Pima people

“ The Pima Indians have lived in their villages on the Gila River time immemorial, at least they have no tradition of the time of their coming. Their tribal organization has many features worthy imitation by more civilized people. The government rests with a hereditary chief and a council of sages. The rights of property are protected, as far as they have any individual property, which is small, as they are in fact communists. The water from the Gila River to irrigate their lands is obtained by canals constructed by the common labor of the tribe. ”

“ PIMA, a tribe and stock of North American Indians. Their range was southern Arizona and northern Mexico. The ruined Pima village, known to the Spanish as Casa Grande on the south bank of the Gila, is an example of their early civilization and skill in building. Driven out of their homes by neighbouring tribes, they lived a more or less nomadic life. They were always good farmers, showing much skill in irrigation. ”

“ The Pima occupy a still wider territory, extending on the south into Cinaloa, on the east in to the Province of Taraumara. The Upper Pima are found far to the north [pg 7] living by the Sobahipuris to its outlet, and on both banks of the Gila to the Tomosatzi, in vales of luxuriant beauty, and in wastes of sand and sterility between those rivers and the sea,—having still other tribes beyond them using the same language in different dialects. ”

“ The Pimos.—Without at present fixing their locality, it is sufficient for the sake of showing the character of their civilization, to make the following extracts, directly from Mr. Squier's paper on New Mexico and California, but indirectly, or in the way of first-hand evidence, from Lieutenant Emory:—
"At the settlement of the Pimos, we were at once impressed with the beauty and order of the arrangements for irrigating and draining the land. Corn, wheat, and cotton are the crops of this peaceful and intelligent race of people. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Ami say, however, that hell [134] cannot be any worse than the earth; otherwise spirits would not remain there.
With the Piyuma—the small east coast tribe living just south of the Ami—the most sacred spot is a bamboo-grove a few miles inland called by themselves “Arapani.” Here, according to Piyuma tradition, was planted the staff of a god, which grew into a bamboo. From different joints of this bamboo sprang the first man and the first woman, ancestors of the Piyuma people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kino, as far as we can find, makes no mention of "two-headed eagles."
The people were robust and lived to an extreme old age, except where the fogs of the lowland prevailed. There all sorts of ailments occur. The Pimas were composed of a number of tribes such as the Opas, Cocomaricopas, Hudcoacanes, and the Yumas. They lived on both sides of the Gila River in rancherias, which the missionaries united into pueblos. ”

“ The Pimos have ever been most friendly to Americans, and I have yet to learn of a single instance in which they ever harmed a white man. These Indians are not nomads. Their villages have remained in the same localities for hundreds of years. As their country affords no game, and they are by no means a warlike tribe, they maintain themselves in comfort and abundance by tilling the ground, and limit their warlike propensities to punishing the raids made upon them by other tribes. These Pimos profess to have originally come from the far south. ”

“ The Great Father and Mother of the Moquis created men in nine races from all manner of primeval forms. The Pima creator made man and woman from a lump of clay, which he kneaded with the sweat of his own body, and endowed with life by breathing upon it. ”

“ There is nothing in the ruins and relics which demands a higher culture than the Pimas possessed. There is no sign of a knowledge of metals beyond hammered copper; the structures are such as the Pueblo Indians of the same stock live in now; and the Pimas have a historic tradition which claims these ruins and these old fields as the work of their ancestors, from which they were driven by the repeated attacks of the Apaches and other savage tribes of the north. ”

“ The Piman family is mainly Mexican, as of its nine tribes or divisions only three are Arizonian. Of these, the Sobaipuri, who lived on the Santa Cruz and San Pedro branches of the Gila, have entirely disappeared. The Pimas proper, Upper Pimas, or Pimas Altas (so called in distinction from the Lower Pimas, Pimas Bajas, or Nevomes, of Mexico) , have lived for 200 years on the Gila and Salado, in the position assigned by Pike to the Cocomaricopas. ”

“ Among themselves loose women are tolerated, but the Pimo girl who may be caught in carnal intercourse with any other than a Pimo man, runs nine chances out of ten to be stoned to death. If a white man be a trader among them, and has been there for a long time, and has acquired something of their language, he is more or less considered entitled to the privileges of the tribe ”

“ There are English, French, German, Spanish, Belgian, and North American residents here; there are Chinese and Negroes, white, black, yellow, and all other complexions among the natives of the country, besides, as Fred says, 'several wards to hear from.' Professor Orton says there are at least twenty-five varieties of people in Lima; the upper classes are [Pg 152] educated and polite, while the lowest of the population are among the most dangerous in the world. ”

“ The first who came were the same party under Malia (Maricopas) , who worked clearing off land. I gave them the eastern portion of the land. Francisco Chico Ochoa, a Pima, came well recommended as a good, honest man. He agreed to keep me posted in regard to the character of those applying for lands. The Pimas were to have the western portion of the lands.
The agreement was that no Indians would be allowed to remain on these lands except those who would observe good order, live honest, sober, etc., and work for their own living, and in no way molest the settlers. ”

