Non-Puebloan Tribes

Non-Ruebloan Tribes

DRAWINGS BY PAUL COZE TO DESCRIBE the non-puebloan tribes of Arizona is to describe all of the state's Indian groups except the few thousand Hopis, whose homeland is on several arid mesas surrounded by the Navajo reservation. Excepting the Hopi, Arizona's Indians may be divided into three large groups, a division which is based on language and customs. The groups are: the Apacheans, who include the various Apache tribes and the Navajo; the Pimans, the Pima and Papago; and the Yumans, who are the people of the Colorado River, from the Grand Canyon to its mouth.

Two unimportant groups, so far as Arizona is concerned, are a few dozen Paiutes who live in the Arizona strip, along the Utah line, and those Yaquis who migrated to southern Arizona some 35 years ago. The Plains-like Utes live in Utah and southwestern Colorado.

THE APACHEANS

The largest, and best known, tribes within the state are the Apache and Navajo. These people, who speak dialects of the same language (Athapaskawan), left, or were pushed out of, western Canada centuries ago. By the 18th century the Navajo were settled in north-central New Mexico where they lived by farming-and by raids against the Pueblos of the Rio Grande valley. The main Apache groups, at the same time, were filtering through central New Mexico toward the mountains of central and southern Arizona.

Both groups were aggressive and warlike and the names by which we now know them were given by Pueblo Indians. "Apache" signifies "enemy" in the Queres language and the term "Navahu" was added to the northern tribe to designate "farming enemies."

After the Spanish colonies were established along the Rio Grande differences in way-of-life became more pronounced between Apache and Navajo. The Apache remained primarily hunting people. They roved the mountains in small bands. When spring came they planted a few crops along a water course but did not linger to cultivate. After hunting, and gathering uncultivated plant foods through the summer, the band would return in the fall to harvest any crop which may have matured, unaided and unprotected. The largest percentage of Apache foods consisted of uncultivated plant foods, products of the hunt were next in importance, and the scanty and neglected cultivated foods made a poor third.

As more Spanish, and later, Anglo-Americans, settled in the southwest, Apache raids and resistance to encroachments on what they considered their homelands became ever more fierce. Almost unceasing warfare between Europeans and Apaches, with atrocities by both sides, lasted until the end of the nineteenth century.

Now, the western Apaches are concentrated on two large reservations in the eastern part of Arizona. Their livelihood is chiefly through stock raising in which they do well. The only craft for which the Apache are well-known, basket making, is rapidly becoming a neglected art.

The Lipan, now practically extinct, once roamed the southern plains. Two other Apache groups, the Jicarilla and Mescalero, live in New Mexico where they raise cattle and still do a little basketry and leather work.

The Navajos, although remaining friendly to their cousins and often joining them on raids, have had a far different history since the advent of Europeans in the Southwest. As a group, the Navajos have a trait which sets them apart from all their neighbors. They are inveterate borrowers of ideas and they have the faculty of usually being able to become more proficient in executing the borrowed trait than were the people from whom they obtained it.

Thus, early in their contact with Europeans the Navajos stole sheep. Instead of stopping in the hills to eat the sheep, as the Apaches did, they kept some. The result was that within a few years the Navajos became a pastoral people, as dependent on their flocks as on crops.

It was probably about this same time that they borrowed the idea of weaving from the Pueblos, but, instead of weaving with the hard-to-get native cotton they wove with the

EARLY PIΜΑ WARRIORS

readily available wool from their flocks. Wool shearing and spinning were undoubtedly learned from the Spanish and the Pueblos and the loom on which Navajo blankets are made is still of the type which Pueblo Indians have used since prehistoric times.

Today the Navajos are by far the best known hand loom weavers in the country and, as a rule, turn out textiles which surpass those made by their mentors, the Pueblo Indians. A curious twist which occurred when the Navajos learned to spin and weave (the pun is unintentional) is that, although among the Pueblos weaving is craft practised only by men, (Zuñi was an exception) it is Navajo women who spin and weave.

