THE PIMA INDIANS OF ARIZONA. 407 



were informed, bad been done by the owner of the land, with the ex- 

 pectation of finding some hidden treasure. It is a source of regret to 

 those of us who value these traces of former occupation of our soil 

 that they had not been sacredly protected and preserved. The mound 

 was originally about fifty feet in circumference, and six feet high in the 

 center. We found one human skeleton that had been left exposed, 

 many of the bones being in a perfect state of preservation. This grave 

 had been made on the surface of the ground. Flag-stones broken to 

 the required width had been set on their edges around the body, uniform 

 in height, and covered with flat stones, and then with earth 5 other 

 bodies had been placed alongside in the same manner, and also on the 

 top of those first interred, and in this way after many years forming the 

 mound as we find it. A few rods south of the mound are about twenty 

 graves of bodies buried separately, the ground over each grave showing 

 a depression of a bout six inches, with a piece of flat stone set at the 

 head and foot of each grave. This may have been adopted under the 

 influence of the teachings of the Moravians as a more Christian form of 

 burial. In examining a field of ten acres or more near the mound, -we 

 found a great quantity of flint chippings that had been broken off in 

 making implements, large numbers of which have been gathered up 

 here since the settlement of this valley by the whites. 



Mr. James Park, who has lived here for almost seventy years, gave 

 me a stone implement somewhat of the shape and size of a carpenter's 

 hatchet, made of the blue-gray stone common in this neighborhood. I 

 have others much the shape and size of wedges used for splitting stone. 



THE PIMA INDIANS OF ARIZONA. 



By Captaix F. E. Grossmann, U. S. A. 



Their histoey and traditions. — The Pimas have but vague ideas 

 of the doings of their forefathers, and whatever accounts may have been 

 handed down to them have been so changed in the transmission that 

 they cannot be deemed reliable now. Their account of the creation of 

 the world is confused, different parties giving different details thereof. 

 The story most generally accepted among them is that the first of all 

 created beings was a spider, which spun a large web, out of which, in 

 process of time, the world was formed. They believe that the Supreme 

 Being or Creator took a nerve out of his neck and thereof made a man 

 and a woman. According to their traditions, the first human beings 

 lived near the Salt Eiver, in Arizona Territory, near the McDowell 

 Mountain. These people multiplied rapidly, and soon populated the 

 valleys of the Salt and Gila Eivers. There appears to be a strong prob- 

 ability that the Pima and Papago Indians, who speak the same lan- 

 guage, and to all intents belong to the same nation, are the descendants 

 of the earliest occupants of this section of the country. Still the ac- 



