Tohono O'Odham

The Tohono Oʼodham (/toʊˈhɑːnə ˈɑːtʊm/ or /tɑːˈhoʊnə ˈɑːtəm/) are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, residing primarily in the U.S. state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora. Tohono Oʼodham means 'Desert People'. The federally recognized tribe is known as the Tohono Oʼodham Nation. The Tohono Oʼodham (/toʊˈhɑːnə ˈɑːtʊm/ or /tɑːˈhoʊnə ˈɑːtəm/) are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, residing primarily in the U.S. state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora. Tohono Oʼodham means 'Desert People'. The federally recognized tribe is known as the Tohono Oʼodham Nation. The Tohono Oʼodham tribal government and most of the people have rejected the customary English name Papago, used by Europeans after being adopted by Spanish conquistadores from hearing other Piman bands call them this. The Pima were competitors and referred to the people as Ba꞉bawĭkoʼa, meaning 'eating tepary beans'. That word was pronounced papago by the Spanish and adopted by later English speakers. The Tohono Oʼodham Nation, or Tohono Oʼodham Indian Reservation, is a major reservation located in southern Arizona, encompassing portions of Pima County, Pinal County, and Maricopa County. The Tohono Oʼodham share linguistic and cultural roots with the closely related Akimel Oʼodham (People of the River), whose lands lie just south of present-day Phoenix, along the lower Gila River. The Sobaipuri are ancestors to both the Tohono Oʼodham and the Akimel Oʼodham, and they resided along the major rivers of southern Arizona. Ancient pictographs adorn a rock wall that juts up out of the desert near the Baboquivari Mountains. Debates surround the origins of the Oʼodham. Claims that the Oʼodham moved north as recently as 300 years ago compete with claims that the Hohokam, who left the Casa Grande Ruins, are their ancestors. Recent research on the Sobaipuri, the now extinct relatives of the Oʼodham, shows that they were present in sizable numbers in the southern Arizona river valleys in the fifteenth century. In the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library are materials collected by a Franciscan friar who worked among the Tohono Oʼodham. These include scholarly volumes and monographs. The Office of Ethnohistorical Research, located at the Arizona State Museum on the campus of the University of Arizona, has undertaken a documentary history of the Oʼodham, offering translated colonial documents that discuss Spanish relations with the Oʼodham in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Historically, the Oʼodham-speaking peoples were at odds with the nomadic Apache from the late seventeenth until the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The Oʼodham were a settled agricultural people who raised crops. According to their history, the Apache would raid when they ran short on food, or hunting was bad. Conflict with European settlers encroaching on their lands resulted in the Oʼodham and the Apache finding common interests. The Oʼodham word for the Apache 'enemy' is ob. The relationship between the Oʼodham and Apache was especially strained after 92 Oʼodham joined the Mexicans and Anglo-Americans and killed close to 144 Apaches during the Camp Grant massacre in 1871. All but eight of the dead were women and children; 29 children were captured and sold into slavery in Mexico by the Oʼodham. Considerable evidence suggests that the Oʼodham and Apache were friendly and engaged in exchange of goods and marriage partners before the late seventeenth century. Oʼodham oral history, however, suggests that intermarriages resulted from raiding between the two tribes. It was typical for women and children to be taken captive in raids, to be used as slaves by the victors. Often women married into the tribe in which they were held captive and assimilated under duress. Both tribes thus incorporated 'enemies' and their children into their cultures. Oʼodham musical and dance activities lack 'grand ritual paraphernalia that call for attention' and grand ceremonies such as pow-wows. Instead, they wear muted white clay. Oʼodham songs are accompanied by hard wood rasps and drumming on overturned baskets, both of which lack resonance and are 'swallowed by the desert floor'. Dancing features skipping and shuffling quietly in bare feet on dry dirt, the dust raised being believed to rise to atmosphere and assist in forming rain clouds.