Pima Villages

Pima Villages, sometimes mistakenly called the Pimos Villages, were the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee-Posh (Maricopa) villages in what is now the Gila River Indian Community in Pinal County, Arizona. First, recorded by Spanish explorers in the late 17th century as living on the south side of the Gila River, they were included in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, then in Provincias of Sonora, Ostimuri y Sinaloa or New Navarre to 1823. Then from 1824 to 1830, they were part of the Estado de Occidente of Mexico and from September 1830 they were part of the state of Sonora. These were the Pima villages encountered by American fur trappers, traders, soldiers and travelers along the middle Gila River from 1830's into the later 19th century. The Mexican Cession following the Mexican American War left them part of Mexico. The 1853 Gadsden Purchase made their lands part of the United States, Territory of New Mexico. During the American Civil War they became part of the Territory of Arizona.

History

The Spanish Period, 1694 to 1821

Late 17th Century

Father Eusebio Kino had been tasked with establishing Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert. In 1691–1692, he established three missions in the Pimería Alta among the Tohono O'odham (Papago) and Sobaipuri. These were the Mission San Cayetano del Tumacácori, Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi, San Xavier del Bac and its daughter mission of San Cosme y Damián de Tucsón all south of the Pima Villages.

The villages of the Akimel O’odham where located along the Gila River before the Spanish explorers Father Kino and Captain Manje, the leader of Kino's military escort, first encountered them in 1694. A census taken by Manje in 1697 and 1699 found 1118 people in 5 villages along the Gila, within the boundary of the modern Gila River Indian Community. From east to west there was Tucsan or Tuesan (130 people) one league (2.5 miles) west of the Casa Grande Ruins, then Tusonimo (200 people), four leagues downstream from the unnamed settlement, then Coatoydag (400 people, the largest), three leagues downstream from Tusonimo, then Soación or Sudaisón four leagues downstream from Coatoydag and Comacson at the foot of the Sierra Estrella six leagues downstream from Soación and three leagues (7.5 miles) upstream on the Gila from its conjunction with the Salt River. A further 132 Akimel O’odham were in the village of Oyadaibuc to the west near what is now Gila Bend. A later map by Kino showed three villages of "mixed Pimas and Opas," lay above Oyadaibuc on the Gila and two more villages of Pimas above them before Comacson was reached. The Spanish counted 530 Pimas living in the villages from Oyadaibuc to Soación on the Gila in 1699.

Captain Manje wrote that 960 Cocomaricopa or Opa lived in villages to the west along the lower Gila River between Oyadaibuc and their western most village Tutumaoyda or Tumagoidad, (which Kino named San Matias del Tulum). Tutumaoyda lay on the south side of the Gila River a few miles from modern Agua Caliente. A twenty-seven league (about 67.5 mile) unpopulated no mans land along the lower Gila river lay to the west between the Cocomaricopa and the Quechan or Yuma, their hostile neighbors, whose villages were on the lower Colorado River near the mouth of the Gila River.^[1]

The Mexican Period, 1821 to 1856

Pima and Maricopa Villages in 1820's

Soon after Mexico achieved its independence, interest in reopening land communications with Alta California was revived with the arrival of a Dominican missionary, Father Félix Caballero, in Tucson in 1823. He and three companions walked from Misión Santa Catarina Virgen y Mártir in Baja California, crossing the Colorado River among the Cocopah. A military expedition was organized to return the priest to his mission and pioneer a route to the Californias. The expedition record of Captain Romero, says they traveled up to the Gila River and passed through the Pima Villages and then through the Maricopa villages on their way to the Colorado River. The first Maricopa village they encountered was now Hueso Parado only 7 leagues below the Pima Villages near the Gila's confluence with the Santa Cruz River, and the next Maricopa village they encountered was 25 leagues down the river near Gila Bend. From there they found the Maricopa lands extended down river to 4 leagues below Agua Caliente as they had in the 18th Century.^[2]