The Pueblos also furnished the Navajos with the original examples of sand paintings for ritual use. Now Navajo sand paintings are so much more complex and better known than those of, say, the Hopi, that the latter are seldom heard of.

A fourth art which the Navajos borrowed and in which they excel is that of silversmithing. This craft was learned during the nineteenth century and the question is still argued as to who it was that taught the Navajo. Plains tribes (probably the Comanches) or Spanish settlers either or both could have done it. The Navajo silversmith's art is now so well established that the imitator is imitated and vast quantities of spurious "Navajo silver" flood the curio market.

All this talk of what the Navajos have done has led away from the tale of what happened to them while they were acquiring and developing the traits for which they are best known. After sheep were added to the Navajo economy the people quickly became pastoral and the communities broke up into family groups who spread over the land in search of grass and water for their flocks. By 1700 the Navajos were in northeastern Arizona and a hundred years later some were living near the rim of the Grand Canyon.

The new-found way of life did not stop forays into the Rio Grande, however, and many retaliatory expeditions were made against the Navajo. Finally, in 1864, Col. Kit Carson rounded up more than 6,000 Navajos and marched them to a reservation at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. With spirits broken, the Navajos pleaded to be permitted to return; they were returned to the "Navajo Country" in 1868.

With remarkable resiliency the Navajos increased (and their flocks likewise) until they are now the most numerous tribe in the United States. More than 60,000 Navajos now crowd a 50,000,000-acre reservation in the Four Corners region. That is true crowding for pastoral people; the land is now so over-grazed that stringent controls by the Indian Service are necessary, and the present drought is causing great suffering throughout the reservation.

Even though the present and immediate future of the Navajo looks dark one cannot help but feel that this courageous and versatile people will win through this crisis as they have others.

THE PIMANS

One of the early Spanish expeditions on the west coast of Mexico met a new group of Indians near the Rio Mayo. In the inquisitive manner of explorers the commander asked, "Who are you?"

The answer was, "Pim," ("I don't understand you"). "Aha," said the explorer, "You are Pimas." Thus the Ootam ("The People") received the name by which they are most commonly known.

The Ootam, or Pima, is a large group of related tribes

who live mostly in the northwestern corner of Mexico; two tribes, the Pima and Papago, live in southern Arizona. The Pima (the Arizona Pima, that is) call themselves The River People for their home is along the Gila and Salt Rivers. The Papago, or Bean Eaters, live on the desert between Tucson and Ajo and the name indicates their principal food-the mesquite bean.

The Pima and Papago are related to the Hohokam, who lived in the same region in prehistoric times. When Spanish travelers first came within the present boundaries of Arizona they found the Pima and Papago living very much as they do today.

The Pimas live in villages, chiefly along the Gila. Here they farm by means of irrigation; some of the canals now used were first dug hundreds of years ago. Their crops formerly consisted of the standard American crops of maize, beans, squash, cotton and tobacco. Today they have added other crops such as wheat and alfalfa.

Even though the Pimas are classed as farmers, at least half of their vegetable food supply, until quite recent times, consisted of uncultivated food crops such as mesquite beans, grass seeds, and cactus fruits.

Their villages are composed of widely separated, rectangular houses; the houses are built of poles and cactus ribs, lashed together and plastered with mud. A feature of each home is a detached ramada, or sunshade. This is merely a roof, supported by poles, with no walls. Under the ramada a Pima family spends most of its time during the hot desert summer.

The Papagos live a much more rigorous life in a desert where there are no running streams and only a few dependable springs and wells. As long as they have been known they have had a sort of "poor relation" tag placed on them by the Pimas, who have hired them at harvest time to help bring in the crops. Payment is in grain which the Papago are unable to raise. Despite this dependency on their farming relatives the Papagos profess great contempt for their river dwelling kin, saying that a soft life makes the Pima lazy.

