days of transcontinental railroads often owed their lives to the friendly brown-skinned farmers whom they met upon the Gila.[1] 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?
HISTORY
Name
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."[2] 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
- ↑ Sylvester Mowry, lieutenant in the Third Artillery, in an address before the American Geographical Society, in New York, February 3, 1859 (Arizona and Sonora, 3d ed., 30), said: "Much as we pride ourselves upon our superior government, no measures [the United States Government have [sic] since, under urgent pressure of the writer, made some small appropriations for the Pima Indians] have been taken to continue our friendly relations with the Pimos; and to our shame be it said, it is only to the forbearance of these Indians that we owe the safety of the life of a single American citizen in central or western Arizona, or the carriage of the mails overland to the Pacific."
- ↑ "La nacion pima, cuyo nombre han tomado los españoles en su nativo idioma, se llama Otama y en plural Ohotoma, de la palabra Pima repetida en ellos por ser su negacion." Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, 4th ser., I, 345.
