was confined to mothers and infants. Accurate information of the primitive custom can not now be obtained. Formerly, when long-separated friends met they expressed their joy in tears. The terms expressing their degrees of relationship or simply "friend" were sometimes used.
Guests were offered pinole upon arrival if it were not near mealtime. Pinole was easily prepared without cooking and stayed hunger. At meals guests were helped to food in a dish apart from the common bowl out of which the family ate.
Intertribal Relations
ALLIANCES
The relations of the Pimas to their neighbors had a profound influence upon their social organization and general cultural development. They held possession of the best agricultural lands in their section of the Southwest, and were compelled to fight for the privilege. Their alliance with the Maricopas entailed a long and sanguinary struggle with the Yumas, which resulted in what Bancroft has termed "the almost total annihilation" of the latter tribe. From the Maricopas they received, however, efficient aid against their principal enemy, the Apaches. Thus the Pimas learned the advantages of confederation, and there is reason to believe that their culture, based on a thrifty system of agriculture, in time might have surpassed that of the Hohokam. The Yavapais were sometimes hostile, but do not appear to have been very formidable opponents.[1] In the Annals there are references to a few tribes of minor importance that it is almost impossible to identify from their Pima names, but they were always allied with either the Yumas or the Apaches. Aside from the Maricopas, the tribes friendly to the Pimas were their congeners, the Papagos and Kwahadkʽs and the Sobaipuris of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro valleys.
WARFARE
Raids
A better understanding of the division of labor prevailing among these people may be had by studying the conditions imposed upon them by the presence of the aggressive Apaches. The men may be forgiven for allowing the women to perform certain tasks in the cultivation of the crops that are usually considered the portion of the stronger sex when it is learned that this plan was necessary in order to maintain pickets constantly for long periods, and that an armed guard was the sole guaranty of safety to the villages. Every three
- ↑ Garcés relates in his Diary that the "Yabipais Tejua," [Yavapais] have in some way remained enemies of the Pimas and Cocomaricopas Gileños." Coues', On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer, II, 449.