Both Pima and Papago, with few exceptions, have always been friendly to the Spanish and the Americans who came into their land. During the days of the California gold rush the Pima sold more than 50,000 bushels of wheat annually to emigrant trains and to the army. Pimas also served as scouts during the Apache campaigns; these peaceful farmers were always able to hold their own against the warriors from the mountains.

Today the Pimas live pretty much as they have for hundreds of years. The Papagos are a little better off than they formerly were, for they now have herds of cattle and, by means of deep wells, a more dependable water supply. Their land, as a whole however, remains an inhospitable desert.

THE YUMANS

The Yuman tribes of the Colorado River are not as well known as they should be. Because most of them live along the river, in one of the hottest sections of the country, and have no spectacular customs, they are often ignored. One large group of Yumans, the Yavapai, are often confused with the Apache, and the Maricopa, who moved up the Gila valley more than a 100 years ago, are mistaken for Pimas.

The Yumans are among the tallest and heaviest of all American Indians. They have adapted themselves to life in a country where a subsistence can be acquired with a minimum of effort. If some of the tribes spend most of the time lying in the mud of the river to keep cool, why should anyone complain-much of our own effort is directed toward building a fund of money so that we can spend a few weeks a year lying in a pool of water.

One of the smallest, but best known, of the tribes which speak a Yuman language, are the Havasupai who live in a spectacularly beautiful setting at the bottom of the Cataract Canyon, a tributary of the Grand Canyon.

The Mohaves, farther down the river, were magnificent Warriors whose favorite weapon was a short, mesquite wood club which was shaped like an old-fashioned wooden potato masher. They were among the few American Indians who favored fighting at close quarters. They also were among the few who settled differences by individual combat by the champions of either side in a conflict, much as European knights of the Middle Ages sometimes met before the armies to determine the outcome of battle.

The Yavapai moved into the mountains of central Arizona in the 14th century and probably caused the Hohokam trouble. Another migrating Yuman tribe is the Maricopa, who moved up the Gila River early in the 19th century to live near the Pima and are now practically indistinguishable from them except in language. The Cocopah, on the lower Colorado, have long been held as an example of the ultimate in laziness and early travelers were unanimous in calling them the worst thieves in the southwest, but, as remarked before, why work, when wild seeds, rodents and bugs may be gathered with little effort, and, if a traveler leaves valuables unhidden or untied, it is obvious that he no longer wants them!

All the Yuman tribes farm to some degree, particularly the Yuma proper, the Mohave, and the Havasupai. The land under cultivation has been increasing in recent years.

Yours sincerely OF MEDICINE MEN:

To return to the subject of Medicine Men and our modern medication, (my letter April issue), the following recent incident may be of interest to you. Being so far from medical service, and in an area where distances are great and roads quite primitive (maps do advise not to travel through here without Navajo guide)-I've had to do what I can when called upon. Consequently, I have treated everything from cut fingers to a baby that had fallen into boiling water (and was brought to me by her four-year-old brother who had to pull an express wagon through the sand). Last week the school was turned into an infirmary, with pneumonia patients in isolation-while school was conducted in the residence. But so much for that. One of my most regular "patients" is a blind medicine man who comes for medication to soothe his eyes. (All of which is to show that one can work with Medicine Men-and which leads to the incident in mind.) There is a woman very ill in this area. She has refused "modern" medication-though the Medicine Men are willing to have it given along with their own ceremonies. Further, she has dismissed two medicine men as being unable to cure her-and has just had another Sing by a third medi-

cine man. She and her family feel she is doing well: the medicine man does not. All of which is to repeat: if modern medication is the primary aim, then it is not necessary to do away with the medicine man.

Fr. Eugene Botello Bluff, Utah

PRONUNCIATION AND SMOKE TREES:

On the last page of February issue are two letters which seem to demand comment.

