The Akimel O’odham (or Pima) are the village agriculturists of central Arizona. They are the cultural descendants of the Hohokam, an agricultural peoplewho flourished between 600 and 1450 CE.
In his entry on the Akimel O’odham in The Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Peter Booth reports:
“The Akimel creation stories tell how the River People inherited the pre-Columbian culture of the Hohokam and developed agricultural villages along the perennial Gila and Salt Rivers.”
The area in which the Pima peoples live is known as the Sonoran Desert, an area of very hot summers (high temperatures may reach 120° F) and relatively little rain. The first Spanish explorers to enter the area called it the Pimería Alta which means “Upper Pima Area”.
O’odham means “people.” However, ethnologist Bernard Fontana, in his book Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians, writes:
“It also means Those Who Emerged from the Earth. It means sand, or dry earth, endowed with human quality.”
The Akimel O’odham are also called Pima which is the Spanish corruption of the phrase Pi-nyi-match which means “I don’t know.” This was given as the answer to the questions asked by the first Spanish explorers and the Spanish, in turn, thought that this was their tribal name.
The Pimas, along with the Papagos and the Maricopas, are sometimes classified as “Ranchería” people (Ranchería is a Spanish word for a small Native American settlement consisting mostly of huts).
Farming
In his book Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960, Edward H. Spicer reports:
“The ranchería peoples were all agriculturalists and for them faming was a major activity.”
The principal crops included corn, beans, squash, and cotton. The Pima were able to start planting early in the season and often obtained two crops during the summer, which were harvested in July and October. Akimel O’odham agriculture yielded 10-12 bushels of corn per acre.
For centuries, the Akimel O’odham irrigated their fields with elaborate canal systems. They built diversion dams using logs and brush and an extensive system of canals and feeders would bring water to their fields.
The Akimel O’odham often planted on the islands in the Gila River. River water was easily diverted to these fields by throwing a log across the river.
The Akimel O’odham provided the cotton for many of the tribes in the area, including the Tohono O’odham and others who lived away from the rivers.
Gathering, fishing, hunting
Prior to the coming of the Europeans, about 40% of the food consumed by the Pimas came from wild plants. These included seeds from mesquite, ironwood, palo verde, amaranth, saltbush, lambsquarter, mustard, horsebean, and squash. They also used acorns and other wild nuts. Over 50 edible plants were used. In his chapter on Pima history in the Handbook of North American Indians, Paul Ezell writes:
“Gathering wild plant foods was an important source of supplementary or emergency food.”
The mesquite bean was especially important as it provided emergency rations at times when other food was scarce.
In addition to farming and gathering wild plants, the Akimel O’odham also did some hunting. While deer were the largest game taken, rabbits were taken most frequently. Mountain sheep were also hunted in pre-Hispanic times. The Akimel O’odham also fished, occasionally using nets.
Villages
Prior to the coming of the Europeans, the Pimas viewed land, water, and food as things which were owned in common by the village.
In an article in American Anthropologist, Andrew Darling, John Ravesloot, and Michael Waters report:
“Villages were dispersed, decomposable, and fluid associations of rancherías loosely organized into village aggregates.”
In their book Native American Architecture, Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton write:
“Pima communities were situated near their fields, and often supported several hundred people. Their building materials were arrowweed, willow, and cottonwood, which require a moderate amount of rain.”
In his introduction to Pima and Papago in the Handbook of North American Indians, Bernard Fontana writes:
“While it is true that riverine Pimans often maintained fields one or two miles away from their regular settlements, it was nonetheless along rivers that Piman life assumed its most anchored form.”
As individual farmsteads within the village area would move, the result would be some village drift or reorientation of the village area.
Dwellings, known as ki, were round buildings with brush walls and a dry earth roof. Construction material came from cactuses, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton write:
“The ki often measured up to 10 feet in diameter, although a headman’s might be almost twice that size. Large settlements often boasted a ki 25 feet in diameter that could accommodate up to eighty tribal members for village council meetings. An extremely strong structure, the ki could withstand fierce windstorms.”
