Maricopa people

“ Naturally skilled hunters, these powerful members of the human race climb up and down the most dangerous precipices, and lead an almost ideal life in the most inaccessible of spots.
The Maricopa Indians must be included among those whose general appearance seems to invite admiration, however much one may regret the absence of general civilization and education. These men are for the most part honest, if not hard working, and they are by no means unpleasant neighbors. ”

“ Maricopa County pursues a way of peaceful prosperity, with no lapse into the vaudeville of petrified forests and buried stars. Her stars make their appointed rounds in the skies, and shine nightly upon the just and the unjust. ”

“ The Pápagos, their neighbors, are closely allied to them by language. In nowise related to them, but very similar in their manners and customs, are the Maricopas, who reside in their immediate vicinity, and who claim to have migrated to that place some centuries ago, from a more westerly territory.
All these people, although not dwelling in houses built, like those of the Pueblos, of solid materials, have settled villages in which they reside at all times, and are entirely distinct from the roving and nomadic tribes described in the Apache family. ”

“ The Pimos foot up five or six thousand, and from them are sprung the Papagos—a great tribe dominating all southern Arizona. The Maricopas and Pimos have a Reservation here together, some twenty-five miles long by four or five wide, embracing both sides of the Gila, and live in twelve different villages scattered over it. Two of these are occupied wholly by Maricopas—the rest, by Pimos. Both tribes are a healthy, athletic, vigorous-looking people, and they were decidedly the most well-to-do aborigines we had yet seen. Unlike most Indians elsewhere, these two tribes are steadily on the increase ”

“ That gaunt, dark shore itself recalls that the history of the Marquesas is written in blood, a black spot on the white race. It is a history of evil wrought by civilization, of curses heaped on a strange, simple people by men who sought to exploit them or to mold them to another pattern, who destroyed their customs and their happiness and left them to die, apathetic, wretched, hardly knowing their own miserable plight. ”

“ Along all this land or sea-coast traversed by Hojeda, Americo, and his company, they got gold and pearls by barter and exchange, but the quantity is not known, nor the deeds they perpetrated in the land. Having left Margarita, they went to Cumanà and Maracapana, which are respectively seven and twenty leagues from Margarita. There are people on the sea-shore, and before reaching Cumanà there is a gulf where the water of the sea forms a great angle extending fourteen leagues into the land, round which there are numerous and populous tribes. ”

“ A Maricopa Indian, in the present limits of Arizona, was offered an advantageous trade for his horse, whereupon he stretched himself on his horse's neck, caressed it tenderly, at the same time shutting his eyes, meaning thereby that no offer could tempt him to part with his charger. ”

“ The grazing ground to which we resorted during our stay near the Maricopa villages had been the scene of a desperate conflict between that tribe and the Pimos, on one side, and the Yumas, Chimehuevis, and Amojaves, on the other. Victory rested with the Maricopas and Pimos, who slew over four hundred of the allied tribes, and so humiliated them that no effort has ever been made on their part to renew hostilities. This battle occurred four years before our advent, and the ground was strewed with the skulls and bones of slaughtered warriors. ”

“ As we were passing through Phoenix, we met a few Indians, Maricopas and Pimas. I called one of them to me, and asked him if he understood Mexican. He said he did. I told him who we were and that our mission was to talk to the natives, that we wished to get the Pimas and Maricopas together, over on the Gila, and talk to them. He said, "All right, how much will you pay me to go and notify them?"
I replied, "We will pay you nothing. We are not traveling for money; we are here more for the good of your people than for our own. You can go and tell them or not, just as you please." ”

“ Small wonder that this gorgeously beautiful island should have been the home for a century of one of the finest races of primitive people the world has ever known! Sad indeed is it that to-day the Marquesans are rapidly dying off from consumption and fever introduced into their fair domain by civilization itself. ”

“ After this the exile invented numerous excuses to call, till Mariquita’s mother finally agreed to his union with her daughter. His political disability made him out of favor with the State church, the only place in which people could be married then, but Mariquita became what in English would be called a common-law wife. One of their children, José, had a tobacco factory and a slipper factory in Meisic, Manila, and was the especial protector of his younger sister, Regina, who became the wife of attorney Manuel de Quintos. ”

“ There are about 300 Maricopas at the Pima Agency in Arizona. The Cocopas are a small tribe whose census is uncertain; they live on the California side of the Colorado up to the vicinity of the Gila. The Yavasupai or Aguazul Indians, who live in Cojnino or Cataract cañon, to the number of about 200, as already said, note17, are entirely cut off from the world in the bottom of the chasm selected for their abode. ”

“ Margarita, white queen of the dusky race whose habitation is the pathless forest, hail! Here, upon the border which limits thy domains, we pledge anew to thee the promise of fealty, of which the crimson star upon our foreheads is the token. By it we swear to thee that thy foes shall be our foes, and that over us, thy slaves, shalt thou have the power of life and death. ”

“ So I divided off the land between the Pimas and Maricopas, leaving the chiefs to divide the lands among their people.
They soon went to work enlarging the ditch. These natives were of the poorer class, having been living in settlements where the water had been shut off from them. They had been living for years in poverty and degradation. Their association with white men had only degraded them the more, and they were dwindling away and numbering less and less every year; so when they had the privilege of taking hold with us they were truly grateful. ”

“ Mariquita’s mother knew the exile, since, according to the custom in Filipino families, she looked after the business interests of her husband. Curious to see the belle of whom he had heard so much, the Marquis made an excuse of doing business with the mother, and went Page 59to her home on an occasion when he knew that the mother was away. No one else was there to answer his knock and Mariquita, busied in making candy, could not in her confusion find a coconut shell to dip water for washing her hands from the large jar, and not to keep the visitor waiting, she answered the door as she was. ”

