CHAPTER VI I I
MAN IN ARID LANDS: THE PIMAN INDIANS OF
THE SONORAN DESERT
Bernard L. Fontana
I. Man in the Desert
489
A. World-Wide Studies
490
B. Sonoran Desert Studies
491
II. The Sonoran Desert Setting
493
Pimeria Alta
494
III. Piman Indians
511
A. Western Nomads
513
B. Arenenos
517
C. Two-Village People
518
D. Riverine Pimans
520
IV. Conclusions
522
References
524
When studied narrowly in himself by anthropologists or jurists,
man is a tiny, even a shrinking, creature. His over-pronounced
individuality conceals from our eyes the whole to which he
belongs; as we look at him our minds incline to break nature up
into pieces and to forget both its deep inter-relations and its
measureless horizons: we incline to all that is bad. in anthropocentrism. And it is this that leads scientists to refuse to consider
man as an object of scientific scrutiny except through his body.
. . . The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the
inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the
WOrld '
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( 1961 )
I. Man in the Desert
To strive toward an understanding of man in the desert is to take a
faltering step toward the "true physics" of which Père Teilhard de Chardin
489