Bringing O’odham into the “Pimería Alta”: Introduction

Pimería Alta—variously translated as Land of the Northern Pima, Land of the Upper Piman Indians, Land of the Northern Piman Speakers, and Upper Pima Country—is a Spanish term coined by Jesuit missionaries and other colonial officials with reference to the people they found inhabiting the northernmost part of the Sonoran Desert during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More than simply denoting a geographical region, in colonial usage the term signified what Spaniards thought of as the northern Pima nation—that is, the collective groups of people who spoke dialects of the same language. The Pimería Alta comprised numerous communities of Pimas Altos (Northern Pimas), so designated when missionaries realized they spoke the same language as people to the south whom Spaniards already knew as Pimas, despite the fact that both peoples, north and south, called themselves O’odham (meaning “Person” or “People”).

More specific labels were applied by the Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino and Captain Juan Mateo Manje during their explorations at the end of the seventeenth century, as they further distinguished among several sub-groupings of Pimas Altos occupying a greatly varied terrain. Farming along the perennial river stretches were Pimas, who inhabited the watershed encompassing the upper reaches of the south-flowing Sonora, San Miguel, Cocóspera, Magdalena, and Altar Rivers as well as the north-flowing Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers; Sobaipuris, who lived to the north, downstream along the middle Santa Cruz and the San Pedro; and Pimas Gileños, who resided along the middle Gila River. Many Sobas also farmed near the Magdalena-Altar river confluence to the southwest, in the low desert area between Caborca and Oquitoa, whereas others maintained a nomadic way of life in the sparsely vegetated, open desert to the northwest, west, and southwest of Caborca. Papabotas or Papagos inhabited the arid, interior desert uplands to the west (the Papaguería, in Spanish terms), generally adopting semi-nomadic residential patterns while seasonally cultivating crops in places where conditions allowed. Areneños (“Sand Dwellers”) roamed the driest desert region even farther to the west, relying on isolated springs and natural rock basins for water, with extremely limited opportunities for growing food. Kino and Manje offered no explanations for their classifications, but they undoubtedly perceived differences in environmental adaptations, cultural traditions, and/or dialect, and the names they assigned groups most likely represent Spanish corruptions of terms by which those groups were known to their O’odham or non-O’odham neighbors.¹

In modern scholarship, Pimería Alta is more commonly construed to mean the collective land base of the various northern O’odham groups who historically occupied a region far more extensive than what is encompassed by the boundaries of today’s Tohono O’odham, Ak Chin, Gila River, and Salt River reservations and the other, less formally organized descendant communities in northern Sonora. Historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have adopted the term as an expedient way to reference northern O’odham territory during Spanish colonial times. Pimería Alta in this usage becomes a geographic expanse defined by the explorations of Kino and Manje as well as their eighteenth-century successors, with boundaries fixed in time: the Gila River on the north, the San Pedro River and Río San Miguel on the east, the Río Magdalena–Río Asunción drainage on the south, and the Gulf of California and Colorado River on the west (Figure 1). As such it has come to include the Yuman-speaking Pee Posh communities, known to Spaniards as Cocomaricopas and Opas, who resided near and eventually with O’odham along the Gila River and whose descendants today constitute part of the Gila River Indian Community and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.² Researchers also find Spanish nomenclature useful for discussing the various O’odham groups of the colonial period, especially those long since integrated into surviving Tohono O’odham (historically Papago) and Akimel O’odham (historically Pima) communities, whereas linguists refer to all peoples speaking dialects of the O’odham language (a member of the Tepiman subfamily of...