Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/31

26 was the prevailing mode of disposing of the dead, as it was also on the lower Gila and the Salt river. Nothing was learned to indicate that the Sobaipuris of the San Pedro practised incineration. If some of the clans of the Hopis or Zuñis are to be identified with the Hohokam of the Gila, as is maintained by some of the most able authorities upon Southwestern archeology, how is the total disappearance of this primal custom to be explained?

There is a strong belief among the Pimas that they came from the east. It is in that quarter that the abode of their dead is located. Their gods dwell there. Their beliefs do not seem to have been influenced in this respect in the least through contact with the tribes of Yuman stock who have sought a paradise in the opposite direction. There are vestiges of a tradition that the Pimas were once overwhelmed by a large force of warriors who came from the east and destroyed nearly all the people and devastated the entire Gila valley. This does not appear to be another version of the account of the invasion by the underworld clans. While the majority of the Pimas declare that their people have always lived where they now are, or that they came from the east, there are some who say that the Hohokam were killed by an invasion from the east before the Pimas came.

The Pimas formerly regarded the ruins with the same reverence or aversion which they felt toward their own burial places. After the excavations made by the Hemenway Expedition on the Salt river, as no disasters followed the disturbance of the dead, they grew less scrupulous and can now readily be hired as workmen to excavate the ruins or ancient cemeteries.



From the meager records of the Coronado Expedition of 1540–1542 it has been surmised that Chichilticalli was the Casa Grande, but this statement lacks verification. After traversing the entire southern and eastern part of Arizona the writer can not but believe that it is extremely improbable that Coronado saw the Casa Grande and the 