NOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN" BY EDWARD S. CURTIS
LANGUAGE: Piman
LOCATION: Arizona-The Pima lived along the Salt
and Gila rivers and in the Sonoran desert in southwestern Arizona.
DRESS: The dress for men was loin-cloth in summer
and robe in winter. The women wore a short cotton skirt of their own weaving and
in winter a shawl.
DWELLINGS: The Pima house was a dome-shaped
dwelling about seven feet high, supported by four crotch posts. The whole is
thatched with arrow-brush and covered with clay. The doorway is always on the
eastern side..
RELIGION AND CEREMONIES: The main ceremonies are
the "Rain Ceremony, "Harvest Dance," and the "War
Dance," a portion of which consisted of the tying of enemy's scalp locks.
Puberty rights, called the "Changing" were also celebrated by the
Pima. The Pima creation myth is very complex, centering on "Chuwutumaka,"
(Earth Doctor), the creator.
QUOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN
INDIAN:" "The myth of the creation as related by the northern Piman
tribes is an almost inextricable confusion of logical and illogical acts and
events. The Pima, the Papago, and the Qahatika have each their version of the
genesis, and every historian and story-teller has his individual variation of
it."
"Like most tribes of the Southwest, the Pima
are an agricultural people, and from their
earliest history have grown crops by
irrigation, conveying water from the rivers in canals, but they did not, as has
often been supposed, at first flood the land directly from the canal; instead
the water was dipped and carried out to the crops. Under this system, their
farms on which they raised corn, squashes, beans, and cotton, were necessarily
very small."
"The Apache were the hereditary foes of the
Pima from earliest tradition, and though they were no better fighters than their
peacefully inclined desert brothers, the latter were constantly harassed through
dread of sudden attack. The Pima, however, retaliated, and learning that the
Apache were early sleepers as well as early risers, would often strike a
sleeping camp before the waning moon had risen, retreating from the mountains by
its pale light ere the Apache could rally in the streaking dawn."
"The Pima show considerable skill in their
handiwork. As late at least as sixty years ago cotton was raised, and spun and
woven into blankets or cloth. The loom was horizontal, consisting of two poles
tied to four stakes set in the ground to form a rectangle. Pima baskets are well
known, the term 'Pima' being commonly applied to the products of kindred tribes
as well."