O'odham Tribes

Arizona's O'odham, which means “We, the People,” are a group of related desert-dwelling societies. Historically, the O'odham inhabited an enormous area, extending south into Sonora, Mexico, to the Yaqui River, north to central Arizona (around Phoenix, Arizona), west to the Gulf of California and the Colorado River, and east to the San Pedro River. This land base has been called the Papagueria, Pimeria Alta, and Pimeria Bajo, and has been home to the O'odham for thousands of years.

Scholars divide the O'odham into two main groups. The Tohono O'odham (formerly referred to as the Papago, which derives from Ba:bawko'a, meaning “people who eat tepary beans,” which is pronounced papago in Spanish) are the Desert people. They are also the Two Village People because of their annual subsistence migration patterns. The Akimel O'odham (the Pima or River People in Arizona and the Pima Bajo in Sonora), who lived along the permanent rivers in rancheria-style villages, are the One Village People, who could live in one place year round. Both speak dialects of O'odham, a Uto-Aztecan language, although each group has dialects. The O'odham peoples are significant members of Arizona's multicultural population. In 2010, the Tohono O'odham had 23,478 members and the Akimel O'odham had 19,921 members with another 5,000 individuals claiming heritage, but not enrolled tribal membership, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

O'odham people have lived in the Sonoran desert since time immemorial. The O'odham's ancestors are referred to as Huhugam (“those who have gone before”), which has been translated into English as Hohokam. For thousands of years, these people lived along the Salt, Gila, and Santa Cruz Rivers and were attuned to the desert, creating sophisticated canal systems to irrigate crops of cotton, tobacco, maize, beans, and squash. Their irrigation systems can still be seen in Phoenix; they are used as the basis for contemporary canals and roads. The Hohokam had a very complex culture; they built vast ball courts and huge ceremonial mounds, and made fine red-on-buff pottery, baskets, and exquisite jewelry of stone and shell. Meteorological principles were used to time planting, harvesting, and ceremonial cycles.

The ancestral O'odham developed complex water storage and delivery systems, and they used the land seasonally to maintain sustainability. For O'odham who did not live on a major river, this required migrating from valley homes near washes that supported small fields of tepary beans, squash, and melons or larger irrigable fields to cooler mountain dwellings. O'odham also gathered wild plants (saguaro fruit, cholla buds, and mesquite bean pods) and hunted deer and rabbit by javelin, producing a very healthy diet. They were traders who provided baskets and cotton textiles to groups hundreds of miles from their homes. These patterns of life continued into the contact period, but the movement of Apacheans and Yavapai, Hispanic, Mexican, and Euro-American settlers into O'odham homelands meant that new adaptations were required.