tobacco and squash, as well as cotton that was woven into cloth. The two tribes had allied themselves against others such as the Apache and Quechan after the 18th century when the Maricopa sought and received asylum with the Pimas. White military expeditions passing through Pima land found hospitable and industrious villagers who traded wheat, syrup, melons, corn and other surplus crops for needles, buttons, beads, clothes and thread. Lt. Col. Phillip St. George Cooke with the "Mormon Battalion" remarked in his journal on "eating watermelon on Christmas," which the Pimas offered from their storage piles. Another chronicler noted fields "as far as the eye can see" of irrigated, productive land along the Gila River. In 1876, the Pimas sold a surplus of 2 million pounds of wheat. But by 1871 the Gila was drying up. White settlers upstream around Florence were diverting all of the water, leaving the fields of the Pimas and Maricopas to wither and dry up. Also at this time a drought was beginning. Stories are told in the Salt River community of this time, when men would run the 30 or so miles up from the Gila, tend their fields and run back at evening. Soon, whole families relocated to the lush edges of the Salt River, where they cleared fields, refilled ancient ditches and began tilling the soil around their new settlements. By 1878, Indian Agent J.H. Stout counted 600 to 700 people living at Salt River. White settlers were displeased. The Pima and Maricopas "were denounced for this by the committee of the Maricopa Grand Jury and are termed renegades and savage intruders," according to a letter written by Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, for whom Fort McDowell is named. Agent Stout also noted that the "number of whites who want farms of the lands occupied by the Indians has increased to 16", and that they had held a meeting demanding that the Indians be forced back to the Gila. But Stout, along with others, petitioned the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to add Salt River to the then-existing reservation, citing the Indians' buffering effect against the Apaches, as well as their right to farm the land. Pima and Maricopa had served commendably as scouts for the army. On January 10, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes enlarged the reservation to include the "Salt River on the west, the San Carlos Reservation on the east." Less than six months later, that executive order was revoked and the current Salt River Pima-Maricopa Reservation (which is now east of Scottsdale) was established, roughly the size it is today. The people maintained a village system of agriculture, where family homes were located relatively close together for protection from raiding Apaches. They maintained an economic and political system based on mutual help in the production of crops. Although she was born about 1907, "Nanny" Howard's recollection of community life reflects a continuum of that period. She recalls how families used to help each other at planting. "They'd all go - the women to cook and feed everybody And when it came time to harvest the wheat, some families had Papagos come stay and help for some of the crop because they didn't have any fields down there." Harvesting the wheat involved the use of horses to trample the stalks, after which women would winnow out the chaff with large woven baskets, according to Howard. "People really helped each other then, not like now," she said. The governing body was that of a council of "chiefs" and a hereditary "head chief." Decisions were arrived at by consensus, with discussion continuing until everyone agreed. According to Josiah King, now deceased, "the system was more democratic than making decisions by a majority vote, but had the disadvantage of being slow when there were strong opposing opinions." King had noted that during the early 20th century "strong differences of opinion" created two political factions, the Progressives and the Conservatives. "Meetings in the large council house often ending in fights between the Progressives and Conservatives," he said. "The Progressives were known as Montezuma's Gang after Dr. Carlos Montezuma, a Yavapai who campaigned for Indian rights and urged Indians to become educated, learn from the white man and adopt what was beneficial. The Conservatives favored keeping the Pima way, and at one point the Conservatives tried to kill Chief Hiv Qua." When Chief Hiv Qua died in 1933, he was about 80 years old. Upon his death, Jose King became the last Pima chief, but according to his son Josiah, by that time the system had broken down. "The chief's power had been taken away by the government and many people no longer believed in the chief but followed the Indian agent, " said Josiah King. By 1940, the tribe had elected by popular vote its first president and adopted a constitution and bylaws under the provisions of the federal Indian Reorganization Act, a system in effect today. Also, at the beginning of this century, the enactment of two major legislative actions involving land and water, central