Sobaipuri
Encyclopedia
The Sobaipuri are one of many indigenous groups occupying Sonora (including present day Arizona) at the time Europeans first entered the American Southwest. They were a Piman group who occupied southern Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

 and northern Sonora
Sonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....

 (the Pimería Alta
Pimería Alta
The Pimería Alta , an area of the 18th century Sonora y Sinaloa Province in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, encompassed parts of what are today southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora in Mexico....

) in the 15th-19th centuries. They were a subgroup of the O'odham or Pima
Pima
The Pima are a group of American Indians living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona. The long name, "Akimel O'odham", means "river people". They are closely related to the Tohono O'odham and the Hia C-ed O'odham...

, surviving members of which include the Tohono O'odham
Tohono O'odham
The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...

 and the Akimel O'odham.

Debate still surrounds whether the Sobaipuri and other O'odham groups are related to the prehistoric Hohokam
Hohokam
Hohokam is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological Oasisamerica traditions of what is now the American Southwest. Many local residents put the accent on the first syllable . Variant spellings in current, official usage include Hobokam, Huhugam and Huhukam...

 who occupied a portion of the same geographic area and were present until about the 15th century. This question is sometimes phrased as the Hohokam-Pima or Salado-Pima continuum, phraseology that questions whether there is a connection between the prehistoric Hohokam and the first historic groups cited in the area. A key piece of the puzzle has recently been found when it was discovered that there were O'odham/Sobaipuri present in the late prehistoric period (Seymour 2007a). Chronometric dates from multiple sites on the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers have produced evidence of Sobaipuri occupation in the 15th century (Seymour 2007, 2008; www.sobaipuri.com). The position is no longer defensible that no one was present after 1400 and that there was a substantial population decline in the prehistoric period (Seymour 2007c,d).

Sobaipuri Archaeology and Sobaipuri History

The Sobaipuri were present when the first Europeans visited the area in the middle 16th century, thereby playing an important role in European contact and later the European colonization of Arizona
European colonization of Arizona
The modern colonization of Arizona started with the arrival of Europeans in 1528. Prior to this time, there were migrations of people in and out of this region. These people undoubtedly brought different tools, plants and cultures which affected the various peoples who were already residing in...

. Marcos de Niza probably encountered this group along the San Pedro River
San Pedro River (Arizona)
San Pedro River is a northward-flowing stream originating about ten miles south of Sierra Vista, Arizona near Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. It is one of only two rivers which flow north from Mexico into the United States. The river flows north through Cochise County, Pima County, Graham County, and...

 in southeastern Arizona in 1539, although when Francisco Vázquez de Coronado followed less than a year later his party of explorers seems to have turned before reaching the Sobaipuri settlements (Seymour 2009a). When Father Eusebio Kino
Eusebio Kino
Eusebio Francisco Kino S.J. was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who became famous in what is now northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States in the region then known as the Pimaria Alta...

 first arrived in the area in 1691 he was greeted by leaders of this group. Headmen from San Cayetano del Tumacacori and perhaps other villages had come to Saric, Mexico from the north to ask that Kino visit them. Kino traveled north along the Santa Cruz River to San Cayetano del Tumacacori (later moved to the modern location of Tumacácori National Historical Park
Tumacácori National Historical Park
Tumacácori National Historical Park is located in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley of southern Arizona. The park protects the ruins of three Spanish mission communities, two of which are National Historic Landmark sites, and it also contains the Tumacácori Museum, a historic landmark building...

 and renamed), where he found three native-made structures that had been constructed specially for him: a house, a kitchen, and one for saying mass (Bolton 1948). This visit to this first of the Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert
Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert
The Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert are a series of Jesuit Catholic religious outposts established by the Spanish Catholic Jesuits and other orders for religious conversions of the Pima and Tohono O'odham indigenous peoples residing in the Sonoran Desert...

 north of the current international border made this native Sobaipuri settlement the first mission in southern Arizona, or the first Jesuit mission in Arizona, but, contrary to popular notions, not the first mission in Arizona. This original native Sobaipuri settlement of San Cayetano del Tumacacori has been located archaeologically on the east side of the river (as shown on Kino's historic maps), providing evidence of a densely packed, well-planned, long-occupied village (Seymour 2007a).

Kino then stopped by Guevavi (later referred to as Mission Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi
Mission Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi
Mission Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi was founded by Jesuit missionary Fathers Kino and Salvatierra in 1691 as La Misión de San Gabriel de Guevavi, a district headquarters in what is now Arizona, near Tumacácori...

), which is located to the south along the Santa Cruz River. Here he later (1701) established a church which he ordered whitewashed. The location of this native settlement and this formal church has been identified (Seymour 1993, 1997, 2008b). This native settlement later became the head mission for this region.

The Sobaipuris were initially friendly with their neighbors, including the Apache, Jocome, and Jano (Seymour 2007b, 2008a). They traded with one another and they were cited sometimes raiding together. They even intermarried, probably creating the unique character of the Sobaipuri. Later they sided with the Europeans which stressed their relationship with this unconverted tribes because they then went into battle against them.

Archaeological Research on the Sobaipuri

The Sobaipuri are one of the most-studied protohistoric (or late prehistoric and early historic) groups in southern Arizona, although this is not saying much as the protohistoric (late prehistoric and early historic are less studied than most other time periods, especially in this area). The accompanying list of references shows the upsurge of research in this group by archaeologists in the past 30 years.

Prior to this most of the research was conducted by historians. The first archaeological work was initiated by Charles C. Di Peso
Charles C. Di Peso
Charles Corradino Di Peso was an American archaeologist. He is known for his research in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest.- Biography :...

 (1953, 1956) of the Amerind Foundation who established a program designed to understand the transition from prehistory to history. Although most of his conclusions about sites visited by Father Eusebio Kino
Eusebio Kino
Eusebio Francisco Kino S.J. was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who became famous in what is now northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States in the region then known as the Pimaria Alta...

 have been discredited, Di Peso is recognized as a true scholar and he did define the first archaeological Sobaipuri site, making key contributions to the field, some of which are only recently being recognized. The other sites he thought might be Sobaipuri turned out to be late prehistoric sites representing Puebloan and other culture groups or the remnants of a later Spanish fort Santa Cruz de Terrenate.

Archaeologist Deni Seymour has studied the Sobaipuri for 25-plus years, revisiting some of the issues raised by Di Peso. On the San Pedro, Santa Cruz, and tributary drainages Seymour has documented more than 40 archaeological sites occupied by the Sobaipuri (Seymour 1989, 1990, 1993a). She has mapped portions of their extensive irrigation systems and noted how their agriculture-based villages drifted along the river margins as groups grew and splintered through time (Seymour 1990, 1993, 1997, 2003). Excavations on several Sobaipuri sites have led her to revise conclusions that have arisen from use of the documentary record alone.

In the early 1980s, archaeologist Bruce Masse (1981) excavated Sobaipuri sites on the lower (northern) San Pedro River, revising many of Di Peso's original perspectives and summarizing the state of knowledge about this group to that date.

Only a few residential sites have been found away from the rivers. Archaeologist Bruce Huckell (1994) documented three archaeological sites in the shadow of the Santa Rita Mountains north of Sonoita
Sonoita
Sonoyta, Sonora is a town in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. It stands on the U.S.-Mexico border, facing Lukeville, Arizona, in the United States. It is the municipal seat of the municipality of Plutarco Elías Calles.-Demographics:...

, Arizona. These sites were probably used seasonally for hunting and gathering or possibly as refuge sites to escape Spanish, or possibly Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...

, domination.
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