The Pima Indians/History/Name

by Frank Russell

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."^[1] 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 divisions of the same linguistic stock they add the word âʼkimûlt, "river." "River people" is indeed an apt designation, as evidenced by their dependence on the Gila.

Gatschet has thus defined the Pima linguistic stock in an article entitled "The Indian languages of the Pacific," which was published in the Magazine of American History:^[2]

Pima. Dialects of this stock are spoken on the middle course of the Gila river, and south of it on the elevated plains of southern Arizona and northern Sonora (Pimería alta, Pimería baja). The Pima does not extend into California unless the extinct, historical Cajuenches, mentioned in Mexican annals, spoke one of the Pima (or Pijmo, Pimo) dialects. Pima, on Pima reserve, Gila river, a sonorous, root-duplicating idiom; Névome, a dialect probably spoken in Sonora, of which we possess a reliable Spanish grammar, published in Shea's Linguistics;^[3] Papago, on Papago reserve, in southwestern Arizona.

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1. "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.
2. Vol. I, 156.
3. The most valuable publication relating to the Pima language is the "Grammar of the Pima or Névome, a language of Sonora, from a manuscript of the XVIII Century." This was edited by Buckingham Smith, and 160 copies were issued in 1862. It in in Spanish-Névome, the latter differing slightly from the true Pima. The grammar has 97 octavo pages with 32 additional Pages devoted te a "Doctrina Cristiana y Confesionario en Lengua Névome, ó sea la Pima."