In O'odham language, "Tohono O'odham" means "Desert People."
The Tohono O'odham (Papago) nation's native word papah, beans, is the source for being called the "bean people." They belong to the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family, and are closely related to the Pima tribe southeast of the Gila River and south of Tucson, Arizona, and extending west and southwest across the desert Papagueria on into Sonora, Mexico. In 1694, Father Kino became the first white man to visit the Tohono O'odham (Papago) nation, finding a very large population into the thousands. Census figures in 1937 listed 6,305 members of the Tohono O'odham (Papago) nation.
The desert people (as they are called), recently reestablished their ancestral name after many years of being known as Papagos. They reside in a portion of the northwestern Sonoran Desert. Their ancestral homelands bridge the international border of Mexico and the United States; however, in 1916 the United States defined for them a four-part Reservation of 4,462 square miles in southern Arizona. Recent estimates approximate the tribal population on the Reservation to be between 7,500 and 12,000 with about 2,000 living in Sells, the largest community.
Their land is the hottest of North American deserts. Hot summers, cool winters, extreme diurnal temperature fluctuations, low humidity, high evaporation and a biannual rainfall pattern dictate strategies for maintaining human comfort. At Sells mean daily temperatures range between 72° F to 10° F in July and 36° F to 65° F in January. Water evaporation from an open tank can exceed 6 ft. annually. Sells receives a yearly precipitation of about 12 inches with approximately the same amounts falling during the winter and summer rainy seasons.
The Papago women who weave baskets continue their ancient art form mainly for economic survival. One of the weavers indicated that she weaves to sell baskets in order to support her family. She sells to traders who come to her home. As is true of most Papago weavers, she is willing to create new designs and innovate her work to please the demand of the market. Therefore, instead of doing the time-consuming tight stitched baskets, many weavers do the split stitch because they can weave more baskets in the same time.
They have their own printed alphabet and language studies:
Ofelia Zepeda has authored the first grammar of the Tohono O'odham language.
She has actively worked with her tribe to improve literacy in their native language
and in English.
(Click on language image for English translation.)
