Early Mapmaking of the Pimería Alta in Arizona and Sonora (1597–1770): A Transborder Case Study

Abstract

Early Mapmaking of the Pimería Alta in Arizona and Sonora (1597–1770):A Transborder Case Study Juan Gil-Osle (bio) Every map is a purposeful selection from everything that is known, bent to the mapmaker's ends. Every map serves a purpose. Every map advances an interest. —Ward Kaiser and Denis Wood, Seeing Through Maps: The Power of Images to Shape Our World View, p. 4 This paper explores the history of early modern European mapmaking of the Arizona-Sonora border, known as the Pimería Alta. Studying the early modern cartography of this specific part of the transborder area between Mexico and the United States has illustrious precedents in the works of Ernest J. Burrus, Dennis Reinhartz, Gerald D. Saxon, Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jack Mount, Glen McLaughlin, and Nancy H. Mayo, among others. With some exceptions, most of the materials used by these intellectuals are not focused on the Pimería Alta and, on many occasions, they deal with maps that do not have a Spanish origin. The objective in this essay is to cover those deficiencies by chronologizing a significant number of maps from Spanish and Mexican sources, in addition to creating a narrative about perceptions of this northern frontier of the global Spanish political conglomerate during the early modern period. The mapmaking of this region has four characteristics that will help articulate the different parts of this paper.1 The first is a lexical one. In early European maps, the Arizona-Sonora border was known under many names, such as Totonteac, Tierra Nueva, Nueva Granada, Papagería, Pimería Alta, Pimería Superior, and others.2 Here the focus is on the [End Page 39] word "Pimería" and its lexical variations. Second, the history of these maps has a temporal threshold: before and after the 1660s, when the oldest extant European map based on actual exploration and observation of the land was created. The third characteristic is an ethnographic denomination that started to appear on maps in 1692. Thanks in part to the cartographic and narrative works of a number of Jesuits, the word "Pima" and its variants made its way onto all sorts of maps.3 The fourth characteristic is that the maps show the weaknesses of a porous northern frontier, which became a sort of impenetrable backland for the Spanish empire, and is often described as a barren despoblado. Since this essay focuses on the maps containing the word Pimería, let me start by delimiting the geographical extension of the Pimería and the origin of the word Pima, to follow with analysis of some maps from three different periods: before the 1660s, from the 1660s to 1690, and after 1690. Pimería What constitutes the Pimería has changed over time. In 1692 Adamo Gilg, a Jesuit contemporary of Eusebio Kino, used the terms Pimería Inferior and Pimería Superior to describe the region comprising the Sonora River in México up to the Gila River, Arizona, United States. In the area of the Pimería Superior on Gilg's map, the descriptor "nuevas conversiones" appears, and disconnected rivers are represented. In 1716, for the Jesuit Luis Xavier Valerde, the Pimería Alta stretched from the Mission Dolores up to the Gila River—between 30 and 34 degrees of latitude—and east-west from the valley of the Sobaipuri to the Gulf of California, which in today's terms is a very accurate definition of the Primería Alta. Forty years later, the Jesuit Gottfried Bernhard Middendorff gave a more extended definition to the area. For Middendorff, the Pimería Alta is defined by the territories on both sides of today's Mexico-U.S. border from the Magdalena River up to the Gila River, and from the Janos Fort to the Gulf of California (figure 1).4 [End Page 40] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Gottfried Bernhard Middendorff, "Pimería Alta con los ríos Colorado y Gila…Don N. N. Anville, 1756–1757," Archivo General de Indias, ES.41091.AGI/27.17//MP-MEXICO, 206.5 Pima Pima, adj. Spanish, shortening of Pima Ayto, from Pima pimaha'icu "nothing," perhaps a shibboleth —Oxford...