Relations with Americans
CIVIL AND MILITARY EXPEDITIONS
Early in the nineteenth century American beaver trappers began to penetrate through the Apache-infested mountains that bordered Pimería on the north and east. Beaver were then fairly abundant in the mountain streams and down the Colorado Grande to the very end in the burning lowlands. The annals of the Pimas make no mention of these earliest visitors from the United States, but it is known that several parties reached the "Pimos Gileños," who were found uniformly friendly. The Patties, father and son, journeyed from the Rio Grande to trap beaver in the Gila country between 1825 and 1828, and in the latter year pushed on to California.[1] Kit Carson, with a party of trappers, returned from his first trip to California by this route during the winter of 1829–30. The famous trapper, Paul Weaver, inscribed his name on the walls of Casa Grande in 1833.[2]
Besides the self-reliant and well-armed trappers, a few parties of settlers made their way to California through the Gila valley while it was yet in the possession of the Mexicans, though the best-known route was then north of the Colorado canyon. With the opening of the new era of American ownership began the journeys of surveyors and explorers. The first military invasion was by General Kearney, with a party of 200 troopers, in 1846. Emory's excellent Notes of a Military Reconnoissance and Johnston's Journal give details of this journey with the first reliable information concerning the Pimas. Kearney was followed by Lieutenant-Colonel Cooke in command of the Mormon battalion, which opened a practicable wagon road to California by way of Tucson and the Pima villages. In his official report Colonel Cooke states:
I halted one day near the villages of this friendly, guileless, and singularly innocent and cheerful people, the Pimos. They were indeed friendly, for they refused to surrender supplies that had been left at the villages to be held for the Mormon battalion, and they threatened armed resistance to the Mexicans who demanded the mules and goods.
- ↑ Pattie’s Personal Narrative.
- ↑ J.R. Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country. New York, 1869, 118.
banks of the river Gila near the town of the Incarnation of Sutaquison, having journeyed more than four leagues towards the west and a quarter northwest. The Indians of the town came out to receive us and saluted us with tokens of great joy. Their number I estimated to be five hundred souls. On our way we passed through two other small towns. In this limited territory lies almost all the land occupied by the tribe of the Pimas Gileños. The soil here is very poor and raises a very sticky dust, on account of which and their wretched food the Indians are very ugly, dirty, and repulsive. The river Gila was dry in this region, so they obtained their water by digging wells in the sand. It is only during the season of freshets that the river is of any service for the seed lands and fields of the Indians. The banks of the river are covered with a grove of undersized cottonwood trees. In the evening tobacco was distributed among the Indians and glass beads were promised the women for the following day. We asked the Indians why they lived so far from the river, for formerly they had their town on its banks. They replied that they had changed its site because on account of the groves and woods on its banks they could defend themselves bat ill against the Apaches, but that by living apart from the river they were able to have a clear field for pursuing and killing the Apaches when they came against their town."
