June, 2007

“Arizona History”

or

“Why I’m Taking Spanish Classes”

“If they want to live in this county, they should learn the language!”

“Absolutely. So when do you begin Spanish classes?”

I can't tell you how many times I've heard some version of the first exclamation. I haven't quite had the nerve to present my snappy come-back. The assumption, of course, is that immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries who come to the U.S. looking for work ought to learn American English without delay. This is our country, and new-comers should learn to speak the native language!

Don'cha just love irony?

There's so much irony here, Dave Letterman could do an entire routine on it. Or a whole Seinfield episode. Or, just imagine Denny Crane diving into this on Boston Legal!

The American Southwest - Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, Utah and Okalahoma - it's all part of Old Mexico. It was all Spanish-language territory until 1848. The lovely hills where I live weren't even part of that treaty; everything south of the Gila River, including Yuma, continued to be Mexican territory until 1853.

So there you go. When the Yankees came to live in Mexico, why didn't we learn Spanish? Or, for that matter, why didn't any of the European immigrants learn O'odham, or Pima, or Yavapai?

What does all this have to do with us Sidekicks? Because we're all living and working in the Presbytery of Grand Canyon, it seems to me we are unavoidably caught up in these issues that affect our communities. (Admittedly, my husband's congregation, Memorial in Phoenix, is more involved in the immigration issue than most, because our congregation is now about 40% Hispanic.) The following is material I prepared for our Get-Together at the Presbytery Meeting earlier this month. It's basically Arizona History, but since I went to high-school in Ohio, it was all new to me. I hope you'll find it as interesting as I do. (photo: Watson Lake near Prescott.)

People already lived in Arizona 20,000 years ago, but the climate and ecosystems were cooler and wetter in the earliest millennia. Traces of early agricultural civilizations are found throughout the state, from an age when hardwood forests grew far south of the Mogollon Rim. Sometime around 1276 to 1299 A.D. there was a great drought which ended the prehistoric civilization.

When the climate changed, the peoples changed, and forest dwellers either followed the woodlands as they receded or adapted to desert living. High, almost inaccessible cliff dwellings still stand in silent evidence of one prehistoric race, the Anasazi, now thought to be ancestors of the pueblo peoples. Even the vast irrigation system surrounding Arizona capital city, Phoenix, follows a ancient patterns of canals used to irrigate the Hohokam farmlands with water from the Gila and Salt Rivers.

According to scholarship, the best known of Arizona’s native peoples, the Apache and the Navajo, didn’t arrive in what is now Arizona until nearly the same time as Europeans discovered this hemisphere.

The earliest Europeans who came through Arizona were, of course, Spanish missionaries and conquistadors. In 1539, a Franciscan, Marcos de Niza, ventured north from through the Sonoran toward the pueblos, which he apparently mistook for the fabled cities of gold. A year later he led Coronado on a disappointing foray through the territory looking for treasure in all the wrong places. They left with such a poor opinion of the area that the Spanish showed very little interest for more than a century. (Boy, were they wrong!)

Which doesn’t mean Arizona was a land of tranquility. Rather the opposite, with O’odham raiding the Apaches, and Apaches attacking Pima, etc., etc. BTW, since language is such an issue, the term “Apache” comes from another nation’s word for “enemy,” and encompassed all the present Apache and Navajo clans. The Spanish picked up the word, which was appropriate, since virtually all the native peoples resisted Spanish incursions. (photo: Saguaro in the Sierra Estrellas.)

Jesuit Eusebio Kino came through Sonora toward the Gila River, in 1698, and according to reports, was welcomed by O’odham, people who farmed the river valleys of the northern (Sanora) Sonora. But the mission project was not entirely peaceful. New converts occasionally rebelled, sometimes with stunning violence. The missions persevered with military assistance, and Kino determinedly pressed north. He introduced valuable products as gifts to the people who responded to his gospel, including new seed grains, vegetables, Fruit trees and small herds of vigorous livestock. The new resources must have made significant improvements in the lives of subsistence farmers. Another change was the policy of reducción, requiring the native peoples to leave their nomadic life and settle in permanent villages around the missions. The “reduction” of their wanderings allowed the people to be instructed in church doctrine and more easily protected from returning to their traditional “pagan” way of life.

