360 PAPAGUERIA 



the only water obtainable for weeks and months is a reeking 

 spume of organic poison ; above any and even all of these is the 

 ever-present danger of the drying up of the spring, the tinaja, or 

 the rivulet on which the villages or travelers depend, and the 

 quickly consequent delirium, ending in the most terrible of 

 deaths. Yet despite all their hardships and dangers, the Papago 

 appears to liye long; few invalids are seen, old men who clearly 

 remember the events of 50 or 60 years past are found in nearly 

 every village, and withered crones, shrunken to living skeletons, 

 yet able to perform the most arduous of domestic duties, are 

 surprisingly numerous. While statistics are lacking, there is 

 reason for supposing that the average expectation of life in the 

 desert is greater than in more favored lands. 



A considerable agricultural reservation has been assigned to 

 the Papago Indians, including the old Spanish mission of San Xa- 

 vier, in Pima county, nine miles south of Tucson, Arizona. This 

 reservation is on the northeastern margin of Papagueria. About 

 a hundred families are collected on the reservation, where they 

 are judiciously controlled by a sub-agent of the Indian Bureau. 

 The reservation Indians are supplied with vehicles and agricul- 

 tural implements, and occupy themselves in the planting and 

 harvesting of corn, small grains, beans, melons, squashes, etc., for 

 home consumption and for the Tucson market ; the women manu- 

 facture pottery in considerable quantities for the market, as well 

 as for domestic use. Most Indians on the reservation continue 

 to occupy primitive houses, and the culinary and other domestic 

 operations are preeminently primitive; but their habits and 

 modes of thought are so far changed that they are regarded as 

 alien or semi-alien by the great majority of the tribe. The south- 

 ern portion of Papagueria is somewhat more diversified as to sur- 

 face than the main body of the district, and is somewhat better 

 supplied with water; accordingly the Yaki and other tribes, as 

 well as Mexican stockmen and farmers, and Mexican or foreign 

 miners have pushed into the region ; and thus the primitive 

 holders of the land have been in large part displaced and remain 

 only in scattered rancherias or villages, sometimes adjoining 

 Mexican towns, sometimes isolated. In general the permanent 

 part of the Papago population in Mexico may be considered sta- 

 tionary ; and the families have acquired Mexican customs and 

 are affiliated commercially, though seldom in blood, with their 

 neighbors. Perhaps a fifth or a quarter of the Papago Indians 

 are either located on, or in some way tributary to, the reserva- 



