The Pima Indians/History/Prehistoric Ruins

by Frank Russell

HISTORY

Prehistoric Ruins

The Pimas have long since grown accustomed to being interrogated concerning the builders of the great stone and adobe pueblos that now lie in ruins on the mesas of the Gila and Salt river valleys. However ready they may have been in the past to claim relationship with the Hohokam^[1] or relate tales of the supernatural origin of the pueblos, they now frankly admit that they do not know anything about the matter.^[2] As early as the time of Kino and Mange mention is made of the chief of the former pueblo of Casa Grande, who was called "Siba." Mange in his Diary of November, 1697, translates this word as "bitter" or "cruel." The present pronunciation is sivan^y and the same name is given to all Hohokam chiefs; no one now knows the meaning of the word. The query arises, Is the similarity of this term to the native name for the Zuñis a mere coincidence? Mr Cushing states that "Cibola equals the 'Chi-vo-la' of Fray Marcus, of Nizza, equals the Zuñi name for themselves, namely, Shiwona, or Shiwina."^[3]

Each ruin is called va-aki, ancient house, and in the myths a name is added to distinguish it from other ruins and to it si'van^y to identify him from other chiefs.

Following is the list of the best known places, with their chiefs:

Tcoʼ-oltûk, Corner, Casa Grande. Ruled by Sĭaʼ-al Tcu-vtakĭ, Morning Blue.

Â-âtʼkam Va-aki, Sandy Ancient House, Santan. Ruled by Kĭaʼ-atak, Handle.

Sʽoʼam Nyuʼĭ Va-aki, Yellow Vulture Ancient House. Name of chief not known to my informants.

The following names of chiefs are preserved in the myths, but the ruins are referred to simply as va-aki:

Tcufʼhaowo-o, Dipper, was the sivan^y at the ruin situated about 4 miles northwest of Santan, (Pl. IV, a, b.)

Taʼ-a, Flying, lived at the Sweetwater pueblo. (Pl. IV, c.)

Tcoʼ-otcuk Taʼtai, Black Sinew, at Casa Blanca.^[4]

Tcu’narsat, Lizard, at Gila Crossing.

Aʼ-an Hiʼtûpăkĭ, Feather Breathing, at Mesa.

Vi-ĭk Iʼalt Maʼkai, Soft Feathers Rolling, ruled the pueblo between Tempe and Phoenix that is now being excavated by the Arizona Antiquarian Society.

When a single chief is referred to, he is usually called Siʼvan^y, and when the full name is given, Siʼvan^y is always added, so that it is not surprising that Mange, Bandelier,^[5] and others should have supposed that the Casa Grande pueblo was under the control of "Siba" or "Siʼvan^y;" indeed it is now frequently designated "Siʼvan^y Ki" by the Pimas. Fifteen miles southeast of the Casa Grande ruin is the mountain ridge that rises abruptly from the nearly level plains which is known as Ta-aʼtûkam or Picacho mountain. Picacho is an isolated peak south of the mountain. The pass between them, through which the main trail ran from the Pima villages to Tucson, and through which the railroad has been built, was one of the most dreaded portions of the overland trail when the Apaches were "out," as they were most of the time. To the northeast of the mountain is a small pueblo ruin that lies about 15 miles from the river, which is apparently the nearest water. It was probably occupied during a part of the year only. East of the mountain is a ruin called Kĭsʼtcoĭt Vatcĭkʽ, Table Tank; on the north is one known as Moʼ-okʽ Vatcĭkʽ, Sharp Tank; and at the foot of Ta-aʼtûkam, on the west, is Aʼ-alt Vapʽtckʽ, Small Tanks. Southwest of the mountain were situated the Pima village of Akûtcĭny and the two pueblo ruins previously mentioned. There is another small pueblo ruin a few miles northwest of the site of Akûtcĭny, but no others of similar type are known to the writer at any point in Arizona south of Picacho. A personal examination of all the ruins of the southeastern part of the Territory has shown them to be of a different type from those of the upper and lower Gila and the Salt river valleys. The ruins along the San Pedro, it is true, extend to the southward of the parallel of Picacho, and it is believed to be desirable that some of them be explored. Superficially they resemble the ruins about Solomonsville, where cremation 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,^[6] 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.

