Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/191

186 in labor, in which case, if the child lived, it was taken in charge by the maternal grandmother.

Babies were nursed until the next child was born. Sometimes a mother nursed a child until it was 6 or 7 years old and if she became pregnant in the meantime she induced abortion by pressure upon the abdomen. The unborn was sacrificed because it was believed to be prejudicial to the welfare of the nursing child, which the mother loved the more "because she could see it." Illegitimate children were aborted at three or four months. One case of abortion at seven months was reported, but it was done with the aid of the medicine-man. These operations were usually successful, but in a small percentage of cases they caused the death of the woman.

No attempt was made by any of the Pimas to explain the cause of sterility.

The tribe has been large enough to prevent ill effects from close inbreeding, and there has been a constant addition of foreign blood. Sala Hina (fig. 51), who is perhaps 65 or 70 years old, recalled the names of three Apache women who had been married by Pimas. One of these had "many children." She had also known two Maricopa men married to Pima women and two Pimas married to Maricopa women. How lasting these unions had been she was unable to say. There is a Hare-eater from Sonora and a Yaqui who have married Pima women at one of the upper villages. Intermarriage with the desert-dwelling Kwahadkʽs has been fairly common. The father of Sala Hina was a Kwahadkʽ and prominent in Piman history as the man who brought the first cattle to the tribe. The few Kwahadkʽ women among the villages make the peculiar pottery that is characteristic of their tribe, and which should not be confounded with that of the Pimas. Detecting a slight dialectic difference in the speech of one of the temporary interpreters the author learned upon inquiry that his mother had been a Kwahadkʽ. Another interpreter said that his people called him "mixed," which is not surprising, as in his veins flowed the blood of Pimas, Maricopas, Papagos, and Apaches, peoples of three distinct linguistic stocks. The greatest influx of foreign blood has been from the related Papago tribe whose caravans annually made their appearance at the harvest season. Some Papago families have always lived with the Pimas, at one time forming an outpost on the north by maintaining a village on the Salt river.

In the past there was also some intermarriage with the Sobaipuris, and there is both traditional and historical evidence of the final amalgamation of the remnants of that tribe with the Pimas. Some were captured by the Apaches, as shown by Bourke in his researches upon the clans of that tribe. "The Apaches have also among them