to the Pima and Maricopa, were to unilaterally transform that way of life. The Dawes Act of 1887, applied at Salt River about 1910 had allowed for the division of land into individual "allotments" of 10 acres below the Arizona Canal, and 20 acres of secondary land above the canal, which had no rights to irrigation water from the canal. The well-meaning intent of the Dawes Act was to create "family farms", but instead the "resulting land use and settlement pattern led to the destruction of village structure and cooperative modes of farming which had enabled villagers to pool their labor and resources," wrote Billman Hayes, Sr., a former chairman of the tribal Land Board several years ago. White homesteaders in the Salt River Valley had noticed the ancient Huhu-kam canals. Reclearing and use of these canals proved to be profitable. By 1888, they had cultivated 100,000 acres and began to seek more water. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Irrigation Act, which paved the way for the construction of dams on the Salt and Verde Rivers and the subsequent diversion of water below the Granite Reef Dam into canals. The Salt River began to dry up. Though a child at the time, Florence Howard, now near 80, remembers that the "people were kind of scared" when the river stopped. Like other elders she saw the river's green edges of reeds, willow, cottonwood and mesquite slowly shrivel and fade. The songs of the people began to fade also, says Howard. She spoke of when the all-night circle dances would bring "lots of people, and my father would sing with them 'to make the people dance' and celebrate." Major celebrations such as the "burning of the witch" to mark the historic killing of a child-stealing sorceress, later merged with the Mormon Pioneer Days or various saints’ days as the Pima and Maricopa embraced Christianity. "Vashi soovak", or the place where a sweet-smelling grass grew abundantly and now is Scottsdale, was mostly chaparral with a few farms about 73 years ago. "Nanny" Howard was a child then, and she remembers that Mr. (Verner) Vanderhoof farmed near Indian School and Pima Roads. "The Indians would go and work for him, harvesting in wagons," she recalls, "and he would grow a special kind of pumpkin that he knew the Indians liked, the kind that you could cut into strips and dry. He was good to us, when he was through getting what they needed from the fields, he'd let the Indians take what was left." Then, education of reservation children was required by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Boarding schools like the Phoenix Indian School were the rule of the day since the early 1900's. Leo Schurz recalls that the military structure of the school required uniforms, drilling and the learning of a trade. He says, "we grew our own vegetables, baked bread for the whole school, raised stock and were trained to be able to get a job doing those things." As part of the training, children were strictly forbidden to speak their tribal languages. Like most Salt River seniors, Naomi Enos is fluent in her native language. She can recite family kin-ships and anecdotes about earlier tribal members. People like her have seen in their lifetime a total restructuring of the old economy from agricultural self-sufficiency to the mainstream American economy. "We grew everything that we ate," she said. "There was no welfare then, people didn't have a choice, you had to work." When they could no longer grow enough to be self-sustaining, she said people sold wood and women took jobs as domestic help in white homes. Acculturation through education also brought about a change from the diet of desert and cultivated indigenous crops. Florence Howard laments the loss of such foods as "hunum" or cholla buds, berries and mesquite pods. She says of the past, "they didn't get sick then, it's because of the food they ate, no sugar." Today, although Pima and Maricopa shoppers favor [the local supermarket] to the field and desert, there are still some gardens of corn, beans and squash seen at Salt River. The old, non–hybrid seeds, like the languages, have survived to some extent and may represent as a symbol those tangible parts of culture persisting in a modern, technological world. Even so, the water to sprout those seeds and irrigate miles of arable land of the Salt River Reservation remains at issue. A historic water settlement now under negotiation, could resolve several suits bought by the tribe against the government, Valley cities including Scottsdale, the Salt River Project and others. The suits were filed to assert court-determined water rights of the Pima and Maricopa based on prior or first use. * Quote from ritual oratory collected by George Herzog from Gila River Piman in the 1920s. Piman Texts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Library, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguists), ms. 269. posted by *rjb,* *4:27 pm* Comments: Post a Comment
Website Counter This website created by Gwendolyn Holbrow All copyrights reserved

Archives

Friday, September 09, 2005