Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration

4. S-cuk Kavick: Thoughts on Migratory Process and the Archaeology of O’odham Migration

4 S-cuk Kavick Thoughts on Migratory Process and the Archaeology of O’odham Migration J. Andrew Darling A comparable approach is called for today, an approach which would analyze not things in space but space itself, with a view to uncovering the social relationships embedded in it. (Lefebvre 1991:89). The real knowledge that we hope to attain would have a retrospective as well as a prospective import. . . . It will help us to grasp how societies generate their (social) space and time—their representational spaces and their representations of space. (Lefebvre 1991:192). This chapter is the fourth in a series of essays that examine O’odham ideology and archaeology to consider various aspects of the anthropology of Native infrastructure, mobility, and indigenous landscape analysis (see Darling 2009; Darling and Lewis 2007; Darling et al. 2004). In this chapter, I wish to develop an idea of migration in terms of the relationship between landscape and spaces in which infrastructure—as the association of facilities and ideas that allow societies to function—mediates between the two. I wish to consider migratory dislocations or relocations and their ideological implications, including the processes implied by the translation of conceptual or cognitive spaces (landscape ideologies) to new areas. One way that cognitive geography is expressed is through traditional song practices. I consider the impact of migration on cognitive geography and its implication for song transformation in light of archaeological evidence of O’odham migration during the historic period. Among the O’odham, migration has legendary and historical significance, and their meanderings take place over a regionally extensive landscape that encompasses the expanse of desert known as the Pimería Alta—that portion of the Arid Southwest below the Mogollon Rim extending across the international border into northern Sonora, Mexico (Figure 4.1; cf. Bahr et al. 1994). Thoughts on Migratory Process and the Archaeology of O’odham Migration 69 Within this vast area, rivers, waterholes, mountain ranges, and a diversity of desert-adapted plants and animals provide the natural backdrop in which O’odham peoples subsisted. This is further supplemented by a vast infrastructure of trail networks linking resource areas, water resources, settlements, and sacred places (Darling 2009; Darling and Eiselt 2009). I began studying O’odham mobility by looking at the continuity of settlement from prehistory to the historical present while focusing on one aspect of Piman mobility—village drift, a process whereby a settlement may change its location gradually by several kilometers over a period of years. Paul H. Gulf of California C o l o r a d o R i v e r NEVADA CALIFORNIA Spirit Mountain ARIZONA MEXICO Rio Sonora V e r d e R i v e r Little Colorado River Salt River Gila River San Sim on Superstition Mtns S a n P e d r o R i v e r Frog Mtn G i l a B e n d M t n s Vulture Mtns K o f a M t n s C a s t l e D o m e M t n s M o h a w k M t n s Painted Rocks Mtns S a n t a C r u z R i v e r C e r r o P i n a c a t e Rio 0 50 km 100 km Papago Pima Pima Gilenos Sobalpuri Maricopa San Xavier Soba Pima Quitovac 17th Century Pima 18th Century Pima/Maricopa Figure 4.1. Map of Pimería Alta showing tribal territories (after Fontana 1983; Harwell and Kelly 1983). 70 J. Andrew Darling Ezell introduced this concept to explain the dispersed character of Akimel O’odham (River Pima) settlements in south-central Arizona and to account for the frustration of historians endeavoring to locate historic settlements on the ground. He attributed village drift to several Akimel O’odham practices: “[1] . . . the custom of destroying a house where a death had occurred and erecting another for the survivors some yards away, [2] that of married sons building houses in proximity to their parents, and [3] the practice of building a house near new land when it was brought under cultivation” (1961:110–111; see also Darling et al. 2004:282). For Ezell (1963), village drift provides a useful explanation for the dispersal of O’odham peoples along the length of the middle and lower Gila River valley from central Arizona to...