In 1825, Colonel Mariano de Urrea, the civil and military governor of Sonora, wrote a report listing the names and locations of the Pima Villages on the road from Tucson to the Gila River and downstream along the south bank. The first village upstream on the Gila River, 36 leagues from Tucson, Buen Llano, population 400; second, 1 league downstream from Buen Llano, El Hormiguero, population 1,200; third, 0.75 leagues downstream from El Hormiguero, La Tierra Amontonada, population 1,200; fourth, 1 league downstream from La Tierra Amontonada, El Apache Parado, population 600; fifth, 1.5 leagues downstream from El Apache Parado, La Agua, population 600; sixth, 7 leagues downstream from La Agua, El Hueso Parado de Pimas y Cocomaricopas, population 900 of mixed Maricopa and Pima people.^[3]

Pima Villages during the California Gold Rush

After the 1820's, the Maricopa, under relentless pressure from the Yuma and other tribes, and population loss from epidemics, had been compelled to leave the Gila below Gila Bend and join the Pima in the Middle Gila region. By the time of the California Gold Rush the Maricopa villages, were all located east of the Sierra Estrella, on the Gila River, below the Pima Villages.

In December 1849, Benjamin Ignatius Hayes who was traveling to California through the Pima Villages, wrote in the diary of is trip to California:

"There are eight villages of Pimos, and more than 10,000 souls, so the interpreter (who is a Maricopa) informs us; the villages are all on this side of the river, and of course in Mexican territory... The Maricopas, the interpreter says, number a thousand, in three villages."^[4]

The American Period, from 1856

Even after they had moved to the vicinity of the Pima Villages, the Maricopa were attacked, but for the last time, when the coalition of their enemies were defeated on June 1, 1857 in the Battle of Pima Butte by the allied army of Pima - Maricopa warriors.

1857 Chapman Census

A few months after the Battle of Pima Butte, Lieutenant A. B. Chapman, First Dragoons, U. S. Army made the first U. S. census of the Maricopas, Pimas and Papagos which was submitted to and appeared in the report of G. Bailey, Special Agent Indian Department. That census listed their captains, warriors, women and children, and total population. It found 8 Pima villages, and 2 Maricopa villages, (El Juez Tarado being a village for both tribes), on a 15 mile stretch of the Gila River. The Pima Villages listed were:

The Maricopa Villages listed were:

^[5]

St. John Census

The Pima Villages and some of their lands were included in the Gila River Indian Reservation in 1859. An Indian Agency was established at Casa Blanca with Silas St. John, (station agent of the Butterfield Overland Mail at Casa Blanca Station), appointed on February 18, 1859 as Special Agent for the Pima and Maricopa Indians. Agent St. John also conducted a census of the villages later that year, when presents were being distributed among the villages by the Indian Agency, showing 3,770 Pimas and the 472 Maricopas. This population census is thought to be inaccurate, probably due to this distribution of presents, showing almost 400 fewer persons than the 1858 count, too few children and overstating the adult population. The census records the Pima Villages as: Buen Llano, Hormiguero, Hormiguerito, Casa Blanca, Cochinilla, Arenal No. 1, El Cerro No. 1, El Cerro No. 2, Arizo del Agua, Arenal No. 2; the Maricopa Villages as: Sacaton and Huesoparada. El Cerro No. 1 and No. 2. made ten villages for the Pima. Beside Hormiguerito they were the smallest villages, apparently new villages, indicating the expansion of farms for the trade with the Mail company and the military in the late 1850s.^[6]

That year the reservation was also first surveyed for the Indian Agency, by A. B. Gray, at that time a surveyor of mining properties in Arizona, that was formerly with the Mexican Boundary Commission.^[7]

1860 Census

The 1860 U. S. census records the Pima Villages and their populations as: Agua Raiz, population 523, Arenal, population 577, Casa Blanca, population 323, Cachanillo, population 504, Cerrito, population 257, Cerro Chiquito, population 232, El Llano, population 394, and Hormiguero, population 510. The remaining Maricopa also occupied two other villages in the same locale: Hueso Parado, population 250 and Sacaton, population 144. ^[8]

References