NOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN" BY EDWARD S. CURTIS
LANGUAGE: Piman
LOCATION: Arizona-The Papago lived in south-central Arizona, as far north as Tucson and in broad stretches of the Sonoran desert.
DRESS: Young men wore the "Kahtani," a cotton poncho which went below the waist. Women wore either a full dress of deerskin or cotton skirt to the calf.
DWELLINGS: The Papago house was a rectangular hut of adobe mud between posts and wattle. The summer home was a brush shelter for protection from the heat.
RELIGION AND CEREMONIES: The main ceremonies are for Puberty rights (Maturity ceremony), which lasted for four days. Not a few of the religious observations of the Papago still persist even among those supposedly civilized, although they are kept from the knowledge of whites.
QUOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN: " "The Papago are a strong branch of the Piman family living in the narrow valleys of south-central Arizona as far north as Tucson, and the broad stretches of Northern Sonora. They were among the first of the Indians of this section to come under the influence of the Spanish missionaries, and early proved their friendliness toward Christianity, that is, as with Indians generally, so far as its outward form is concerned."
"A peculiar belief of the Papago is called "Aak." If a bird or almost any animal, especially
the coyote, is encountered in one's path acting at all peculiarly, as fluttering the wings in the case of a bird, or sitting up and whining in the case of a coyote, it is regarded as an infallible sign of the approaching death of whomsoever one happens to be thinking of at the moment."
"The larger part of the Papago are semi nomadic; that is they wander from place to place as occasion necessitates. One week they may be harvesting their little crops of grain; the next they have taken the trail to the mines to work for the time; or gone to the hills or the river valleys to harvest cactus fruit or mesquite beans."
The Papagos built San Xavier del Bac mission, near Tucson, for the Franciscans, and have kept the structure in good repair.