PAPAGOS or "TOHONO O'OTHAM", "THE PEOPLE OF THE DESERT"

The Pápago is a bi-national group as from the division of its territory between Mexico and the United States, having his members to choose between the two nationalities. They are relatives with the hia'ched o'otham, also known as areneños or pinacateños, and with the akimel o'otham, commonly known as pimas gileños, for their residence next to the Gila river.

In the United States, where most of them live, they are located in Arizona, established in a reservation with 11 districts at the medium and high valley of the Gila river, with the head of the reservation in SHELLS and where the office "Tohono O'otham in Mexico Office" takes care of the relations between the O'otham of both countries. In 1917, when the reservations at United States became established, a Tribal Congress under the authority of a Tribal Constitution of the Pápago Nation was formed.

During the Colony, they were named "Pimas Altos" and as of the XIXth century they were denominated "Pápagos", that means "bean eaters" or "pimas frijoleros" since their principal planting was the bean. In the United States the term "Tohono O,otham" is being used more times, like them denominated themselves and that in their own language means "people of the desert"

Their present-day population in Sonora catches up with the 385 inhabitants.

LOCALIZATION
They inhabit at the desert of Sonora, at Altar's ( El Bajío, El Cubabi, La Mochonera and El Cumarito ), Caborca's ( Pozo Prieto, Las Calenturas, Las Norias, Santa Elena, El Carricito, San Francisquito and El Carrizalito ), Plutarco Elías Calles's ( Quitovac and Chujubabi ) and Saric's ( Pozo Verde ) municipalities.
There also exist descendants of the group at Puerto Peñasco, Caborca and Sonoyta cities.

CLIMATE AND ECOLOGY
This desert is one of the places with lowermost humidity ratio all over the world. The annual precipitation is inferior to the 350 mm; The highest temperature in July and August touches 47° C and the lowest 15° C in December and January.
Rains are scarce and they show up in the months of July, August and September, and the rains known as equipatas show up in winter ( January and February ).
As for vegetation, predominates the flora of cactaceae like the pitahaya, sahuaro, little lettuce and the zábila. Trees like the mezquite, palo verde, palo fierro, acacia, and torote. Shrubs like the gobernadora, hediondilla, jojoba and uña de gato, in addition to herbs and traditional pastures ( like the zacate liebrero ). There are juniper, oak tree, encino and umbrella pine in the higher parts.
In the fauna there is plenty of coyote, rabbit, hare, squirrel, white tail deer and bura deer, wildcat, wild lamb, wild boar, puma, snakes, etc.

THEIR LANGUAGE
Their language is closely related with the Pima and both form the branch Pimana of the Yutoazteca family. The language tends to incur in the disuse in Sonora, while in Arizona the majority are bilingual ( Tohono and English ).

THEIR HISTORY
From over three thousand years, Altar-Yuma's desert or Sonora's desert, was inhabited by hunting collectors' groups that already knew the cultivation of corn. In the first millennium of our era, the Hohokam's agricultural culture develops, with complex forms of organization as well as an elaborated and progressive irrigation system.
The Hohokam's descendants, the present-day Tohono O'otahm's or pápagos, had a residence of summertime and another one of wintertime, with an economic model that sustained itself to the white men' arrival.
1687: The colony enters this zone through the Jesuit missions encouraged by Fray Eusebio Francisco Kino. The missionaries congregate the dispersed groups to make evangelization easy.
End of XVIIth century: The colonizers use pápago labor force for their mines and lands of cattle raising. Kino tries countering these abuses founding the Pimería Alta's missions and establishing his center of action in the Mission of Nuestra Señora de Dolores during the 24 years that he lived in the Pimería.
He founded missions in Dolores, Cocóspera, San Ignacio and Tubutama, introducing cattle, new cultivations and new agricultural techniques.
1695: Peace is  broken off. The nomadic Indians attack the Spanish ranches and the pimas suffer the reprisals. The pimas revolt and attack Altar and Caborca, burning temples and killing Father Saeta. The real troops massacre a lot of pimas ( pápagos ) despite the efforts of the Father Kino to intermediate between Spaniards and Indians.
1736: The silver fever attracts miners and fortune hunters.
1767: Jesuits are expelled of the New Spain. In the Pimería Alta were having over 24 missions and visits.
1768: The Franciscans enter the region to continue with the Jesuits' work.
1840: Pápago's uprising due to the illegal usurpation of the fertile pimas lands by part of Spanish colonists, most of all at the zones around Caborca. The movement is quelled in 1843.
1853: The Pimería Alta splits into two halves because of the Mesilla's Treaty. In Sonora, the cattle farmers, miners and farmers, take the control of the land and deprive a lot of indigenous communities.
1898: Violent confrontations where a lot of pápagos die and other ones emigrate to the side of Arizona.
1911: The Pápago Indian Good Government League is created in Arizona, seeking to represent and unify all of the tribe.
The traditionally sacred places are located at one and the other side of the frontier, emigrating to one and another side for their ceremonies.
The thirty years of armed fight, between 1898 and 1928, expressed the nonconformity for the depriving and the division of the pápagos and in 1928 the president Plutarco Elías Calles endowed them with 2,823 hectares, forming in that way the common land "Pozo Verde", and initiating the ethnos's incorporation to the national life.

THEIR HOUSING AND HEALTH
The most ancient kind of housing ( JUUK ) consisted in a circular excavation of approximately five meters in depth and ten in width, with a roof of branches of ocotillo and hediondilla, supported with beams obtained of the bark of the sahuaro, with stepped walls.
Another traditional housing ( known in their language as HUKI ) is the one with quadrangular floor, with walls of adobe or stones amalgamated with clay, roofs of straw or reed and mortar. The floor is made of tamped land and the door oriented toward the west. The kitchen used to be a simple open ramada or with walls of reed, with a fireplace of adobe ( the stage ), tables, chairs, benches, several utensils and torote's baskets to store seeds. A wooden or wire fence surrounded the house.
Currently, the settlements have some dispersed houses that form caseríos. Architecture is similar to the one belonging to the rural housings of the region, being few the peculiarities: fences of sahuaro's bark and wells at the patio of every house.
The most common diseases are the respiratory, gastrointestinal and of the skin.