“He explored Tohono O'odham (Papago) country as far west as the Colorado River, visited the Sobaipuri Pimas along the Santa Cruz and the San Pedro, and traveled as far north as the Salt River Valley (that's Phoenix!) where he preached to the Gileños, as the Akimel O'odham living along the Salt and Gila rivers were called. (photo: not really the Salt River, but it's water somewhere in AZ.)


Nearly everywhere he and his companions went, the O'odham welcomed them with food, arches made of branches, and simple wooden crosses. It was generally thought among the Pimas that Kino was charismatic and energetic. They responded to his warmth and his drive.” (photo: Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona.)

“Padre Kino also laid the foundations for San Xavier del Bac Mission on the outskirts of today's Tucson, still used for regular services by the Tohono O'odham Indians who live nearby.”

Converting native peoples to Spanish living styles and religion turned out to be more difficult as the missionaries moved further into what is now Arizona.

“Kino founded missions San Xavier and San Miguel at the Piman communities of Bac and Guevavi along the Santa Cruz, but the Jesuits soon abandoned those northern outposts. They were not staffed until 1732, twenty-one years after Kino died.”

After Padre Kino died, some of the missions, like San Xavier del Bac, remained, but Spanish expansion and development pretty much came to a stop.

Jumping forward to September 16, 1810, independence from Spain was declared by Miguel Hidalgo, causing a costly war fought bitterly for a decade, until 1821, resulting in a costly freedom that nearly bankrupt the nation. All of what is now our state was part of the Mexican State of Vieja California (Old California.) (photo: Canyon de Chelly.)

“General Antonio López de Santa Anna was a strong influence in Mexican politics, a centralist and a two-time dictator. In 1836, Santa Anna approved a radical amendment to the Mexican constitution that established a centralized form of government, instead of the federal form. That meant that all state & local authorities were no longer elected but appointed by the central government. In effect, it created a dictatorship. At this point, Texas declared independence from Mexico, becoming a nation unto itself in 1836. The annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845, created a border dispute that would cause the Mexican-American War. Santa Anna played a big role in trying to muster Mexican forces but this war resulted in the resolute defeat of Mexico and as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico lost one third of its surface area to the United States.”

But the southern part of Arizona – including a large slice of our presbytery from Goodyear to Yuma, was not included. Everything south of the Gila River, where I happen to live, remained part of Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. (photo: Gila River flood, 2005)

Then the great westward movement of our early pioneers began, and Arizona entered the phase of its history which has provided so much story material for books and movies.

Men came West to seek their fortunes - adventurers, prospectors, farmers, businessmen, builders. To protect them against the Indians who fought fiercely to keep back this change in their land, the army also came and built its forts. Only the most brave and hardy pioneers came until the last of the Indian uprisings were finished and final peace won in 1886. Development of the state then surged forward.

Back in the ages of its creation, there had been formed in Arizona land great deposits of gold, silver, copper and other minerals which were now uncovered by the prospectors. Lusty new towns sprang up near the mines.

Great fortunes were made and lost, sometimes in a single 24 hours.

While prospectors were "striking it rich," other pioneers saw their fortunes of the future in another aspect of Arizona land aspect of Arizona land. Farmers cultivated crops along rivers and streams as had the Indians before them. Others brought in cattle to roam the range land. Still others saw Arizonans an ideal place to raise sheep. (photo: Navajo sheep, Canyon de Chelly.)

Law and order were slow to catch up with the sudden growth of the frontier. Bitter gun battles broke out between the cattlemen and sheepmen, each wanting the grazing land and water rights.

With the leadership of the pioneers themselves, United States Marshals finally made a peaceful territory of Arizona, where crops, cattle and sheep, as well as mining, all became important in building the future of the state.

In 1912, its lawless, boisterous frontier days behind it, Arizona became the 48th state to join the Union and its modern advance began.

Main sources:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Arizona

http://www.governor.state.az.us/kids/AZ_History.asp