American Southwest Virtual Museum - Museum of Northern Arizona
American Indian Archaeological Sites
Rancheria : Uto Aztecan
Papago (Tohono O’Odham)
Ofelia Zepeda
Pima (Akimel O’Odham)
Tohono O’odham (Papago)
Tohono O’odham - home site
Tohono O’odham Nation
Underhill, Ruth, 1883-1984
Papago Indians of Arizona and their relatives the Pima / illustrated with photographs from the Bureau of American Ethnology and drawings by Velino Herrera (Ma-Pe-Wi). - Lawrence, Kans. : Haskell Institute, 1940. - 67 p. : ill.
Lumholtz, Carl, 1851-1922
New trails in Mexico : an account of one year's exploration in north-western Sonora, Mexico, and south-western Arizona 1909-1910 / by Carl Lumholtz. - New York : Scribner’s sons, 1912. - 410 s. : ill.
Tohono O’odham levde i en karg miljö, men Ruth Underhill som levde bland dem på 1930-talet beskriver dem som ett folk helt nöjda med sitt liv och ständigt lågmält, vänligt leende. Det kanske var vänligheten som gjorde att sången var en kulturell uttrycksform som sattes i högsätet?:
”The Papagos are a gentle, poetic branch of the race which produced the Aztec conquerors. Squat, broad-faced, dark often with the beauty of a clean-featured piece of sculpture, they have three chief characteristics. They never raise their voices; even the lustiest men speak in a smiling undertone which causes white traders to declare that these Indians must all know lip reading. Their movements are deliberate; our own jerkiness can hardly comprehend the rhythm slowed down by desert heat to the slow swing of a wave under aa ship’s bow in a dead calm. And they are always laughing. We who pass days, even weeks, at hard work, with no more than a polite smile now and then, can scarcely accustom ourselves to the gentle laughter which always accompanies Papago talk. No group of Papago men or women is sever together without the sound of it. Going back to New York after months of tdhat sound, I have missed it as I would miss cold water if I could never drink it again.
That same laughter and those same slow movements have been going on in the same desert since prehistoric time. (s 2)
Om det starkta bandet till landet och det karga levnadssättet:
I have never heard on of them object to this plan of life. Rather an old woman telling me of it sighed and said: ”To you Whites, Elder Brother gave wheat and peaches and grapes. To us, he gave the wild seeds and the cactus. Those are the good foods.”
Ständigt i rörelse var det kanske av vikt att hålla det materiella enkelt och sparsamt. Istället fanns det något som utmärker papagos av det mer andliga slaget: ”There was only one direction in which emotions could find a vent - in song.
But song was not simply self-expression. It was magic which called upon the powers of Nature and constrained them to man’s will. People sang in trouble, in danger, to cure sick, to confound their enemies, and to make the crops grow. They sang, as they fought and as they worked, all together. This was a tiny, close-knit community, where the good of one was the good of all; where if one person starved or was ill, the shole group suffered loss. So they gathered in villages, with a herald to tell them of approaching enemies. When one killed a deer, he divided it among them all. When the women dug wild roots, they gave just as much to her who stayed at home as to her who went. ”How else could we keep alive?”
In such community, song became not only the practical basis of Papago life, but also the most precious possession of the people. The power of song was an honor to be earned; it could not be assumed lightly at the mere whim of an individual. The describing of a desired event in the magic of beautiful speech was to them the means by which to make that event take place. All their songs describe such desired events, and besides the songs there are stately ritual orations intended for the same purpose. The songs are from every departement of life and in many moods: solemn, wistful, humorous, wild. The mood does not matter. Magic will be worked if the descriptions is vivid and if the singing or the recitation is done, as it should be, at the right time and with the right behavior, on behalf of all the people.
Such a magic spell is never consciously composed: it is ”given” by the supernatural powers. A man who desired a song did not put his mind on words and tunes: he put it on pleasing the supernaturals.
Sid 2-6 i:
Underhill, Ruth Murray
Singing for power : The song magic of the Papago Indians of Southern Arizona / av Ruth Murray Underhill ; [Illustrations by [A]Velino Herrera and Ben Pavisook]. - Ny utg. - New York : Ballantine Books, 1973. - 148 p. : ill.
Originalutgåvan 1938.
Den traditionella sången behandlas i:
Densmore, Frances
Papago Music. - Washington : Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, 1929. - 229 p. : ill. - (Bulletin // Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology ; 90)
Egendomligt nog har nutiden lockat Tohono O’odham att skapa två väldigt egna musikstilar, inte olika svensk dansmusik och säkert för det mesta framförda med ett flin (leende) i mungipan:
Chicken, eller Southern Scratch är en slags polka för elgitarr, och Wailamusiken är mest dragspel:
Chicken Scratch - Tohono O’odhams originella favoritmusik (Elektrisk Polka)
History of the Waila
Tohono O’odham - Litteratur
Ofelia Zepeda
Tohono O’odham, Trump och den Mexikanska gränsen
'Over my dead body': tribe aims to block Trump's border wall on Arizona land / The Guardian 26 jan 2017
Kilpatrick, Kate
U.S.-Mexico border wreaks havoc on lives of an indigenous desert tribe : If you are Tohono O’odham and live on the Mexican side, it’s a second-class life // Al Jazeera America 25 maj 2014.