Book Description

The Tohono O'odham of southern Arizona, formerly known as the Papago, have made a life in a place that many would consider uninhabitable. These desert people were converted to Catholicism by early Spanish missionaries, yet they retain much of their earlier lifeway as a means of continuing adaptation to their desert environment. Originally published in 1979, this book is a restudy of speeches and ritual information collected by anthropologist Underhill beginning in 1931 and published, in English only, in her book Papago Indian Religion (1946). It describes the Native - as opposed to the Christian - side of the yearly ritual cycle of the Tohono O'odham, showing how seven rites form a system of meanings that grew from the relation between these people and their desert homeland. The rites presented focus on the summer wine feast, salt pilgrimage, hunting, war, and flood.