Consider first the one which refers to the peak in Navajoland. I believe the natives are the best authority. Since they say A-ga-tlan, softly, with no special accents, every a broad, and slur the tl, why don't we? That was how the Indians said it when I visited that part of Arizona in 1937.

I have heard strangers pronounce it with every a short, (as in cat); also with accents varying from a', to ag', to gath', to la', and not once did it sound as euphonious as the simple Agatlan. True, tlan is a little dif-ficult to say. But do we give up easily?

We have good precedent for omitting the h. Mexico abounds in names having the diphthong tl, which must not be separated in syllabi-cation. The famous Dr. Atl, for one; besides place names such as: Antlan, Ixtlan, Mazatlan, and many others. Thus, it seems consistent to spell the peak Agatlan, as I have heard the natives say it.

Remember what we have done to the musical Nahuatl word coyotl. That we could have garbled it to "kiot," is just not understandable. And if we need an official example, please note what was done to Puerto Rico. We corrupted it so persistently that it required an Act of Congress to return to the Islanders their own name.

Now take the next letter, about Smoke trees. A very nice subject. May I make a suggestion? When you write the article for Mrs. J. R. White, please tell her that the name Smoke was undoubtedly given to the bushes when they were not in bloom. For, when you see the blue, blue flowers, you wonder how a bit of the old ocean got out there on the desert-"right before your eyes!"

Mrs. D. N. Lewis Tucson, Arizona

OPPOSITE PAGE

This painting gives an idea of the many activities that could have gone on in Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, at 3:00 o'clock on a summer afternoon in 1270 A.D. at the peak of the Great Pueblo Period.

In the left foreground an unmarried girl with butterfly hair-do is husking corn of several colors and gossiping with a married lady who has two rolls of hair behind her ears, as found on several mummies, and in pictographs, Mim-bres pottery, and in kiva paintings at Coronado State Monument, New Mexico. Three women in the painting wear the pueblo dress, while the others have the string aprons-both would have been used in the summer. Nearby is a ladle and a corrugated pot. On the wall area Classic Mesa Verde mug and a decorated jar.

Between the girl and the wife fixing her husband's hair lies a snare. Close to the couple are a bowl, a squash, a stone axe, and the peculiar submarine-shaped jar.

Above the couple a dog barks at a contrite small fry who has broken a big jar. Two women are making pottery; behind them two women re-plaster the lower room of a two-story house, on top of which a man is pointing out to some children that the town crier is making an announcement, and they should keep quiet. Two priests, one with ceremonial kilt and evergreens, climb a one-pole ladder.

Beneath the crier a woman closes the doorway of her house with a stone slab, and below her on the near roof an old lady keeps warm with a rabbit skin blanket, while her daughter grinds corn. In front of the house a woman, whose baby snoozes in a wooden cradle, bakes blue corn meal "pancakes" on a hot stone slab. The kiva door is closed with a mat, turkeys wander about, and the woman in the right hand corner, sitting on the beautiful brown textile (to be seen in the Park Museum), strings turquoise beads.

To the right, two bow-and-arrow-makers ridicule a returning unsuccessful hunter, women bring water in jars from the spring, and turkeys pick over the trash pile.

Visible in the painting are a round and a square tower, ten of the 23 exceptionally small kivas which occur in the ruin, and rectangular and T-doors. Beyond the square tower with its balcony, people are finishing a third-story room.

Cliff Palace had 200 living rooms and sheltered perhaps 400 people.

BACK COVER

Boy has met girl in the moonlight at Mon-tezuma Castle about 1400 A.D. by the Indian lovers' device of luring her out by piping on a bone flageolet, which he holds in his left hand. Over his left arm he carries a large cotton blan-ket (of black and white design, in the National Monument Museum), and wears a lace-type shirt (pieces in the museum). He wears a kilt and we assume he has come from a ceremonial meeting. He wears a turquoise mosaic inlay upon a wood background with a center of pink argillite stone.

