Aree Men, a subtribe of the Papago.
The Tohono O’odham people, also known as the Papago, are a Native American tribe of the Sonoran Desert who primarily live in Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora. Tohono O’odham means “Desert People.” When the Spanish encountered them, they called them Papago, but the people rejected the name and officially changed it to Tohono O’odham in the 1980s.
They are thought to be descendants of the prehistoric Hohokam culture. They share linguistic and cultural roots with the closely related Akimel O’odham, or Pima, whose lands lie just South of present-day Phoenix along the lower Gila River.
These people were a settled tribe that raised crops, including sweet Indian corn, beans, squash, lentils, and melons. They also used native plants such as saguaro fruits, mesquite tree beans, and cholla buds, and made mesquite candy from mesquite sap.
Mission San Xavier del Bac near Tucson, founded in 1700 by the Jesuit missionary and explorer Eusebio Kino, was built by the Tohono O’odham. Although Catholic priests came to Christianize the area’s Indians, the Tohono O’odham villages resisted change for hundreds of years. During the 1660s and 1750s, two significant rebellions rivaled the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in scale. During and after Spanish rule, the desert people preserved their traditions largely intact for generations. Today, the beautiful church sits on the Tohono O’odham reservation.
Tohono O’odham Girl by Edward S. Curtis, 1907.
The nomadic Apache often raided the tribe for their food. The relationship between the two tribes became especially strained after 92 O’odham warriors joined the Mexicans and Anglo-Americans in an attack on the Aravaipa Apache at Camp Grant, Arizona, on April 30, 1871. Known as the Camp Grant Massacre, an angry mob of citizens from Tucson and their Papago Indian mercenaries attacked an Aravaipa camp, clubbing and shooting 144 people, primarily women and children. All but eight of the corpses were women and children, as the men had been off hunting in the mountains. The attack was retaliation for a Gila Apache raid in which six people had been killed and some livestock stolen. Twenty-seven children who were captured were sold in Mexico by the O’odham Indians.
It was not until American settlers began moving into Arizona territory that outsiders began to oppress the people’s traditional ways. When territorial lands opened under the Dawes Act of 1888, more missionaries came to the area and built schools and missions. Under U.S. Federal Indian policy from the late 19th Century, the government required native children to attend Indian boarding schools, where they were forced to use English, practice Christianity, and give up much of their culture in an attempt to promote assimilation into the American mainstream.
Although the Tohono O’odham never signed a treaty with the Federal Government, they were assigned to a reservation that included part of their original Sonoran Desert lands. Most people live on the reservation, which covers more than 2.7 million acres in Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa Counties. With more than 24,000 people, the reservation is the third-largest Indian reservation area in the United States, after the Navajo Nation and the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation.
Papago Man by George P. Thresher, 1900.
Today, some people still farm, but most have shifted to raising cattle as their primary source of income. Over the years, the Papago tribe has had little involvement with white settlers, a tradition that continues today and allows them to preserve many of their aboriginal traits. Their language is still alive today.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.
Also See:
Native Americans – First Owners of America
Native American Photo Galleries
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