In his book Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Carl Waldman reports:
“Pima houses were small, round, flat-topped, pole-framed structures, covered with grass and mud.”
Construction of a ki began by digging an 18-inch excavation for the floor. Next, four cottonwood posts were erected with cross beams to create a boxlike foundation. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton write:
“Willow ribs were placed in the earth around the sunken floor and then bent to the cross beams in a domelike form. Woven in and out of the frame was a padding of arrowweed, cornstalks, wheat straw, and brush, all tightly bound to form insulating walls. A mud sealant was smeared on the roof and the outer base was thickly banked with earth.”
In addition to dwellings, the villages contained ramadas (roofed, wall-less structures which provided shade, called vaptto in Pima), open air kitchens (called u’uksha in Pima), and storage houses (called koksinin Pima).
Each village included a round building in which no one lived. East of this building was an open-roofed sunshade. Under the shade or a few feet to the east was a fireplace. It was here that the nightly meetings took place. According to Donald Bahr, in his chapter on Pima and Papago social organization in the Handbook of North American Indians:
“The meeting place had to be within shouting distance of the farthest family house, for announcements were made from it in that manner.”
The round public building was called the “smoking house” (“smoking” was an expression for “to have a meeting”) or the “rain house”. This building could accommodate up to 80 people and functioned as both a meeting hall and a ceremonial facility. Since the village leader was responsible for the upkeep of this building, it was usually located near his compound.
Among the Akimel O’odham, the custom was that when a son married, he would build a new home near the home of his parents (patrilocal residence).
In some cases the household compounds were surrounded by fields, while in others there was a more compact settlement.
Weaving and baskets
The Pimas wove textiles from a variety of materials including agave and cotton. When using cotton, the women would do the spinning while the men did the actual weaving.
Two kinds of looms were used. One of these is the backstrap loom, which appears to have been derived from a Mexican form. With the backstrap loom, the top of the loom is attached to a wall or a pole and the tension is maintained with a strap around the weaver’s back. The other kind of loom was a vertical loom for producing blankets and other wide cloth. In making a vertical loom, four ground stakes are used to support the beams at the front and rear of the loom.
It is estimated that at one time six out of ten women were basket weavers. The number of weavers has diminished since the establishment of the reservations, as this is a time-consuming task.
One of the distinctive women’s artifacts is the burden basket: a triangular webbed frame which was used for gathering firewood, grasses, corn, wild food, and water jars. According to oral traditions, these baskets walked by themselves until Coyote laughed at seeing them in motion. Then they became the women’s burden.
In addition to the burden baskets, Pima basket weavers made a variety of other kinds of baskets including large grain storage baskets which are so large that the weaver must stand inside the baskets to weave them. These large baskets can hold as much as 50 bushels. The baskets are made from a variety of plants: cattails, willow, sotol, bear grass, martynia, and yucca.
The most common baskets are relatively shallow bowls. In addition, some basketry jars are made for the tourist trade. The designs which decorate the basketry are generally geometric or symbolic. The weavers do not draw the designs prior to weaving, but carry them in their minds. Some of the common symbolic designs include the squash blossom and the butterfly wings.
Anthropologist Bertha Dutton, in her book The Ranchería, Ute, and Southern Paiute Peoples: Indians of the American Southwest, writes:
“Pima women have long been noted for their beautifully woven and artistically decorated basketry.”
In his book The People: Indians of the American Southwest, Stephen Trimble writes:
“Pima baskets with abstract designs in black devil’s claw were prized only less than Pima cotton blankets—the paragon of Southwestern weaving before Navajo weavers began making blankets for sale.”
Clothing and Adornment
Women’s basic clothing was a wraparound skirt made of either cotton cloth or deerskin. Men wore small breechclouts made from cotton or leather. Children generally went naked until such time as they were considered to be adults.
People generally went barefoot, but men would sometimes wear sandals made from mountain sheep skin and/or twisted fibers.
Body decoration and tattooing were common among the women. They would paint designs on their bodies for special occasions. They were also tattooed with lines from their mouth to their chin. Anthropologist Bertha Dutton writes:
“Although a painful practice, all girls over sixteen years old had these decorations.”