“ We are surrounded by dangers and obstacles that seem unsurmountable. Let us hope for help from the unseen, and filled by faith in God and the power of our love, let us wait for the miracle which will unite us. For it will be a miracle, Mariquilla, a wonder like those they tell of in olden times, that we refuse to believe."
"A miracle!" exclaimed Mariquilla, sadly. [Pg 152] "It is true. You are a young gentleman of position, the son of parents who would never consent to see you married to the daughter of Señor Candiola. My father is abhorred all over the city. Everybody flees from us. ”

“ In Macora’s tribe were four young men who had a strong desire to visit the white settlements, and learn something more of the customs of a civilised people than could be gathered from occasional hunters and traders. ”

“ About that time, after the mirage was seen, a young civil engineer who was among the witnesses was engaged on the Gulf coast survey from the headwaters below Yuma to Guaymas. In the course of his labors he found himself at the old Mexican pueblo of Altar, and there he saw the original of the picture in the sky seen three years before near Maricopa Station. The distance, as a buzzard flies, from Maricopa to Altar is more than a hundred miles.
The native tribes are very superstitious concerning the [162] mirage, and when one is once observed, that locality receives a wide berth in the future. ”

“ The Maricopas are stated in one account to believe in a future state exactly similar to the life on earth, with all its social distinctions and wants, so that in order to enable the soul to assume its proper position among the spirits, all the property of the deceased, as well as a great part of that of his relatives, is offered up at the grave. But according to Bartlett they think the dead will return to their ancient home on the banks of the Colorado, and live on the sand hills. ”

“ Their spies were sent across this desert and returned with the intelligence that they had met a tribe living in well constructed and comfortable houses, cultivating the land, well clothed, numerous, and apparently happy. A council was called and it was agreed to send an embassy to the Pimos, to negotiate a defensive and offensive alliance, and with the request that the Pimos would parcel out to them a suitable amount of land for their occupation. After much delay, and with true Indian circumspection, it was agreed that the Maricopas should inhabit certain lands of the Pimos ”

“ She had been born at Monterey and had come to San Francisco as a bride in the late fifties, but had never learned English, speaking the sonorous Spanish of her girlhood to every one she met, whether it was understood or not. Even in the complete wreck of fortune and position, in which Mariposa saw her, she was a fine example of the highest class of Spanish Californian, that once brilliant and picturesque race, careless, simple, lazy, happy, lords of a kingdom whose value they never guessed, possessors of limitless acres on which their cattle grazed. ”

“ It is upon this liquor that the Maricopas and Pimas get drunk once a year, the revelry continuing for a week or two at a time; but it is also an universal custom with them to take regular turns, so that only one third of the party is supposed to indulge at one time, the remainder being required to take care of their stimulated comrades, and protect them from injuring each other or being injured by other tribes.' [843] All are fond of dancing and singing; in their religious rites, as well as in other public and family celebrations, these form the chief diversion. ”

“ This custom, so strictly enforced among the Maricopas, does not exist among the Pimos; but in the case of an intermarriage between the two tribes the deceased is invariably sepultured in rigid accordance with the views of his or her tribe. Self-interest is, after all, as strong a motive among Indians as among whites, and for this reason intermarriages between the two tribes are so rare, even after one hundred years of undivided co-existence on the same lands, and prosecution of the same general objects. ”

“ Hence the black serves the Indian all the year, without the black having other profit at the end of the year than his tribute paid. This is the reason why the village is continually without people, because the Indians, on account of the profit from the work of the blacks, go to live with the blacks, or near the pass of the mountain, where said blacks live, in order to assist them in the work, for the blacks unless assisted physically do not work. Four leguas from this visita toward the north is another visita called Mariyumo, administered also by the said father minister of Mariueles. ”

“ From the mocassins, however, and from other relics of the Indians strewn about, Lopez had pronounced at once that two tribes had been engaged in the fray: the one, inhabitants of the Pampas,—a people which, although ready to murder any solitary whites, seldom attack a prepared foe ”

“ And this may, indeed, be one of the main points Marquez is "celebrating" (if that is the right word) in this epic novel of his people.
So What Is the Novel Saying About Latin America? As North Americans, we are far more accustomed to thinking of our own history (personal and national) as something of an encounter with destiny: we have confidence that we can take charge of our lives, construct a project-based life, and carry it through, so that in a way the world we have acted in will be transformed from the world into which we are born. ”

“ We were as happy drawing water in the wood, and gathering plantains in the negro-grounds, as we have ever been in these shrubberies. We were as merry in that single room at Breda as in this mansion, or in our palace. It is not for our own sakes that we have been so raised.”
“It is pleasant for our children.”
“It is. And it is good for our race. It is to make us their servants. Oh! Margot, if ever you find a thought of pride stirring at your heart, remember that if the blacks were less ignorant and more wise, it would not matter whether we lived as we used to do, or as we live now. ”

“ West hereof is the city of Maracaibo, very pleasant to the view, its houses being built along the shore, having delightful prospects all round: the city may contain three or four thousand persons, slaves included, all which make a town of a reasonable bigness. There are judged to be about eight hundred persons able to bear arms, all Spaniards. Here are one parish church, well built and adorned, four monasteries, and one hospital. The city is governed by a deputy governor, substituted by the governor of the Caraccas. The trade here exercised is mostly in hides and tobacco. ”