Ode to the Sonoran Desert: Part 2 – Culture and People

People have been crossing the Sonoran Desert for centuries in search of greater opportunities for a better life for themselves and their families. The Spanish Conquistadors came looking gold at the famed Seven Cities of Cibola; the Anglo-American Forty-Niners traveled The Devil’s Highway, through what was still Mexico in 1848, looking to strike it rich in California; and in the early 1900s prospectors and ranchers descended on the area looking for “unclaimed” mine sites, lands and water access.

Like migrants today, these groups encountered many difficulties and dangers on their journeys. Unlike today’s migrants, they were not driven into the most remote regions of the ridges and basins; harassed and scattered from their companions by helicopters, ATVs and pick-up trucks; detained in cold cells, criminalized and separated from their families; and for the local population, assisting their travel with food, water, rest, care and companionship was not a crime.

For everyone not intimately familiar with the geography of the
Sonoran Desert, I whipped up this little map. It is clearly not to
scale. For reference the distance from Sonoyta to Gila Bend is
about 83 miles and Cabeza Prieta and BGBR combined cover an
area slightly larger than Connecticut.

Stolen land! Many of you are thinking, the Sonoran Desert is stolen land! And it is, it has been many times over. First from the Tohono O’odham and Hia’Ced O’odham people by the Spanish conquistador and missionary expeditions of Francisco de Coronado and Fray Eusebio Kino. Then by the Mexicans after the first Mexican revolution. Next by the Anglo-Americans during the westward expansion of the United States. And finally, by the US Government with the creation of Organ Pipe National Monument in 1937, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in 1939, and the Barry M Goldwater Bombing Range in 1941.

The native people of the Sonoran Desert are the Tohono O’odham and Hia’Ced O’odham. Before the arrival of Mexicans and Anglo-Americans, their lands stretched from Southern Sonora, MX to north of present-day Phoenix and from the Sea of Cortez in the west to the San Pedro River in the east. Today, the US Government designated Tohono O’odham Reservation covers a fraction of that area, bounded by the US/Mexico border in the South, Highway 8 to the north, the Baboquivari Mountain Range in the East and the Ajo Mountain Range to the west.

The geography, plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert all play important roles in O’odham culture, food, religion and stories. Is it ok for me to share these stories? I will share a well-known, and often told, one that illustrates the importance of cohabiting and caring for desert animals with the acknowledgement that this is not my story:

On the Organ Pipe National Monument map, there is a mountain in the Ajo Range designated as Montezuma’s Head. This name is, of course, a colonial name from the Spanish. The O’odham name for the mountain is I’itoi Mo’o and ‘Oks Daha, meaning I’itoi (Elder Brother of the O’odham people) and Old Woman Sitting. Legend states that one day close to sunset an old woman sat down to rest with her basket at the top of a small hill. As the sun set she and her basket were turned to stone. Every day since she continues to weave her basket, and when she finishes the world will come to an end. Every night the coyotes come and unweave her work from the previous day, ensuring that she will never finish, and the world will continue.

The Tohono O’odham people have many legends of hidden or lost gold in the mountains of the Sonoran Desert. These stories may have inspired the first Spaniards who traveled in the Desert, a motley band of survivors from a shipwreck off the Florida coast in 1527. Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo de Maldonado, Andres Durantes and Esteban, an enslaved African, crossed the Desert heading from north to south looking for a “road” going back to Mexico City. They eventually arrived at the court of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, where they regaled everyone with stories of the fabulous gold of the Seven Cities of Cibola.

Topography of Diaz Spire and Diaz Peak in Organ Pipe
National Monument. Somewhere in here could be the historical
find of a lifetime!

The fabled wealth of Cibola precipitated the launch of a massive expedition led by Francisco de Coronado in 1540. In advance of the main, slow moving, caravan Coronado sent an advance party led by Captain Melchior Diaz. Diaz’ name has passed into Sonoran Desert legend. He and his group crossed the Desert following the approximate route of The Devil’s Highway to Yuma and California. Diaz returned by the same route, bringing with him the news that, “California is not an island!” During the journey, he caught sight of a coyote worrying some sheep. Diaz launched his spear at the coyote and misfired, jamming the point of the spear into the ground and impaling himself in the groin on the back end. His group made a valiant attempt to get him back to Mexico City, but he died en route in January 1541. The location of Diaz’ grave is the source of endless speculation, it is thought to be somewhere in the Ajo Mountain range between Mt. Ajo and Sonoyta, possibly near Lukeville.

The Diaz/Coronado expedition found neither the Seven Cities of Cibola nor the reported gold. The most lasting impact of the early Spanish conquistador expeditions in the Sonoran Desert are the wild burros. All the burros who still roam the Desert today can trace their ancestors back to those bought over by Coronado and Diaz.

It would be another 150 years before the next Spanish expedition arrived in the Sonoran Desert.

Fray Eusebio Kino arrived in the Desert in 1687, establishing his first mission, Nuestra Sonora de los Dolores, near what is now the town of Nogales. A year later, Kino reached the pueblo at the site of present day Sonoyta. Here he built the San Marcelo de Sonoytag mission, introduced cattle ranching in the desert and oyster farming at the Sea of Cortez, visited Quitobaquito Springs, which he named San Segurio, mapped the Gila River and proved the existence of the land bridge to California. Kino was a busy guy, all told, between 1687 and his death in 1711, he established 24 missions and left copious memoirs and maps of his time in the Sonoran Desert.

Within 50 years of Kino’s death the Spanish mission project was in shambles, in-fighting between Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries, and the second Pima Rebellion in 1757, razed the missions to the ground. All that is left of the San Marcelo de Sonoytag mission at Sonoyta today is the grave of Kino’s successor, Enrique Reuben, who was killed at the mission during the Rebellion.

So much for the Spanish. The Sonoran Desert returned to its rightful “owners”, the O’odham people until… coming up next in Part 3, the arrival of Mexican and Anglo-American prospectors and ranchers, in the early to mid-19th century, searching for the ever-elusive gold, directly through mining prospects and indirectly through cattle ranching.