The tattooing was done with cactus spines and charcoal.
With regard to hair styles, Josephine Paterek, in her book Encyclopedia of American Indian Costume, reports:
“Women wore the hair long and loose with bangs in the front almost to the eyes as protection from the sun glare. About once a week they washed their hair in amole suds and applied a dressing of black river mud mixed with mesquite; this was left on overnight, then combed out or brushed. It was said to make the hair a lustrous black and to get rid of vermin.”
Family
Children were carried in a cradle board until they were able to walk. Children were taught without praise or punishment. According to Genieve De Hoyos, in her book Mobility Orientation and Mobility Skills of Youth in an Institutionally Dislocated Group: The Pima Indian:
“The tenets of the moral code taught to the youth were industry, fortitude, and swiftness of foot. Aggressive courage was discouraged while speeches about these virtues, speeches which were constant but unagressive repetition of the community expectations, and which eventually created a profound and unconscious unity of sentiment.”
The acquisition of personal power was not encouraged.
Children were told the family and tribal traditions by older family members. Questions were not encouraged, and the emphasis was on the memorization of the stories.
Government
Government among the Pimas operated primarily at the village level. The civil leader of the village presided over community meetings. To call the meetings, the leader would start a fire in the round house or big house and then he would climb to the roof to shout, summoning the other men of the village. The civil leader also functioned as a religious leader.
The actual governing authority was vested in the council of all mature males in the village. This group often met each night and made all decisions regarding the community, including the dates for ceremonies, intervillage games, farming, hunting, and warfare. According to Genieve De Hoyos:
“Every decision in the village was made by the men of the tribe meeting in council.”
While all adult males would attend the council meetings, only those who had been through the purification of the sacred journey to the Gulf of California to get salt and those who had been through the purification ceremony required for those who had killed an enemy, were allowed to take part in the actual deliberations. Action was taken not by majority vote, but by consensus.
In addition to the civil leader, the Pima villages had two other important leaders: the war leader who took over in time of war, and the hunt leader. All the leadership positions involved some ritual responsibility. The war leader, for example, had to perform ceremonies that would take away the enemy’s power.
Pima leadership was not hereditary. Leaders tended to be men who demonstrated their acceptance and understanding of the basic values of Pima culture. Genieve De Hoyos writes:
“This moral leader was never an autocratic figure, his role consisting mostly of reminding his people of the right way to handle their problems and disputes in all areas including religion.”
Warfare
Warfare among the Pima was primarily defensive. Genieve De Hoyos reports:
“The Pima were a peaceful people who only went to war in order to protect themselves, mainly from the fierce Apaches who often attacked their villages and carried off horses, women, and children.”
Pima raids tended to be for vengeance rather than for booty. According to anthropologists Clifford Kroeber and Bernard Fontana, in their book Massacre on the Gila: An Account of the Last Major Battle Between American Indians, with Reflections on the Origin of War:
“Their offensive engagements could even be viewed as ultimately defensive in nature – raids staged to signal Apaches that Pimas could not themselves be attacked with impunity.”
During a battle, if a Pima warrior killed an enemy, he would immediately withdraw from the battlefield to begin a 16-day purification ceremony. Genieve De Hoyos reports:
“This in fact, prevented these enemy killers from receiving the honors due to the victors and those in the war party who had not killed were the ones who were honored.”
In Pima culture, the brave man must be humble and should not be given praises or gifts.
Tribal Profiles
There are more than 500 culturally and politically distinct American Indian tribes in North America. The series Indians 101/201 has now profiled 39. Some tribal profiles:
Indians 101: A Very Brief Overview of California's Achumawi Indians
Indians 101: A Very Short Overview of the Caddo Indians
Indians 201: A very short overview of the Chickasaw Indians
Indians 201: A short overview of the Duwamish Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Hualapai Indians
Indians 201: A very short overview of the Lenni Lenape Indians
Indians 101: A Very Short Overview of the Mohave Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Timucua Indians