328 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vol. 50 



ulously spouted out of a hole in the ground, and a sacrifice of children 

 was made to stop the flow. The place where this occurred is still 

 pointed out and is called "Where the women cry" (for their children). 

 It is situated far south of Casa Grandes, among the Kwahadts. 1 Evi- 

 dences from both archaeology and migration legends are corrobora- 

 tive, and point to ancestors of both Hopis and Pimas as original in- 

 habitants of Casa Grande and other vaaki of the Gila Valley between 

 Florence and Casa Blanca. 



But if that is true, why, it may be asked, have the Pimas lost 

 the custom of building great houses, and why did they inhabit such 

 small huts when the Spanish explorers came? In reply, it may be 

 said that they were forced to abandon their great houses, being 

 unable to defend them on account of their unwieldy size. Hostile 

 invaders found these conspicuous structures easy prey and broke 

 up this phase of Pima culture, scattering the chiefs and defenders 

 of the compounds. 2 But, although scattered, they still held to the 

 inconspicuous huts in which the common people had always lived. 

 They abandoned their great houses, or temples, storehouses, and 

 citadels, but still lived in the same kind of houses as before. This 

 apparent change of culture is paralleled among other sedentary tribes 

 of the United States and Mexico. Forced to desert their temples 

 and great houses, the people still clung to the only houses they ever 

 had — the inconspicuous huts, in which nothing remained to tempt 

 the cupidity of their enemies. 



The preceding conclusions may be summarized as follows : In 

 ancient times the valleys of the Gila and its tributaries as far down 

 river as Gila Bend were inhabited by an agricultural people in a 

 homogeneous stage of culture. There existed minor divisions of this 

 stock, as Sobaipuri, Pima, Opa (Cocomaricopa), and Patki. The 

 Pima name Ootam may be adopted to designate this ancestral 

 stock, to which may be ascribed the erection of the Casas Grandes 

 of the Gila. 



1 Many of the legends are connected with locality in the country of the 

 Kwahadt, a group of Indians who speak the Pima tongue, living far south of 

 the Southern Pacific Railroad, on the borders of Mexico. The "Kwahaties" 

 are clever potters and basekt-makers and form the most primitive of all the 

 Pima communities. 



2 The ancestors of the Patki clans of the Hopis were closely allied to, if not 

 identical with, the ancient Pimas. We may regard the "Ootam," or builders 

 of Casa Grande, as ancestors of both Pimas and Patkis. Some of these ances- 

 tral clans may have gone to Zuni, which explains the claim, if any there be, 

 of the people of this pueblo that their ancestors built the Great Houses of the 

 Gila. 



