BDSSELL] 



ANNALS 47 



Yumas encamped near the river at a spot where they had assaulted 

 some women and a Pima had been killed while defending; them. 

 The Yumas had spent the nifjht in singing their war songs. Now 

 and again a medicine-man would come forward to puff whiffs 

 of smoke in order that their cause might find favor with the gods. 

 The Pinui-Maricoj)a council ended about noon and it was decided to 

 surround the Yiunas and to make special effort to prevent them from 

 reaching the river to obtain water. Formed in a semicircle, the 

 Pinias and Maricopas shot down the Yumas upon three sides. Soon 

 the Yumas began to waver and become exhausted from thirst in the 

 heat of the day. They made several attempts to break through the 

 line, but failed, and finally gathered in a compact bodj' to nuxke a last 

 attempt to reach the river. At that moment the Pimas and Mari- 

 copas who were on horseback rushed in upon the enemy and rode 

 them down. ^\fter a hand-to-hand combat the Yumas were all 

 killed except one, who was stunned b}' the blow of a club and lay 

 unconscious under a heap of dead. During the night he recovered 

 his senses and escaped. This was the bloodiest fight known, and the 

 Yumas came here to fight no more." 



Blackwater. During the 3*ear Pimas were killed in two 



places by the Apaches; three south of the river and one 



north.* 



1858-5Q 



BJaclcwater. The meteor of 1859 was ob.served by the 

 Pimas, who called it pai-ikam ho-o. During a raid into the 

 Apache country three of the enemy were killed and also one 

 Pima. 



a •' In 1857, with Mohave. Cocopa. and Tonto allies, they (the Yumas] attacked the Pimas and Papa- 

 gos up the river, and in a grejit battle were almost annihilated." Bancroft, .\rizona and New Mexico, 

 501. 



Cremony visited the Pimas as a captain in the California Column in 1862. In his Life Among the 

 Apaches, 148, he mentions this conflict of the Pimas \\ith their old enemies, saying: "The grazing 

 ground to which we resorted during our stay near the Maricopa villages had been the scene of a des- 

 perate conflict between that tribe and the Pimos, on one side, and the Yumas, Chimehuevis. and 

 Amohaves on the other. Victory rested with the Maricopas and Pimos, who slew over 400 of the allied 

 tribes, and so humiliated them that no effort has ever been made on their part to renew hostilities. 

 This battle occurred four years before our advent, and the ground was strewed with the skulls and 

 bones of the slaughtered warriors." 



For the Yuma sideof the story see Lieutenant Ives's Report upon the Colorado River of the West, p. 45. 



In a letter from an unnamed correspondent living among the Yumas or at Fort Yuma, to Sylvester 

 Mowry, it is stated that the tribes engaging in this battle were the Yiunas, Yarapais, Mohavos, and 

 Tonto Apaches, with one or two Dieganos [Dieguenos], against the Pimas, Maricopas, and I'apagos. 

 One thousand five hundred men were engaged on each side. The Yumas " lost not less than 20O of the 

 flower of their chivalry." See S. Ex. Doc. 11, .tS8, 35th Cong., 1st sess., 1858. 



The Blackwater annalist could give but little information concerning the \ietory over the Yumas. 

 but he had recorded it upon the calendar stick by a fringed line, in itself meanijigless. 



*> The two men in the figure are not meant to represent two killed, but that the events occurred in 

 two places. 



