Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/24

] days of transcontinental railroads often owed their lives to the friendly brown-skinned farmers whom they met upon the Gila. This tribe rendered notable assistance as scouts in the long contest with the Apaches. Even had they remained neutral, they would have deserved friendly consideration on the part of the whites, but as they fought bravely in the latter's behalf justice requires that their services be accorded proper recognition.

The Pimas live in two river valleys that are strewn with the ruins of prehistoric buildings and other evidences of the presence of a considerable population that had attained probably the highest degree of civilization or culture to be found north of Mexico. The present race has been variously regarded as the descendants of the one that has disappeared, as having amalgamated with it, and as being entirely independent of it. The determination of the exact relationship of the two groups has been held constantly in mind during the course of these investigations. Closely connected with this principal problem are those problems of the extent and direction of the migrations of men and culture toward the Sierra Madre, the Rio Grande, the Pacific, and the plateau to the northward. Was this a center of culture or was it a halting place in the march of clans?



The tribe known as the Pimas was so named by the Spaniards early in the history of the relations of the latter with them. The oldest reference to the name within the writer's knowledge is that by Velarde: "The Pima nation, the name of which has been adopted by the Spaniards from the native idiom, call themselves Otama or in the plural Ohotoma; the word pima is repeated by them to express "negation." This "negacion" is expressed by such words as pia, "none," piatc, "none remaining," pimatc, "I do not know" or "I do not understand." In the last the sound of tc is often reduced to a faint click. The Americans corrupted this to "Pimos," and while this form of the word is now used only by the illiterate living in the neighborhood of the tribe, it is fairly common in the literature referring to them. They call themselves Âʼ-âʼtam, "men" or "the people," and when they wish to distinguish themselves from the Papago and other 