Page:Life among the Apaches.djvu/95

 After a long travel through Sonora, visiting Santa Cruz, Bacuachi, Babispe, Tumacarcori, Imurez, Arispe, Ures, Hermosillo, Guaymas, and several other towns, Mr. Bartlett took passage by sea from Guaymas, leaving Dr. Webb, Mr. Thurber, Mr. Pratt and his son, myself and five others, making a party of ten, to reach California overland, and join him at San Diego. This was a very small party to travel through the Apache strongholds, especially at a time when those savages were at open war with us; but we were all splendidly armed, except Dr. Webb, who could never be persuaded to carry anything but a small five-inch five-shooter and a knife—and we were also tolerably experienced in the Apache style of warfare, and the nature of the country to be traversed. The magnificent Santa Rita, ten thousand feet high, with its majestic head wreathed in snow, Tubac, San Xavier del Bac and Tucson were successively reached and passed. The great desert of ninety miles without water—I speak of eighteen years ago, in 1850—between Tucson and the Gila river, was crossed safely, but not without much suffering; and we finally reached the Pimo villages, where we met Lieut. Whipple and party.

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. According to their tradition, their forefathers were driven