THE 



National Geographic Magazine 



Vol. IX AUGUST. 1808 No. 8 



PAPAGUERIA 



By W J McGee, 

 Bureau of American Ethnology 



Following a custom which became well established in the days 

 of Mexican colonization, the priestly pioneers called the arid re- 

 gion beyond the Sierra Madre mountains Papagueria — i. e., the 

 Land of the Papago — from the tribe of Indians native to the 

 country ; and in time the tribesmen, and after them the Ameri- 

 can and Mexican settlers on their border, adopted the designa- 

 tion. The district lies south of Gila river and southwest of the 

 Sierra Madre, in what is now Arizona and Sonora, and is bounded 

 on the southwest by the Gulf of California and on the south by 

 the ill-defined district known as Seriland ; it is some 200 miles 

 wide in the north, narrowing' somewhat southward, and over 300 

 miles in length from north-northwest to south-southeast, the area 

 reaching over 50,000 square miles, or about that of New York 

 or Iowa. The larger part of the district lies in Mexico, in the 

 state of Sonora, though the greater part of the aboriginal popu- 

 lation is gathered in the northern portion, within the territory 

 of Arizona. 



The Papago Indians (Pa-paf in their own language*) are, in 

 distinctiveness and persistence of characters if not in population, 



* Their proper name in their own language is Aw'-aw-tum (Men, or People), while 

 the name by which they were known to neighboring tribes of their own and other lin- 

 guistic stocks is that of a legume cultivated and consumed by them in prehistoric 

 times and later ; this, in the Piman dialects, is called " paf " in the singular, " pa-paf " 

 in the plural, so that the literal designation of the tribe may be rendered "Beans." 

 Since the same term is applied to the field in which the legumes are grown, the term 

 might be considered to mean "Bean-patch;" but in reality it means " Bean people," 

 the second element being understood. This alien designation was apparently used 



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