Description
The Tohono O'odham are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, residing primarily in the U.S. state of Arizona and the northern Mexican state of Sonora. The United States federally recognized tribe is the Tohono O'odham Nation. The historical lands of the Tohono O?odham stretched over much of what are now the jurisdictions of southern Arizona and Northern Mexico, across most of the Sonoran Desert. In the south, their land abutted against that of the Seris and Opata peoples. These lands are characterized by wide plains bordered by tall mountains.
Language
Uto-Aztecan
Culture
The Tohono O'odham did not store water to irrigate their fields, instead practicing a form of flash-flood farming. After the first rains, they planted seeds in the alluvial fans at the mouths of washes that marked the maximum reach of the water after flash floods. Because the floods could be heavy, it was necessary for the seeds to be planted deeply, usually 4 to 6 inches into the soil. With a shifting residential pattern and the wide dispersal of the Tohono O'odham fields, the people had no compelling need to create large villages or a unified tribal political organization and so chose not to do so. The largest organizational unit appears to have been a group of related villages.