This tongue was spoken in the middle of the last century over a
region of country principally within Sonora, the northernmost of
the seven Provinces then comprising the kingdom of New Galicia
under the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The limit of Sonora on the east
was continuous along the chain of mountains that divides it from
Taraumara,--from Sateche, the farthest of the Indian settlements in
that district, southwardly eighty leagues to Bacoa Sati the first of
its towns. On the west the Province was washed by the sea of Cortez
from the mouth of the Hiaqui to the Tomosatzi, or Colorado, the waters
of the Hiaqui forming its limit to the south; and on the north by a
course from the Mission of Baseraca westwardly through the Presidio
de Fronteras to that of Pitic (Terrenate), a distance of seventy
leagues. According to the opinion of a Jesuit Father, the author of
an anonymous work in, manuscript on that country, written in the year
1762 at Alamo, it was thought also to be the most important among
the many Provinces of Mexico, whether for fertility of soil, gold
washings, or silver mines; and not less distinguishable for the
docility and loyalty of those aboriginal inhabitants who had
early given their adhesion to the government to secure religious
instruction.
[Footnote 1: The title of the work, in manuscript, from which the
grammatical notices have been elaborated is Arte y Vocabulario de
la lingua Dohema, Heve ó Eudeva; the adjective termination of the
last and first name being evidently Spanish, as is also the plural
terminations used elsewhere in some of the modifications of those
words. We have only the definition of Heve with certainty given as
"people;" to the word "nation" in the vocabulary, there being attached
the remark: "I find no generic term: each (nation) has its specific
name; the Eudeves are called Dóhme." Another like work, also
unpublished, with the title _Arte cíe In lengua Pinea_ has the
dictionary inscribed _Vocabulario en lengua Nevome_.
In the uncertain relationship of the tribes to each other, better
marked and measured perhaps by the proximity of their idioms than by
any other means with which we are acquainted, a thought has been taken
from the indistinct manner in which these different people are spoken
of by those who have been among them to advance in the present title,
(since we may not be at liberty to reject,) the word Dóhme for the
family; and Pima generally for the common language, under which the
Opata, Heve, Nevome, Sobahipurls and the rest may be placed, as they
shall become known, each by its separate dialect.]
The Missions of Sonora included moreover a section to the south
bounded by the River Chico within the Province of Ostimuri. To the
north, within the religious precinct, was the Pimeria Alta through the
Sobahipuris up to the junction of the river of that name, (otherwise
the San Pedro,) with the Gila; thence for a distance of more than
one hundred and thirty leagues, after passing among _rancherías_ of
Pima, Opa, and Cocomaricopa, and having received in its course the
Asumpcion, or Compuesto--from its being formed by the united waters
of two streams, the Salado and Verde--it enters the Tomosatzi, closing
that Pimeria of innumerable tribes described by the missionaries as
sealed in productive places, and in a genial climate. Other Indians of
the same names, the Yuma also and Papapootam (Papago) lived beyond,
as appears from the accounts given by the spiritual invaders of those
remote regions, chiefly the Fathers Kino, Keller, and Sedelmayer.
The two principal nations of Sonora are spoken of as the Opata and
Tima, since the Eudeve should be reckoned with the Opata, for the
reason that its language differs as little from that of the other as
the Portuguese from the Castilian, or the Provençal from the French;
and likewise should also be added the Jove, who, having mingled with
the Opata, no longer use their own tongue, except in some instances of
the aged. It is one difficult to acquire, and different from any other
in the Province.
The Opata are the best of the native Christians, having never turned
upon their teachers, nor once risen against the royal authorities; nor
do they, like other Indians, make the women bear the heavier share of
the labor in the fields. They are industrious husbandmen; but they are
not any the less wanting in valor on that account, having oftentimes
shown their good conduct when bearing arms with the king's forces
at the expense of the Missions. Individuals there were, and perhaps
still are, who did the work of blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, stone
cutters, masons, learning any craft readily, and practicing it with
skill. They and some of the Endeve, although in a less degree, are to
the other Indians what the people who live in towns are to those in
the country, still for all it was remarked, they were none the less
Indians. Such was the general character of the Opata, which is the
same that is given of them in our time by that curious and instructive
observer, John R. Bartlett, in his narrative of an expedition into
that country.
The Jove were a rural people, quite the greater number of them,
unwilling to be brought together in communities, lived in chasms
among the ridges where they were born, proof to the solicitations of
kindness and conveniences of civilized life. The other portion of them
dwelt in Ponida, Teopari and Mochoba. The good missionary at Bacadeque
endeavored to bring into towns those who inhabited the ranchería
of Sathechi and the margins of the Mulatos and Arcos, rivers to the
south, without avail. They live among briars, owning a few animals,
subsisting on wild fruits and vegetables, gathering an occasional
stalk of maize or a pumpkin that nature suffers to grow in some
crevice here and there made by torrents bursting from the mountains.
These nations, the Pima and the Opata, Eudeve, Jove, forming two
people, occupy the greater portion of Sonora, seated far inward to
the west from the Cordillera. The limit on the south is where stood
the deserted town of Ivatora thence to Arivetze, Bacanora, Tonitzi,
Soyopa, Nacori; on the west from Alamos, through parts of Ures and
Nacomeri to Opedepe, and Cucurpe; on the north from Arispe, Chinapa,
Bacoquetzi, Cuquiaratzi to Babispe, and from that Mission of Babispe
on the east by mountains of low elevation returning to Natora.
The Pima occupy a still wider territory, extending on the south into
Cinaloa, on the east in to the Province of Taraumara. The Upper Pima
are found far to the north living by the Sobahipuris to its outlet,
and on both banks of the Gila to the Tomosatzi, in vales of luxuriant
beauty, and in wastes of sand and sterility between those rivers
and the sea,--having still other tribes beyond them using the same
language in different dialects. The Lower Pima are in the west of
the Province, having many towns extending to the frontier of the
indomitable Seri, who live some thirty leagues to the north of the
mouth of the Hiaqui and have their farthest limit inland, some dozen
leagues from the sea, finding shelter among the ridges, and in the
neighboring island of Tiburon.[2] Those of the Pima who reside on
the south, in the Province of Cinaloa, the history of their migration
thither is of the earliest, and belongs to that which should relate
the closing scene in the journey of Cabeza de Vaca, with the strange
success that eventually, at the close of a century, attended his
Christian purpose.
[Footnote 2: The Guaima speak nearly the same language as the Seri,
are few in number, and live among the Hiaqui in Belén and elsewhere,
having retreated before the sanguinary fury of their congeners
_MS._]
All these nations, save the last, and all others who inhabit the
country excepting the Apaches--including a numerous people on the Gila
and on the farther bank of the Colorado--speak the same language, with
so slight differences, say the missionaries, that they who shall have
attained the one of the Opata and Eudeve with little difficulty will
master the rest. And for this we have that early authority referred
to, of three centuries since: "They made known to us what they would
say by means of a language they have among them through which we and
they understood each other. Those to whom it properly belongs we call
Primahaitu, which is equivalent to when we say Biscayans. We found
it in use over more than four hundred leagues (miles?) of our travel,
without another in the whole extent." The name thus given by the
narrator of the Naufragios seemingly exists in these words, their
definitions taken from a dictionary in MS. of the Pima language
written by a missionary. No, _pima_: Nothing, _pim' haitu_. Ques.
What, _Ai_? Ans. _Pimahaitu_ (nihil).