26 THE PIMA INDIANS [eth. axn. 26 



was the prevailing mode of disposing of the dead, as it was also on the 

 lower Gila and the Salt river. Nothing was learned to indicate that 

 the Sobaipuris of the San Pedro practised incineration. If some of 

 the clans of the Hopis or Zuiiis are to be identified with the Hohokam 

 of the Gila, as is maintained by some of the most able authorities 

 upon Southwestern archeology," how is the total disappearance of 

 this primal custom to be explained? 



There is a strong belief among the Pimas that they came from the 

 east. It is in that quarter that the abode of their dead is located. 

 Their gods dwell there. Their beliefs do not seem to have been 

 influenced in this respect in the least through contact with the tribes 

 of Yuman stock who have sought a paradise in the opposite direc- 

 tion. There are vestiges of a tradition that the Pimas were once 

 overwhelmed by a large force of warriors who came from the east 

 and destroyed nearly all the people and devastated the entire Gila 

 valley. This does not appear to be another version of the account 

 of the invasion by the underworld clans. While the majority of the 

 Pimas declare that their people have always lived where they now 

 are, or that they came from the east, there are some who say that 

 the Ilohokam were kiUed by an invasion from the east before the 

 Pimas came. 



The Pimas formerly regarded the ruins with the same reverence or 

 aversion wliich they felt toward their own burial places. After the 

 excavations made by the Hemenway Expedition on the Salt river, 

 as no disasters followed the disturbance of the dead, they grew less 

 scrupulous and can now readily be hired as workmen to excavate 

 the ruins or ancient cemeteries. 



Contact with Spaniards 



From the meager records of the Coronado Expedition of 1.540-1542 

 it has been surmised that C'hichilticalli was the Casa Grande, but this 

 statement lacks verification. After traversing the entire southern 

 and eastern part of Arizona the writer can not but believe that it is 

 extremely improbable that Coronado saw the Casa Grantle and the 



"The earliest mention of the Gila origin of the Hopi theory is that of Garcfis; "Also they knew that 

 I was padre mlnistro of the Pimas, who likewise are their enemies. This hostility had been told mc 

 by the old Indians of my mission, by the GUe"ios,and Coco-Maricopas, from which information I have 

 imagined (he discurridoi that the Moqui nation anciently extended to the Rio Gila itself. I take my 

 stand (fundome. ground myself i in this matter on the ruins that are found from this river as far as ■ 

 the land of the Apaches, and that I have seen between the Sierras do la Florida and San Juan Nepo- 

 muzeno. Asking a few years ago some Subaipuris Indians who were living in my mission of San Xavier 

 if they knew who had built those houses whose ruins and fragments of pottery (losa for loza) are still 

 visible — as, on the supposition that neither Pimas nor Apaches knew how to make (such) houses or 

 pottery, no doubt it was done by some other nation — they replied to me that the Moquis had built 

 them, for they alone knew how to do such things, and added that the .\paches who are about the mis- 

 sions are neither numerous nor valiant; that toward the north was where there were many powerful 

 people; "there went we.' they said, "to fight in former times (antiguamente); and even though we 

 attained unto their lands we did not surmount the mesas whereon they lived.' " Diary in Coues, On 

 the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer, New York, 1900, ii, 380, 387. 



