The area generally considered the American Southwest stretches from southern Utah and Colorado through Arizona, New Mexico, into parts of Texas, and down into the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. Much of this land is desert country, fed by only an occasional river, making water a precious commodity in this region. Yet even there agriculture had taken a hold; introduced into the area by prehistoric people, it provided a livelihood for several Indian cultures in the Southwest. When the white men arrived there, at any rate, they found the Southwest inhabited by several widely divergent groups; some of these tribes had roots that reached far back into the prehistoric Southwest, while several others were relative newcomers, and some, in fact, had arrived there not very long before the whites.
In the western part of Arizona lived a people who called themselves just that – kwichan, the people. Known today collectively as the Yuma, they were part of the Hokan language family, one of the oldest on the American continent, though in the early days they consisted of tribes like the Havasupai, Walapai, Yuma, Mojave, Yavapai, and several others. Like so many native people who lived in this relentlessly hot country, the Yuman tribes led simple lives. They wore little clothing – buckskin aprons for the women, breechcloths for the men – and only during cold spells in winter did they live and sleep in rabbit skin robes. They had few other hides available, in any case, for larger game was extremely scarce in this country, and whatever furs and hides they did possess was usually acquired in trade with neighboring tribes to the north and east.
The Walapai – the Pine Tree People – were mostly hunters and gatherers who apparently had an intense contempt for farmers. Not until historic times did they finally begin to cultivate a few crops, but they continued to prefer live-stock, particularly horses, which allowed them to expand their hunting expeditions over ever vaster areas. Their closest relatives were the Yavapai – said to mean the People of the Sun – though others claimed that this name meant Crooked-Mouth People, because the Yavapai were usually sulky and hostile and always had trouble with other tribes. There appears to have been some truth to that; the early Spanish settlers often called them Mojave Apache, and apachu is a word in the Zuni language meaning, among other things, enemy.
The Havasupai, on the other hand, had adopted many of the agricultural practices from the neighboring Pueblo Indians, and even used some of their irrigation methods. Always a small tribe, perhaps never more than 300 people, the Havasupai’s origin can be traced far back into prehistoric times, when their ancestors seem to have lived in caves along the Verde River in central Arizona. But sometime during the last years BC, the Havasupai withdrew into one of the most remote and inaccessible regions of the Southwest, a place known as Cataract Canyon, which is actually a part of the Grand Canyon, and they have lived there in virtual isolation ever since.
The most populous of the Yuman tribes, and certainly the most hostile, were the Mojave, who lived in the Black Canyon area, a forbidding chasm which rises for a quarter mile above the once wild waters of the Colorado River. Mojave country was well-defined and known to everyone, and the Mojave and the Yuma fought fierce battles to protect their lands. War, in fact, seems to have been a tribal obsession among the Mojave and Yuma males, though they fought principally among themselves and other Yumans; very seldom did they attack the weaker and more peaceful desert tribes. And if plunder and captives were sometimes taken during such attacks, that was never the major objective; the young warriors always set out in search of honor and prestige that came to them through bravery in warfare, where the scalp of a fallen enemy became the trophy. Another Yuman tribe, the Maricopa, never seem to have fit into this warrior society; they fared rather poorly in battles against their relatives, and as a result, they gradually retreated up the Gila River into Pima territory, near today’s Phoenix. The Pima of that area, however, were unwilling to become entangled in Yuman family squabbles; not until the Maricopa agreed to behave themselves peacefully were they allowed to settle on Piman lands.
These Pima were a Uto-Aztecan tribe who, together with the closely related Papago, inhabited southern Arizona along the Gila and Salt Rivers. The word pima, in their own language, actually means ‘no’ – and there is a somewhat dubious story that the early missionaries to the area heard the word pima so often from these people that they assumed it was their name. At any rate, the Indians themselves used the name A-a’tam, meaning simply the people. Whatever their name, the Indians’ own history and mythology makes it apparent that they are in fact the descendants of the ancient Hohokam. Pima traditions claim that it was their ancestors who built the vast adobe structures like Casa Grande; and the early Pima produced pottery decorated with designs similar to those of the Hohokam, and they built irrigation works – dams, reservoirs, and canals – to water their extensive fields of beans, squash, and pumpkins.
According to Pima tradition, however, raiders from the east began to invade their lands, destroying their homes and their fields, killing and enslaving many of the inhabitants. The Pima fled their homeland, and when at last they returned, they never again rebuilt their towns. They continued to live in the area, but in flimsy mud and thatch houses, growing whatever crops they could keep watered and tended by hand, and always ready to flee again in the face of new invasions. And, in fact, by this time the Apache, ironically retreating before the Comanche and Kiowa, the Pima’s relatives, had indeed moved westward from the Great Plains and had begun their long history of terror and destruction in the Southwest.
The Papago lived to the south of their Pima relatives, in the Sonoran desert, one of the hottest and most barren regions of the United States. Their name comes from the Piman language, translating into bean people, a name bestowed on them for obvious reasons: they depended in large part on cultivated beans, at least while water was available. In times of drought, a periodic occurrence in this area, they made use of the beans of wild plants, particularly the mesquite. The Papago called themselves tono-ootham, the Desert People, and they were that, indeed. Much like the Great Basin tribes, the Papago were a semi-nomadic people who spent much of their time moving seasonally to wherever and whenever food and water became available. But if they were a generally peaceful people, they certainly were not timid, for they repeatedly and successfully defended themselves against other Indian raiders. And the Papago were among the very last Native Americans to come into contact with white settlers and pioneers. Their isolation, and the forbidding character of their homeland, allowed them to continue to live largely undisturbed for many generations.