Fontana Bernard L. Of Earth and Little Rain: the Papago Indians

With photographs by John P. Schaefer. — Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1981. — xii+140 p. — ISBN: 0-87358-287-X.This book, with its sensitively written text and powerful photographs, provides an appreciation of one of the lesser-known groups of Indians in the United States and Mexico. They call themselves O'odham, but to the world outside their reservation, which is the second largest in the United States, they are the Papago.
In 1687, when Father Eusebio Kino encountered the Papago, he came upon men, women, and children who were the bearers of an ancient and eminently successful desert culture. They had evolved their own religious beliefs, spoke a complex language, and had their own political, social, and economic structures. They were altogether selfsufficient, depending on one another and on their desert environment to sustain them.
During the three centuries since that first encounter with a European, the Papago have been both encouraged and coerced to become Spaniards, Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans, yet they have continued to exist as a clearly identifiable entity. Traditional life may have altered, but it has not changed beyond recognition. Instead, the Papago have adapted the peculiar culture of the white man to suit their own way of looking at the world.
For the past twenty-five years, author Bernard L. Fontana has lived close to the western edge of the San Xavier Papago Indian Reservation. During that time, he has studied Papago history and culture and was an expert witness in the tribe's successfully prosecuted claims case against the U.S. government. An ethnologist and field researcher at the University of Arizona, he brings warmth and an understanding to his account of contemporary Papago life.
John P. Schaefer is president of the University of Arizona and an outstanding photographer of the West. His extraordinary images capture the essence of the Papago experience as it is revealed in their faces, their homes, their churches, and the land itself; this Land of Little Rain.