Dr. Jacob Breid, New Superintendent of Fort Lapwai, Idaho. Old and New Occupations of Indian Women. Lace Makers at Soboba, California. PU BLISHED BY PHOENIX INDIAN SCHOOL, PHOENIX, ARIZONA. JNO. B. BROWN, SUPERINTENDENT Issued fortnightly from the NATIVE AMERICAN Print Shop and printed by apprentices representing Pima, Papago, Maricopa, Hopi, Osage, Comanche and Otoe tribes under direction of the School Printer. Address all communications to the NATIVE AMERICAN. NATIVE AMERICAN DEVOTED TO INDIAN EDUCATION VOLUME 17 MAY 27, 1916. A Short History of the Pima Indians By Estelle Armstrong, Phoenix Indian School HE Pima Indians today Occupy portions of the Gila and Salt River valleys in Southern Arizona, both of which are dotted with the ruins of prehistoric buildings, the most noted being the Casa Grande. These ruins and the remains of extensive irrigation systems branching from the Gila and Salt rivers are evidence of the existence of a race of people who had attained the highest degree of unrecorded civilization in what is now the United States. NUMBER 11 One hundred and fifty years later (1687) Father Kino, a Spanish friar, made his first journey into the land of the Pima and in 1694, in company with native guides who had directed him thither, he visited the Casa Grande and said mass within its ancient walls. Father Kino made several later trips to the Indians, but his efforts to establish Christian missions appear to have been largely futile. On one of these expeditions he brought the first horses to reach the land of the Pima. Father Kino died in 1711 and not until twenty years later did another missionary enter Pima territory. The early Whether the Pima Indians are descendants of this prehistoric race, or whether they afterwards occupied the land and continued to use or to imitate by works of their own the irrigation ditches of their predecessors is a question not definitely determined by our ethnologists. Pima themselves are vague on this point against the Pima and Papago tribes. efforts of these devout fathers were often frustrated or entirely defeated by the hostile attitude of the Apache Indians on the north, who attacked Pima and Spanish alike and who waged for unknown years a ceaseless and merciless warfare The and have bestowed the name Hohokam (that which has perished) on the race which built and inhabited the pueblos which built and inhabited the pueblos whose ruins now dot their valleys. When we consider the antiquity of this former race it is not surprising that the Indians have no record of its existence. As early as 1540 Coronado's expedition passed over what is now Southern Arizona and many authorities mentioned Grande rui period. believe that the Chichilticalli In 1776 a military post was established at Tucson and, until the American oc cupancy of the territory included in the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, this locality was the central point of a considerable Mexican and Spanish population. In mission at Tucson led an expedition north1776 Father Garces from the Spanish west to the land of the Pima and in a diary of a member of his company is found an authentic record of the condition of the Pima nearly a century and a half ago. I quote from the translation of this diary: "I said mass, which was attended by some Gilenos Indians who happened to be there and who gave evidence of considerable attention, good behavior and silence. At 1 o'clock in the afternoon we reached the town, which consisted of small lodges of the kind the Gilenos use. We were received by the Indians, whom I estimated to be 1,000 in number. They lodged us in a large hut which they constructed to that end and in front of it they placed a large cross, pagans though they were. The river being somewhat distant, the governor ordered his wives to bring water, which they straightway carried to his lodge for the people. These Pima Gilenos are gentle and kind-hearted Indians. The whole people gave token of great pleasure at seeing us in their country. In the afternoon I went with the governor and Father Garces to see their fields. These fields are enclosed by stakes, cultivated by sections with five canals or draws, and are excessively clean. They are close by the town on the banks of the river, which is large only in the seasons of the freshets. At that time its waters were so low that an Indian who crossed it had the water but halfway up his leg. From what they have told me, this is the reason that they have not yet made their sowing, as the water was so low it could not enter their canals. They also told me to remedy this need they were all anxious to come together for a council and had thought of sinking many stakes and tranches into the river to raise the water so that it might enter the drains. This industry on their part is a proof of their devotion to toil and shows they are not restless and nomad like other Indian races, for to maintain themselves in their towns with their fields they themselves have contrived to hold and control the river. I also saw how they wove cloaks of cotton, a product of which they sew and spin and the greater number of them know how to weave. They also own some large-sized sheep whose wool is good, and also Castilian fowl." "We came in at the back of the settlement of the Pima Indians and found our troops encamped in a corn field from which the corn had been gathered. We were at once impressed with the beauty, order and disposition of the arrangements for irrigating and draining the land. Corn, wheat and cotton are the crops of this peaceful and intelligent race of people. All the crops have been gathered and the stubble show they have been luxuriant. The cotton has been picked and stacked for drying on the tops of the sheds. The fields are subdivided by ridges of earth into rec