I hope I’m not giving away any secrets here; I don’t think I am, and if I do, I hope The People will forgive me.
I was offered a public high school job on the Papago Reservation in 1978, teaching English and leading the marching band. It paid $10,790 a year.
During my six years on the rez, the Tribe reclaimed its name, Tohono O’odham (Desert People), the name they go by today.
If you do some lazy “research” on the tribe today, WikiWackypedia will tell you the People regained their name in 1986, but that is incorrect. I know the Tribe reclaimed its name while I lived there, in the teachers’ compound, behind Baboquivari High School.
I loved the People, and my years on the rez, and continue to be amazed at how little the mirgan (White people) understand, or care to, about the People.
To begin, many, if not most Native Tribes’ names for themselves are best translated as “the People.” Could be Lake People, or Desert People, or Plains People — but always, or usually, the People.
The Tohono O’odham have the benevolent grace of being the only Indian Tribe that never was at war with the U.S. government and never was forced off their traditional lands. The O’odham Nation enjoyed this grace because their traditional enemies were Apaches. (O’op, meaning enemies. The O’odham language forms plurals by repeating the first sound in the word: gogs, dog; gogogs, dogs; s’gogogsik, a whole lot of dogs.)
Apaches were military raiders, exploiting the White Men’s horses and guns. The O’odham were farmers, raising beans, squash and peppers at the foot of the washes that ran after the winter rains.
Every spring the Apaches raided O’odham villages and carried off food and young women. So when the O’odham saw White men in bluecoats on horses ride into their villages, and the White men said they were hunting Apaches, the O’odham said, in effect: “Right on. Follow us.”
That’s why the United States of America essentially gave the O’odham a pass, and let them live in peace in their desert villages.
Also, the mirgan found the desert inhospitable. If you want a good description of the land, read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, the part after the White men leave Tucson Presidio and head west.
So the O’odham, god bless ‘em, still live on their hereditary lands. Up north, toward Phoenix, their cousins, the Pima, have their own reservation.
Far as I have been able to discover, the Pima got their name when a bluecoat soldier asked some Indians what their tribe was, or who they were. And so far as I have been able to discover, the Indians responded to the mirgans’ unintelligible question by saying bi mach: (I don’t know; means nothing to me.)
Even stranger is how the mirgan came to call the O’odham, Papago. All the erudite, clueless explanations I have read say it comes from a word or words meaning “bean eaters.” Well, the O’odham were farmers, and ate beans and squash and cactus fruit and deer and whatnot. The problem is that in no language known to man, or to me anyway, does Papago mean bean-eater.
Those mirgan, what will they come up with next?
One reason I feel it appropriate to divulge these non-secrets today is that it is wintertime, or almost — cold, anyway — and the only time the O’odham should tell traditional stories is in the winter. That’s because most of the old stories feature animals, and the animals go to sleep in the winter. If you tell a story about them in the summer, when they’re awake, they might hear it and get mad.
(Author’s note: Happy Thanksgiving to all my Indian friends on and off the Rez. Sorry for what we did to your country.)