The girl is unmarried, for she has the but-terfly hair-do. Her bird pendant (in Museum) is of turquoise mosaic on shell, the natural lines of which simulate feathers, and her cotton dress is Pueblo-style. The pendant and pieces of her brown textile belt may be seen in the Museum.

The 20-room Castle, really an apartment house, could have housed about 40 people, and is shown as it looked before repair work was added to brace the "tower."

Apparently mama is waiting up, for light shows from a fire in one room.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

So many persons and institutions helped and advised during the compilation of this issue that it is impossible to detail their contributions, but we wish to express our sincere appreciation of their kindnesses by at least listing their names: Dr. Emil W. Haury, Arizona State Museum, Tucson, Arizona; Dr. Frederick W. Hodge and the staff of the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles; Odd S. Halseth, Pueblo Grande Museum, Phoenix; Dr. Harold S. Colton and Miss Katharine Bartlett, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff; Dr. Earl H. Morris, Carnegie Institution, Boulder, Colorado; John Sinclair, Coronado State Monument, New Mexico; Kenneth Chapman and staff of the Laboratory of Anthropology, and the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; Dr. W. W. Taylor, Jr., Santa Fe; William S. Fulton, the Amerind Foundation, Dragoon, Arizona; Mrs. Th. E. Curtin, Santa Fe; the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce; Bob Fronske Studio, Flagstaff; Arthur Woodward, L. A. County Museum. Don Watson, Mrs. Jean Pinkley and the staff of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado; Mrs. Sallie Brewer, Glen Haynes, Charlie R. Steen, Dale S. King, and Drs. Jesse L. Nusbaum and Erik K. Reed of the National Park Service, Region Three and Southwestern National Monument offices, Santa Fe. The superintendents and rangers of national monuments: A. T. Bicknell, Casa Grande; Charles C. Sharp and Lloyd M. Pierson, Tonto; J. W. Brewer, Jr., Tuzigoot; J. O. Cook, Montezuma Castle; Homer F. Hastings, Walnut Canyon; William L. Bowen, Wupatki; John A. Aubuchon, Navajo; Robert Morris, Canyon de Chelly; Irving D. Townsend and Thomas B. Onstott, Aztec Ruins; Thomas W. Matthews, Francis H. Elmore, and Archeologist R. Gordon Vivian, Chaco Canyon; Augustine Pino (Zia), Romulo Cordero (Cochiti) and Fred W. Binnewies, Bandelier. And individuals: Thora Coze; Robert Haynes, Paul Coze's assistant for the photographing and sketching expedition; Robert Boissiere, second assistant; Duncan McKerracher, Pasadena; Herb Summers; Martha Glass, Louise Blaze, photo lab assistants; Mrs. John C. Britt, Flagstaff Art Association; Archeologist Fred Sleight; Mr. and Mrs. Guy Dickenson, Moencopi, Arizona; Jack Stewart, Camelback Inn, Phoenix. And for modeling: Sue Sizemore Modeling School, Phoenix; California Models College, Pasadena; Mrs. de Goes; Verda Schmidt; Jo Ann Wilcox, Genevieve Morrow, Carmen Bonney, W. R. Flinn, Bob Leonard, and Patricia Bowen and Delephine Garrido, Lillus Langston, Jeannine Simpson and Evelyn M. June, Vera Martinez, John Cook, Jr., Mesdames Wayland Sizemore and Diana Laird, and Misses Marjorie Hansen, Terry Olsson, Paula Thomas, Diane Thomas, Dolores Taylor, Nancy Seaton, Carol Estes, Juanita Ott and Della Carlisle of Phoenix; Frances Mode, Sue Bearwaldy, Carlotta Rogers, Gloria J. Dorris, Santa Fe; June Kay, Carole Palmerston, Jane Johnson, Alice Martinez, Art Martinez, Pasadena.