THEIR CRAFTSMANSHIP
Wooden carved figures, palmilla's and torote's basketry and earthenware pieces, fired in oven elaborated with choya's sticks and dung.
Their pieces of basketry are very requested in the United States, selling them at a high price.

THEIR ECONOMY
The desert has been transforming with the introduction of the cattle and the excavation of artesian wells, in addition to the blossoming of cities and towns.
At present, their principal economic activities are cattle raising, as principal influence in their economic development, agriculture, salaried work and the production of crafts.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Formerly the tribe split into two clans: The búhos and the coyotes, that in addition to wedding exchange they performed a specific role in the ceremonies. At the villages, so much the ones of summer as the ones of winter, there was a ceremonial house named "house of the rain or of the cloud" where they gathered together for public affairs. Meetings were presided by an old man named "guardian of the fire", who also was in charge of the ceremonies of purification or of request of rain.
They had to change their traditional organization to the conquerors' arrival, and they designated governors for each village but with a politic and administrative only sense. Also, when their territory was reduced and the ways of tenancy of land became established, the municipal and agricultural authorities prevailed over the traditional governor of every community.
A traditional governor was  elected again in 1977 but his functions were not executives but only of symbolic and ritual value.
The pápago family is nuclear, when they get married between members of the same group, they try that they be from another town or village. Also exists the marriage with other ethnic groups or else with persons of mixed race.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICES
From 1980 the Tribu Pápago School-Shelter , in Quitovac's community. Also exists a tele-secondary school to which attend Quitovac's youths as well as youth from other Sonora's localities.
Tohono o'otham communities lack drainage, piped water and electric energy. A water well for the family supply is found at each house. In Quitovac is generated electric energy with a fuel motor, that makes possible the family and communal supply from 7 afternoon to 10 evening.
The access to the communities is by dirt roads through the desert.

COSMOGONY AND RELIGION
Their legends count that there existed two supernatural beings that created diverse men's races and then destroyed them; These gods fought among themselves, the "wizard of Earth" disappeared, leaving the world to I'Itoy, who finally created the pápago people. I'Itoy expelled the men created first and occupied their territory, the Papaguería.
As from the Jesuits' evangelization, they adapted elements of their religion to Christianism. The rites and present-day beliefs revolve around San Francisco's figure ( that also synthesizes the I'Itoy's image, the Older Brother ). At the settlements rise up chapels of adobe in which an image of the saint receives the prayers and praises, along with numerous candles of different sizes. The cult remained in hands of the O'otham because of the official priests' absence.

Representation of the Tohono O'otham of I'ITOI or Older Brother

THEIR HOLIDAYS
The Jesuits introduced the cult to San Francisco Javier, after which Franciscans changed it for San Francisco de Asís. The great celebration is on October 4, day of the Franciscan saint, but the venerated image corresponds to the Jesuit saint. Every year, numerous groups of pápagos and of Tohono O'otham go on a pilgrimage the October 4 to venerate San Francisco's image, that many identify with the Father Kino.
There are two traditional, native parties:
The VI'IKITA, also known as "party of the cuckoo", celebrates during the full moon of July in Quitovac
It has as purpose to call water and receive blessings. In this ceremony participate North American and Mexican Tohono O'otham in a same terrain, with an accurate place for the dances of each other and cohabitation happens between the ones belonging to a same place, with the usual languages of those regions. During the ceremony can be heard three idioms in Quitovac.
In front of the houses are placed five earthen little heaps, four forming a square and one like center; On the central little heap are placed candy, tortillas, jelly of pitahaya or other foods. The dancers, wearing a checkered blanket tied to the waist and thighs, by way of short pants, above which they are wearing a belt with little bells, they wear mask and a feathered rod in the hand, they get to the patios and bless the foods on the earthen small hills. The crowd that follows them distribute and take in the food, getting this way blessed.

After the journey across the patios, the dancers return to the huki they came out of to initiate the dance. The huki, at present, are little semicircular corrals at the town's outskirts, fenced with rods of sahuaro or pitahaya and branches of the mountain. There the dancers get dressed and the musicians play.
The musicians are usually three singers that play wooden scrapers of hediondilla placed over coritas ( woven baskets ) inverted, and scraped with a jaw of donkey or cow.

The dancers go and come in silence from a huki to another one ( to the one belonging to the guests of another town ) all night long and the next day. When they dance, they do it a little far away from the huki and singing a monotonous melody that includes frequent repetitions of the syllables cu cu cu. Also they bless the people with their rod and they pray in their language asking for rain. Who commits like dancer for the víikita should do it for four consecutive years.

The KHUJIN, or "dance of the deer ", celebrates in the new moon of August, the one in which participate men and women forming two parallel rows or an alternate one of both sexes. The dancers stay in only one place, flexing the knees without lifting the feet of the ground. Only until dawn they dance walking softly and forming a circle and a cross. While they dance, the men shake a little rod that they carry in the hand. Women do not carry object of any kind.
The music for this dance is  provided by three singers, accompanied with scrapers on coritas ( like in the Vi'ikita )
This ceremony lasts a single night and, as it should go preceded by the hunting of a donkey, the one that Mexican Government imposed close season in that epoch of the year to, the ceremony has been suspended at Mexican territory and only celebrates at the Tohono O'otham zone of the North American side.