tangles of about 200x100 feet for the convenience of irrigating. Their fences are sticks wattled with willow and mesquite and in this particular they set an example of economy in agriculture to be followed by the Mexicans, who never use fences at all. "To us it was a rare sight to be thrown in the midst of a large nation of what is termed wild Indians, surpassing many of the Christian nations in agriculture, little behind them in the useful arts and immeasureably before them in honesty and virtue. During the whole of yesterday our camp was full of men, women and children, who sauntered amongst our packs unwatched and not a single instance of theft was reported." Referring later to a trip of 15 miles, Lieutenant Emory says: "For the whole distance we passed through cultivated grounds over a luxuriantly rich soil." After the discovery of gold in California in 1849 thousands of gold-seekers passed through the Gila country for the new Eldorado. They invariably met with open hostility from the Apache and friendliness from the Pima. In fact the kind treatment accorded the whites by these Indians became so well known that in 1859 Congress made a somewhat tardy recognition of their services by appropri Early in the 19th Century, American ating $1,000 for a survey of their land trappers began to pick their way through and $10,000 for gifts, which were largely the hostile Apache on the north to follow the beaver down the Colorado river. of an agricultural nature. It is impossible to relate the story of Kit Carson returned from his famous the progress of the Pima or to point to trip to California in 1829 via the Pima their conversion from a heathen to & villages and in 1846 General Kearney Christian nation without chronicling the tenant Emory of his party gives in his which the now aged missionary, Dr. made the first military invasion. Lieu- almost incalculable influence for good the following entirely reliable informa- The story of his early overland journey "Notes of a Military Reconnoissance" Charles H. Cook, has exerted over them. from Chicago, the difficulties met, the tion regarding the Pima: obstacles overcome, are related by Dr. Cook in his book entitled "Among the Pimas." In 1871 he opened the first school for the Pima Indians, located about two miles west of the present agency, to which, as he relates, the children came hungry and all but naked. From this small beginning he has watched the steady growth of his first endeavors until today he sees the Pima supplied with a boarding school with a capacity of 210, five day schools with an aggregate attendance of 200, while at Gila Crossing, on the south side of the reserve, is St. John's boarding school, a Catholic mission with an attendance equal to that of the Government boarding school and with a branch school at Santan, both of which are doing excellent work. To the lives of such men as Dr. Cook and Father Deutsch of St. John's, devoted to the uplift of a dependent people, enduring the hardships and privations of frontier life with no thought of selfish gain or personal benefit, we owe the confidence the Pima Indians still display in their white brothers, despite the wrongs committed against them on every side. The lives of such men need no commendation; they have erected their own monuments in the history of the Indians in whose annals their influence has written advancement and in whose hearts their images are indelibly enshrined. The early history of nearly every tribe of American Indians is identical in one respect-the deterioration in morals, temperance and industry resulting from the contact with the first white people with whom they became associated. Excuse this as best we may by affirming that the riffraff of humanity, the derelicts and outlaws of the white race, were the first to drift into the unexplored portions of the western country, degrading the Indians by their licentious conduct and utter disregard of all recognized law or customs, there remains the uncomfort able fact that too many white men hold two codes of ethics where an Indian is concerned and treatment which he would blush to think of in connection with a man of his own race he will accord without compunction to the redskin. The Pima were no exception and Bancroft, in his history of the times between 1850 and 1880, mentions the Pima as intemperate, immoral and unfriendly to the whites, owing to the diversion of the waters of the Gila by settlers above them, which had reduced them nearly to the verge of starvation. In 1859, Lieutenant Mowry of the Indian Bureau gave warning that if the diversion of the waters of the Gila continued, trouble with the Pima would result. In 1886 when the Florence canal was projected, Agent Wheeler protested against this further infringement of the rights of the Indians, to the end that the Interior Department instructed the director of the Geological Survey to investigate the matter. The investigation showed three facts: 1. That the water supply of the Pima and Maricopa Indian reservations under present conditions is no more than sufficient for the wants of these Indians. 2. That the construction of a dam by the Florence Canal Company of the character intended will give the control of practically all the waters of the Gila to this company. 3. That if this water supply should be cut off, the Indian reservations would become unhabitable. Notwithstanding this report, the Flor ence canal was opened and only in flood time when there is more water than the canal can carry do the Pima Indians receive enough water from the river to insure the maturing of their crops. That the Gila river occasionally became dry in former times is shown by the records of the early Spanish fathers, but the same records also show that for many years these Indians had been self-supporting |