Major Emory, of the United States regular army, was, I believe the first American to visit these people, in 1846, when, as Lieutenant Emory, he took charge of a military reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) to San Diego, on the Pacific. He thus describes the scene : -- " We had no sooner encamped, eight or nine miles from the Pima villages, than we met a Mari-copa Indian looking for his cattle. The frank, confident manner in which he approached us was a strange contrast to that of the suspicious Apaches. Some six or eight of the Pimas came up soon after at full speed, to ascertain who we were and what we wanted. They told us that the first trail we had seen along the river was that of their people, sent to watch the movements of their enemies the Apaches. Their joy was unaffected at seeing that we were Americans, and not Apaches; and word to that effect was immediately sent back to the chief. Although the nearest villages were nine miles distant, our camp, in three hours, was filled with Pimas loaded with corn, beans, honey, and water-melons, so that a brisk trade was opened at once. Their mode of approach was perfectly frank and unsuspicious ; many would leave their packs in our camp and be absent for hours, theft seeming to be unknown to them. On reaching the villages we were at once impressed with the beauty, order, and disposition of the arrangements for irrigating and draining the land. Maize, wheat, and cotton are the crops raised by this peaceful and intelligent race of people; all had just been gathered in, and the stubbles showed that they had been luxurious. The cotton was picked and stacked for drying on the tops of the sheds. The fields are subdivided by ridges of earth into rectangles of about 200 by 100 feet, for the convenience of irrigating. The fences are of sticks, wattled with willow and mezquit, and, in this particular, are an example of economy in agriculture worthy to be followed by the Mexicans, who never use fences at all.
" In front of each dome-shaped hut is usually a large arbour, on the top of which is piled the cotton in the pod for drying. To us it was a rare sight to be thrown in the midst of a large tribe of what are termed wild Indians, surpassing many of the Christian nations in agriculture, little behind them in useful arts, and immeasurably before them in honesty and virtue. During the whole of yesterday our camp was full of men, women, and children, who sauntered amongst our packs unwatched; and not a single instance of theft was reported.
" I saw a woman seated on the ground under the shade of one of the cotton-sheds; her left leg was tucked under her seat, and her foot turned sole upwards; between her big toe and the next was a spindle about 18 inches long, with a single fly of 4 or 6 inches. Ever and anon she gave it a twist in a dexterous manner, and at its end was drawn a coarse cotton thread. This was their spinning-jenny. Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their loom, by pointing to the thread and then to the blanket girt about the woman's loins. A fellow stretched in the dust, sunning himself, rose up leisurely, and untied a bundle which I had supposed to be a bow and arrows. This little package, with four stakes placed in the ground, was the loom. He laid open his cloth, and commenced the process of weaving."
Each alternate thread of the warp is passed round a piece of cane, which, when lifted, opens a passage for the shuttle in the manner of a sley. The operator sits like a tailor, and, raising the sley with one hand, shoots the shuttle through with the other. The work is beaten up after the passage of each thread by the use of a sharp-toothed instrument made of hard wood. Such an operation is, of course, most tedious; and it is not surprising that even the very limited trade at present existing between the Indians and the outer world should have caused its abandonment, as well as that of the cultivation of cotton.
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adapted from A. W. Bell
"On the Native Races of New Mexico"
1869 (Journal of the Ethnological Society of London)