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1. The term Hohokam, That which has Perished, is used by the Pimas to designate the race that occupied the pueblos that are now rounded heaps of ruins in the Salt and Gila river valleys. As there is no satisfactory English term, the Pima name has been adopted throughout this memoir.
2. "I made frequent inquiries of the Pimos and Coco-Maricopas as to the builders of these (Salt River ruins) and the ruins on the Gila, but could obtain no other than the ever ready, Quien sabe? These, as well as the ruins above the Pimo villages, are known among the Indians as the 'houses of Montezuma,' an idea doubtless derived from the Mexicans, rather than from any tradition of their own. We asked our Indian guide who Montezuma was. He answered, 'Nobody knows who the devil he was; all we know is, that he built these houses.'" Bartlett, Personal Narrative, 1854, II, 248.
3. Congrès International des Américanistes, 7^me sess., 1890, 155.
4. The ruin at Casa Blanca (pl. V, a) is one of the largest south of the Gila. The adobe walls yet show at the level of the surface of the mound. Sedelmair states in his Relación that there were two houses standing at Casa Blanca in 1744. This and the ruin in Santan are the only ones near which the modern villages are built. Casa Grande is 6 miles from the nearest Pima village, which was, furthermore, quite recently established by families from points farther down the river.
5. While in New Mexico the chain of traditional information appears almost unbroken as far down as San Marcial, in Arizona the folk-lore of the Zuñi terminates, according to Mr Cushing, with the northern folds of the Escudilla and of the Sierra Blanca. The remarkable architecture prevalent on the Salado, Gila, and Verde has no light shed upon it by their folk-lore tales. "Here the statements of the Pimas, which Mr Walker has gathered, are of special value; and to him I owe the following details: The Pimas claim to have been created where they now reside, and after passing through a disastrous flood—out of which only one man, Cĭ-hö, was saved—they grew and multiplied on the south bank of the Gila until one of their chiefs, Ci-vă-nŏ, built the Casa Grande. They call it to-day 'Ci-vă-nŏ-qi' (house of Ci-vă-nŏ); also 'Văt-qi' (ruin). A son of Ci-vă-nŏ settled on lower Salt river, and built the villages near Phoenix and Tempe. At the same times tribe with which they were at war occupied the Rio Verde; to that tribe they ascribe the settlements whose ruins I have visited, and which they call 'O-ŏt-gŏm-vătqi' (gravelly ruins). The Casa Blanca and all the ruins south of the Gila were the abodes of the forefathers of the Pimas, designated by them as 'Vĭ-pĭ-sĕt' (great-grandparents), or 'Ho-ho-qŏm’ (the extinct ones). (Ci-vă-nŏ had twenty wives, etc. ['Each of whom wore on her head, like a headdress, the peculiar half-hood, half-basket contrivance called Ki'-jo.' Papers Archeol. Inst., IV, 463.]) At one time the Casa Grande was beset by enemies, who came from the east in several bodies, and who caused its abandonment; but the settlements at Zacaton, Casa Blanca, etc., still remained, and there is even a tale ['It is even said that the people of Zacaton made war upon their kindred at Casa Blanca and blockaded that settlement by constructing a thorny hedge around it. Through the artifices of the medicine-men the hedge turned into a circle of snakes.' Papers Archeol. Inst., IV, 464] of intertribal war between the Pimas of Zacaton and those of Casa Blanca after the ruin of Casa Grande. Finally, the pueblos fell one after the other, until the Pimas, driven from their homes, and moreover decimated by a fearful plague, became reduced to a small tribe. A portion of them moved south into Sonora, where they still reside, but the main body remained on the site of their former prosperity. I asked particularly why they did not again build houses with solid walls like those of their ancestors. The reply was that they were too weak in numbers to attempt it, and had accustomed themselves to their present mode of living. But the construction of their winter houses—a regular pueblo roof bent to the ground over a central scaffold—their organization and arts, all bear testimony to the truth of their sad tale, that of a powerful sedentary tribe reduced to distress and decadence in architecture long before the advent of the Spaniards." Bandelier in Fifth Ann. Rep. Archeol. Inst. Am., 1883–84, 80, 81.
6. The earliest mention of the Gila origin of the Hopi theory is that of Garcés: "Also they knew that I was padre ministro of the Pimas, who likewise are their enemies. This hostility had been told me by the old Indians of my mission, by the Gileños, and Coco-Maricopas, from which information I have imagined (he discurrido) that the Moqui nation anciently extended to the Rio Gila itself. I take my stand (fundome, ground myself) in this matter on the ruins that are found from this river as far as the land of the Apaches, and that I have seen between the Sierras de la Florida and San Juan Nepomuzeno. Asking a few years ago some Subaipuris Indians who were living in my mission of San Xavier if they knew who had built those houses whose ruins and fragments of pottery (losa for loza) are still visible—as, on the supposition that neither Pimas nor Apaches knew how to make (such) houses or pottery, no doubt it was done by some other nation—they replied to me that the Moquis had built them, for they alone knew how to do such things, and added that the Apaches who are about the missions are neither numerous nor valiant; that toward the north was where there were many powerful people; 'there went we,' they said, 'to fight in former times (antiguamente); and even though we attained unto their lands we did not surmount the mesas whereon they lived.'" Diary in Coues, On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer, New York, 1900, II, 386, 387.