If either the Pimos, Maricopas, or Yumas are descendants of the Aztecs, they have most wofully degenerated. On one point their traditions all agree: namely, that the three tribes were not always at peace with each other, as they are now. Long, long ago, when the Pimos were sorely pressed by the more powerful Yumas, they allied themselves with the Maricopas; and when they still found themselves in the minority against the common enemy, and had been almost exterminated, they flew to the white man for assistance, and never broke the treaty made with him. But the shimmer of romance and poetry one would willingly throw around them, is so rudely dispelled by the sight of these lank, dirty, half-nude creatures, with faces exhibiting no more intelligence than (perhaps not so much as) the faces of their lean dogs, or shaggy horses. Yet, again, I must confess that even these Indians are susceptible of a high degree of refinement and cultivation. Two of them, mounted on a horse whose diminutive size allowed their four feet to touch the ground at every stride, dressed, or rather undressed, in a manner to strike terror into the soul of any well brought-up female, rode close up to the ambulance one day, as it passed through the Indian villages, one of them shouting, "Bully for you!" at the top of his voice, while the other whipped up the horse at the same time, as though anxious to retreat the moment their stock of polite learning had been exhausted. Meeting at Maricopa Wells with the captain of the infantry stationed at La Paz, we visited the interior of the Pimo and Maricopa villages together, on horseback. We rode through the field the Indians cultivate, and irrigate from the Gila river, by means of _acequias_ dug through their lands in all directions. Some of their huts on the roadside were deserted by their owners, who had removed to very airy residences, constructed of the branches of cotton-wood and willows, growing on the banks of the Gila, located where they could overlook their possessions on all sides. As these residences consisted simply of a roof, or shed, it was no such very hard matter to keep a lookout on every side. That they do not trust a great deal in each other's honesty, was evident from the way in which they had fastened the doors of their city residences when exchanging them for their country-seats: they had firmly walled up the entrance with _adobe_ mud. However, they are quiet and peaceable, I am told, unless, by any chance or mischance, they get whiskey--of which they are as fond as all other Indians.