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XIX century they were named Papagos, which means something like ‘bean eaters’ or ‘Pima bean eaters,’ since their main crop were beans.
Papagos are a binational group due to the fact that the establishment of the border line between Mexico and the United States divided its territory and their members had to choose either one of the two nationalities.
The Mexican Papagos live in the state of Sonora in the municipalities of Caborca, Saric, Puerto Peñasco, and Magdalena.
According to several linguistic studies, the papago language classifies within the pima group (also called pimano or tepimano), branch nahua-cuitlateca of the stock yutonahua.
It has close relationship with the pima language, with the dialectal variants of the tepehuanos (ódam) and also with the taracahitas languages (mayo, yaqui, tarahumara, guarijio and opata).
Papagos make wooden carved figures, pottery pieces, and baskets. Their pottery is rustic, but however their best and most fine hand-crafted pieces are baskets; the “coritas”, made of palm leaves and torote (desert plants that women collect, prepare and weave).
Papago’s ceremonies conserve a mythological background; an important element of their world view was a myth of the Creation that involved two supernatural beings that created several human races and then destroyed them.
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