Note IV'-19 — Chapter IV · OBSERVATIONS ON NEW SPAIN.[IV'-1]

Pike acquired a good idea of the Gila, for one who never saw it, and it is well laid down on his map; though it joins the Colorado a considerable distance above the head of the Gulf of California, the confluence is below 33°, being in lat. 32° 43´ 32´´ N., long. 114° 36´ 10´´ W. The Gila was known to the whites before the Mississippi was discovered; it was long better known than the Rio Grande, and down to the present century was far better known than the Rio Colorado. The valley of the Gila was the first seat of semi-civilization within the present limits of the United States; and Tucson, on the Santa Cruz r., disputes with St. Augustine in Florida the record of being the oldest continuously inhabited white settlement in our country; but St. A. was founded by Spaniards about the middle of the sixteenth century. An early if not the first name of the Gila was Rio de los Apostolos, more fully Rio Grande de los Apostolos, as the legend appears, for example, on Vaugondy's map, 1783, where so many apostolic and canonical towns are marked along the river as to give its valley the appearance of a well-settled region, including even that ancient and celebrated structure, the Casa Grande, still extant. Rio de los Apostolos or Apostles' r. appears on maps of the present century, as for example on the one which Captain Clark drew at the Mandans in the winter of 1804-5, and which Captain Lewis dispatched to President Jefferson April 7th, 1805, but which was never published of full size till September, 1893. Pike's first branch of the Gila is called "Rio de la Asuncion," with Rio Verde as its main fork. This is correct; for the river of the Assumption of the B. V. M., whatever may be the myth upon which such an extraordinary assumption was based, is that now known as Rio Salinas, Rio Salado, and Salt r., into which the Verde falls near Mt. McDowell and the fort of the same name. The confluence of Salt r. with the Gila is below Phœnix, present capital of Arizona, and but little above the point where the Agua Fria also falls into the Gila. The Verde is the principal river of central Arizona, for the most part flowing southward, though it starts northward by the headwater called Granite cr. and then makes a loop; this creek is the site of Prescott, first capital of Arizona on the establishment of the Territory in 1863, and of Fort Whipple, established by the troops to which I was attached in July, 1864. Pike's small branch of the Gila lettered "Rio de Ozul," for which read Rio Azul or Blue r., is the present San Carlos, of which we lately heard a good deal on account of the unruly Apaches at the agency of that name. Present Blue cr. is a small branch higher up on the same side, near Pike's Rio San Francisco, which latter he rightly charts as one of the initial forks of the Gila. His Rio San Pedro, still so called, is the principal Gileño tributary from the S. It acquired special importance in connection with the U. S. and Mexican Boundary Survey. Near this stream he marks "Pres[idio] de Tubson," at the town of "Sn. Xavier del bac," in the "Senora" (Sonora) of that day.

The Indian tribes of the Gila valley which are located on the map may be here noted, as their names do not come up elsewhere in this work, and with these may also be conveniently considered those which Pike marks on the Colorado above the Gila. Such are, on the Gila: The Yumas (Cuchans); the "Cojuenchis"; the "Cucapa" (Cocopas); the Papagos; the "Cocomaricopas" (Maricopas); and on the Colorado: the "Chemequaba" (Chemehuevis, who are of Shoshonean stock, as we have already seen); the "Jalchedum"; the "Yabijoias" (Yavapais); the "Yamaya" (Amaquaqua, Amaqua, Majave or Mohave). All these Indians lived within the present territory of the United States, occupying the valley of the Gila on both sides from above the junction of the San Pedro down to the Colorado, and up the Colorado, on the Arizona side at least, to the Grand Cañon, to the almost entire exclusion of other tribes. They were bounded on the N. by Shoshonean tribes in California, Nevada, Utah, and a small part of Arizona; on the E. by Athapascan tribes, especially the Apaches; on the S., they stretched throughout Lower California, and far into Mexico. With the single exception just said, the names that I can identify all are now classed under two main family groups or linguistic stocks, Piman and Yuman; and all belong to the latter, excepting the Papagos and the Pimas themselves. 1. The Piman family is mainly Mexican, as of its nine tribes or divisions only three are Arizonian. Of these, the Sobaipuri, who lived on the Santa Cruz and San Pedro branches of the Gila, have entirely disappeared. The Pimas proper, Upper Pimas, or Pimas Altas (so called in distinction from the Lower Pimas, Pimas Bajas, or Nevomes, of Mexico), have lived for 200 years on the Gila and Salado, in the position assigned by Pike to the Cocomaricopas. The Papagos lived further S. and extended into Mexico. According to late official returns (for 1890), there were 4,464 Pimas and 5,163 Papagos under the Pima Agency on the Gila. 2. The Yuman family is less summarily to be disposed of, as the area of its distribution in the United States is more extensive and its divisions are more numerous, and several of them are entirely extralimital in Lower California and Mexico. The name Yuma is given by Whipple as a Cuchan word meaning "sons of the river." In the early days of our occupation of Arizona some of the tribes along the Colorado were hostile; but since the subjugation of the Yumas and Mohaves, followed by the establishment of Fort Yuma and Fort Mohave, they have given very little trouble, with the exception of the Hualapais or Walapais. These may be properly classed as Yuman by linguistic affinities, but they are rather mountain than river Indians, and have within comparatively few years been most decidedly hostile. In January, 1865, it was my misfortune, which I shall never cease to regret, to be concerned in a cruel massacre—for I cannot call it a fight—in which about 30 Hualapais were killed, in the Juniper mts., a very few miles from the spot where Camp Hualapais was later established. My friend, the late Colonel William Redwood Price, when major of the 8th Cavalry (d. Dec. 30th, 1881), had the handling of the Hualapais after this; in 1867 they were about 1,500 people, with probably 400 warriors; he killed probably 175 of them, mostly men, and brought them to terms in 1869, when a batch of prisoners was sent to San Francisco. In 1881, when we reoccupied Camp Hualapais and named it Camp Price, a threatened outbreak was averted by putting a chief in irons. The Hualapais now number perhaps 750, in N. W. Arizona, and are almost the only members of the Yuman stock in the Territory whom we have not entirely broken down, pauperized, and debauched. The shocking syphilization of all the Yuman Indians along the Colorado has been notorious for many years. The Yumas or Umas proper, or Cuchans, have been segregated; there are or were lately about 1,000 at the Mission Agency in California, and 300 at the San Carlos in Arizona. Of the Mohaves, some 650 are at the Colorado River Agency in Arizona, 800 at San Carlos, and perhaps 400 at large. The disestablishment of Fort Mohave is quite recent; I was post surgeon there in 1881. There are about 300 Maricopas at the Pima Agency in Arizona. The Cocopas are a small tribe whose census is uncertain; they live on the California side of the Colorado up to the vicinity of the Gila. The Yavasupai or Aguazul Indians, who live in Cojnino or Cataract cañon, to the number of about 200, as already said, note¹⁷, are entirely cut off from the world in the bottom of the chasm selected for their abode. Some of them I found occupying holes in the rock, which they walled up like old-fashioned cliff-dwellers; while others were sheltered in wickiups scattered about the few acres of arable ground they could find to irrigate for the cultivation of their corn, beans, melons, squashes, peaches, apricots, and sunflower-seeds.