Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/190

176 choya, pitdhaya, agovin, and palo-blanco form a base of greater or less breadth on both sides, from which mountains rise abruptly with wild, picturesque profile, forming on the eastern side a continuous chain which is crossed by only a few extremely difficult paths. The defile which Jaramillo mentions as leading from the south to the Sonora River can only be that one which enters the valley at Babiácora and comes down from Batuco. The Rio Sonora turns thence toward the southwest, and runs through the dark gorge of Ures to the present city of Hermosillo and the Gulf of California. When the first Jesuit missionaries visited the region in the year 1638, they found its inhabitants numerous and more peaceful and better civilized than the other peoples of the country. These inhabitants are now known by the name of "Opata"; they call themselves "Joyl-ra-ua," or village people. The name "Opata" belongs to the Pima language; it arose toward the end of the seventeenth century and is analyzed into "Oop," enemies, and "Ootam," men. The Pimas designate themselves by the latter word. Opata is therefore equivalent to "men hostile to the Pima tribe." The languages of the two tribes are very closely related.

Few tribes in Spanish America have so readily and completely assimilated with the whites as the Opatas of Sonora. I am convinced, after a slow journey of three months through their whole country, that there are hardly two dozen of them who can and will speak their own language. The dress of the Opatas is white, customary in all Mexico, with the palm-leaf hat. Their houses are like the