Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/203

198 score of writers have testified, leading to the belief that. moral standards in Pimería at least equaled if they did not resemble our own. Life and property were secure. By their industry they had mastered the difficulties of their environment. The relations of the sexes and the division of labor had been adjusted in a manner creditable to them.

The law of vengeance operated to prevent homicide. "Speak not foolishly," said the elders; "do not quarrel and kill your neighbor, for that leads to retaliation." Thus the youth were instructed and the abhorrence of bloodshed grew deep and lasting. Within the tribe there was but one exception to this—to kill the convicted sorcerer was meritorious.

No odium attached to the crime of suicide. The body was buried in the usual manner and the property was similarly divided or destroyed. Several instances of self-destruction were ascertained. A blind old man had shot himself and a young man had ended his career because his father would not let him sell some piece of personal property. Another man had shot himself because hie wife had deserted him and their family of small children. A woman had starved herself and baby in the hills of the desert because her husband had left her.

The crime of arson was unknown, though dwellings were frequently burned by accident.

Adultery was punished by turning the woman away from the home. Sometimes the husband shot the horse of the offending man and "then he felt all right."

Prostitution with its train of diseases has not depleted the numbers of the Pimas as it has the population of so many surrounding tribes. Loose women are said by the old people to have been rare in the old days. Independent testimony of the whites accords with this. "They are exceedingly jealous of their females; and their chastity, as far as outside barbarians are concerned, remains, with a few exceptions, unimpeachable." One informant assured the writer's party that the infant daughter of a prostitute by an unknown father was always destroyed lest she "grow up to be as bad as her mother."