The Papagos are a solid race whose bulk conceals their poetic legendry. "People of the Crimson Evening," they have been called. Their land was not coveted by conquistadors, missionaries, gold seekers, or settlers.

"So the Papagos wandered, calm and smiling, back and forth across the waste of brilliant barrenness," wrote anthropologist Ruth Underhill. "They shot the ground squirrels and the rats and birds. Thry picked the caterpillars from the bushes. They shook the seeds from every blade of wild grass. They brushed the spines from acactus stems and roasted them for hours in a pit with a fire over it. I have never heard one 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,'".


Lawrence Clark Powell. Southwest: Three Definitions. Singing Wind Bookstore. 1990. p.51