Tohono Oʼodham

The Tohono O’odham are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, and they are recognized by the US federal government as the Tohono O’odham Nation.

After the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, a competitor people (The Pima) used an insult to refer to the Tohono O’odham, which the Spanish (and later English) mispronounced as ‘papago’, but this term has been rejected by the tribal government and most of the people of the tribe.

The Tohono O’odham Nation’s major reservation is located in southern Arizona, and stretches into Sonoma county of Mexico. The Tohono O’odham share roots with the Akimel O’odham (People of the River). Both are descended from the Sobaipuri, who resided along the major rivers of southern Arizona as long ago as the 15th century.

The O’odham-speaking people were a settled agricultural people who endured raids from the nomadic Apache when the latter needed food. It wasn’t until European settlers encroached on the O’odham people’s land that the O’odham and Apache found some common ground. It was more traditional that they were at odds, each taking captive woman and children during raids on the other.

The music and dance of the O’odham lack any grand paraphernalia or ceremonies. Both the music and the dance is subdued, with the music being ‘swallowed’ by the surrounding desert floor, and the dancing featuring skipping and shuffling quietly in bare feet on dry dirt to raise dust.

The traditional O’odham diet consisted of game, insects and plants. They foraged ironwood seed, honey mesquite, hog potato, cholla cactus, acorns and organ-pipe cactus fruit. They cultivated corn, squash, white tepary beans, papago peas and spanish watermelons. They hunted antelope, gathered hornworm larvae and trapped pack rats for meat.

The land did not provide ideal conditions for growing crops, but the O’odham developed the ‘mouth of the wash’ farming method. When they detected imminent rainfall, they would quickly prep the ground and seed it as the rain began to flood the area.

It is often assumed that the desert people embraced Catholicism, but the Tohono O’odham villages resisted change for hundreds of years. During the 1660s and the 1750s, major rebellions forced the Spanish to retreat, and the desert people preserved their traditions nearly intact for generations.

Apparently, the Tohono O’odham never signed a treaty with the Federal Government, so they managed to get a reservation by conducting trades for the land they thought was already theirs. They have retained many of their traditions into the 21st century, and still speak their language. However, US mass culture has started to penetrate and erode their traditions. Diabetes has become a major health problem for the tribe as they shifted away from their traditional food sources. There is a movement to assist the group to return to their more traditional food choices, and they are advocating for access to the rivers so that they can return to growing their own crops.

The Tohono O’odham Community Action was founded in 1996 with the intent to restore lost tribal traditions. It started as a community garden and basketweaving classes. It now has 2 farms, a restaurant and an art gallery. It is estimated that the restaurant - opened in 2009, and incorporating traditional foods into each item served - serves over 100,000 meals yearly. That’s a minimum of 274 meals a day! I don’t want to cook for that crowd!

The basket weaving classes were held once a week, initially, and a single basket might take an entire year to make! The fibers that were used had to be harvested and prepared, plus they needed to create a design that represented the tribe’s history.

Before contact with Europeans, the O’odham migrated north and south with the seasons, and this continued at least until the US-Mexico border cut through their lands. Even then, much of the O’odham continued to move about as they wanted, but efforts were made during the 20th century to ‘close’ this open hole in this border. By 2000, the Mexican census indicated there were no more O’odham to be found in Sonora.

Well, as the article got closer and closer to the present, I found myself losing interest, as is often the case when I’m looking at history. Besides, this was already a long episode. And thirdly, it kept mentioning all the ways this tribe has been and still are being treated as less than full citizens, which always pisses me off. I will have to remember that when I create cultures that are not based on US culture. Heck, even if they are based on US culture, from the looks of how things are now.

The most interesting things I found were the descriptions of the music and dancing, and the information on their traditional foods. This is the kind of stuff I really want to have available in my mind when I’m thinking up new cultures for future stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%CA%BCodham

Long Lost City

There are lots of stories about lost cities. I like to read about them after the archeologists have had some time to dig them up. So this time, I went out looking for what was known about Mohenjo-Daro.

This city was founded around 2500 BC in what is now Pakistan, and was one of the largest cities of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. But that civilization declined, and the city was abandoned sometime during the 19^th century BC. It was discovered in the 1920s, so I figure they’ve had time to find some interesting tidbits about who lived there. Let’s see what they’ve found.

Mohenjo-Daro is what it is called now, and that either means “Mound of Dead Men” or “Mound of Mohan”, where Mohan is apparently another name for Krishna. Examination of a city seal found during excavation suggests the city’s name was originally Kukkutarma, the “City of the Cockerel”. It is possible that cock-fighting was a ritual and religious activity here, with chickens bred and raised for that purpose, rather than as food. This city may also be where chicken domestication began, and was then introduced to the rest of the world.

Whatever it was called at the time, the city was built on a ridge between 2 rivers. It was an advanced city, with sophisticated civil engineering and urban development. It was one of the known merchant cities of the Indus Valley civilization.

Mohenjo-Daro was built on a grid pattern, with buildings made of fired bricks, sun-dried mud bricks, and wooden superstructures. One estimate of its maximum population is 40,000 people. It covered about 300 hectares, which is a little more than 741 acres.

The city had 2 sections: the Citidel and the Lower City. The Citidel was built on a 39-foot-tall mound made of mud bricks. It included baths, a residential structure to house 5,000 people, and 2 large assembly areas. The city as a whole had a central market with a big well. Households got their water from smaller wells scattered around town. Waste water flowed into covered drains that lined the major streets. Some houses had their own room set aside for bathing, and 1 even had a furnace to heat bath water! Almost every house had an inner courtyard that included a door to a side street. Some houses were 2 stories tall.

One archeologist found a large building that he thought looked like a place to store grain, calling it The Great Granary. A later archeologist pointed out there was no indication of grain being stored there, and he referred to it as a Great Hall of Unknown Function. Not far away is a large and elaborate bath, waterproofed with a lining of bitumen, which may have been used for religious purification. The city also included “College Hall”, 78 rooms in several buildings that may have been priestly residences.

The city had no walls surrounding it, only guard towers on the west and defensive fortifications on the south. Likewise, no weapons have been found there. It was destroyed 8 times, probably by floods. Each time, it was rebuilt directly on top of the previous city.

Artifacts they found include standing and sitting figures, copper and stone tools, balance scales and their weights, gold and jasper jewelry, beads of ivory, lapis, carnelian and gold, and children’s toys. One bronze figurine depicts a young girl dancing. Since it was bronze, the Indus Valley people knew how to blend metals, casting and other methods of using metal. It also shows that entertainment – such as dancing – was important to them. One of the toys was a cart pulled by oxen, so they did use wheels.

What hasn’t been found is any obvious palace or place of government, although it is suspected that Mohenjo-daro was an administrative center of the Indus Valley civilization. The many baths and grid structure of the streets have implied to some that the culture was more interested in order and cleanliness than they were in rulers.

This is the kind of information I like. I can almost see the city and hear the people living their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohenjo-daro

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/mohenjo-daro/

http://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/9-facts-you-must-know-about-mohenjo-daro-before-watching-the-film-258775.html