The Chemawa American, January 01, 1916, Page 9, Image 9

THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
7
INDIANS SHOW TH R IFT
D O IN G W ELL, I N T H E IR D E S E R T H OM E
'HE Christian Science Monitor, published in Boston, of
the date of November 20, 1915, has a splendid arti­
cle on the Papago Indians as found by Commissioner
Sells when he visited them last summer. We re­
print the following:
Down in southern Arizona, near the Mexican bor­
der, lives a tribe of native aborigines about whom
the average American citizen knows practically nothing.
Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells, who recently made an ex­
tended inspecting tour of Indian schools and reservations in the South­
west, is the first Indian commissioner to have visited the Papago
Indians. He spent more than a week with them, traveling several
hundred miles through the sands that he might acquire first-hand in­
formation, and he brings back a fascinating story of a primative but
progressive Indian tribe, battling manfully and successfully against un­
usually adverse conditions under which any branch of the Caucasian
race doubtless would have given up in despair.
Commissioner Sells gave The Christian Science Monitor the following
statement of facts concerning these people and their needs:
Locally the territory occupied by these Indians is known as“ Papa-
gueria,” the Papago country. It embraces that part of Arizona lying
between the Southern Pacific railroad on the north, the Mexican bound­
ary on the south, the 110th meridan on the east, and the 113th meridian
on the west. This is perhaps the dryest and most treeless desert in the
United States, the habitat of the cacti and the Papago Indians al­
most exclusively.
These Indians are a happy tribe, numbering between 6000 and 7000,
living in bands or villages scattered over an area about 120 miles long
(east and west) by about 90 miles broad. Their villages vary in size
from a few to as high as 130 houses, many of the larger settlements
housing over 500 inhabitants. Their houses are usually built of adobe,
plastered over a framework of ochatillo stalks or ribs of the sahuaro
cactus, the roof being of the same material, but quite thick.
Some of the more progressive Indians are beginning to use modern
home equipment. Limited means, however, have denied such “ lux­
uries” to most of these people, who today still cut their grain with a
hand sickle, thresh it by tramping, winnow by tossing in the air on a
windy day and grind by hand, rubbing one stone upon another—prim­
itive methods in vogue among the ancient Egyptians thousands of
years ago.