“ The Pima. The Hiaqui. The Tubar. The Tarahumara. The Cora.
That the Pima group contains the Pima Proper, the Opata, and the Eudeve, may be seen from the Mithridates. That the language of the Papagos, or Papago-cotam, is also Pima, rests upon good external evidence. Whether the speech of the Ciris, and population of the island of Tiburon and the parts opposite, be also Pima, is at present uncertain; though not likely to be so long, inasmuch as I believe that Mr. Bartlett, the Boundary Commissioner, is about to publish samples, not only of this, but of the other languages of Sonora. ”

“ As the Pima Indians took the manslayer taboo much more seriously than their enemies and, unlike them, did not postpone expiation and purification until the end of the expedition, their prowess in war suffered very much through their moral severity or what might be called their piety. ”

“ The traditions as I heard them on the spot relate that in the times before the coming of the Spaniards the Pimas lived on the banks of the middle Gila, between Riverside and Phenix, in Arizona, in permanent houses, which were grouped into small villages. No common bond connected the different villages, except in those cases where small settlements gathered around a larger neighboring one. Such tribe centers existed at Florence, Casa Grande, Zacaton, and Casa Blanca on the Gila, and at Mesa City and Tempe on the lower Rio Salada. The best known of these is the ruin of Casa Grande. ”

“ The other Indians thought I was courting Nawasa, and it was always the custom among those Indians for a young couple never to ride out alone.
It has always been a mystery to me why those young Pimas took such a deep interest in the white girl, for they were merely untutored Indians, having only a few years since seen the first white man, and had not seen many since then. ”

“ The Pimas, Papagoes, and Maricopas form a semi-civilized community, living on a reservation on the Gila and Santa Cruz rivers in Arizona. Originally they were distributed over the whole south-western portion of that territory. Missions were established among them at an early date by the Spanish Jesuits, and with very good success. At present they are mainly self-supporting, while a large proportion of them wear citizens dress and live in houses. The three tribes now number 10,500. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Possibly in no other place in the world is there so much variety of complexion and physiognomy as in Lima. From the delicately fair creole daughter of European parents, to the jet black Congo negro, people of every gradation of color are seen living in intimate relation one with another. ”

“ They agree with a third language from the Pima country—but this is not, necessarily, the Pima. Hence, what applies to the Pimerian may or may not apply to the Pima Proper.
Nevertheless, the Pima belongs to the same class—being, apparently, more especially akin to the Tarahumara. I have only before me the following Tarahumara words (i. e. the specimens in the Mithridates) through which the comparison can be made. They give, however, thus much in way of likeness and difference. ”

“ If they were not so very dark in complexion, their features would be pleasing, for they have the steady, intelligent eye, and straightforward manners of their more northern brethren, the Pimas. The most interesting point about them, however, is their mode of life. Like the Jaqui Indians of Southern Sonora, they very willingly leave their homes at certain seasons to gain a livelihood elsewhere. ”

“ The old régime in the Philippines has disappeared forever. In hardly more than a generation the people have passed from a life which was so remote from the outside contemporary world that they might as well have been living in the middle ages in some sheltered nook, equally protected from the physical violence and the intellectual strife of the outside world, and entirely oblivious of the progress of knowledge. ”

“ Pimeria is the most northern district of this extensive division, and is bounded on the north by The Rio Colorado, by New Biscay on the east, by the Californian gulf on the west, and by Sonora on the south.
Pimeria received its name from the Pimas, a tribe of Indians who inhabit this tract of country. It is subdivided into high and low Pimeria, and extends about three hundred miles to the north of Sonora. The climate is cold and moist, and the rains often last a week without intermission in the winter season, and torrents from the mountains during that period descend in all directions. ”

“ The Pimas were out on their annual hunt for that season, and we had to remain with them two days. Being acquainted with them all, and as I have said before, when one is out in a hostile Indian country, sometimes the company of friendly Indians is quite acceptable. ”

“ In the empty stables on each side of our own is a regular camp of poor people, who were lounging by the well, watching one or two naked brown babies playing on the ground. They all looked so peaceful and happy and so picturesque in the sunset and moonlight, that we agreed with each other that perhaps life in the Philippines might be quite pleasant if one only lived the right way and had a brown skin covered by a minimum of clothes.
They are a singularly happy people, these Filipinos, when they are unspoilt by the advantages of civilisation. ”

“ The population of Lima, Callao, and many of the seaboard Peruvian towns is composed of Aryans, Indians, Hamitics, and Mongolians, with a conglomerate mixture of all four races. In Lima, people with mixed white and Indian blood predominate; those of mixed white and negro blood are a close second. The aristocracy and better-to-do classes are white and are descended from the Spaniards. They do not marry outside of their own race and constitute the ruling element. There is a large Italian colony, many of whose male members are leading merchants and professional men. ”