The Maricopas are a refugee tribe, related to the Yumas, who once threatened them with extermination because of an inter-tribal feud. They were adopted by the Pimas and protected by them, and have ever since lived with them as one people, having however a different language, identical with that of the Yumas.
The Quojatas are a small tribe, of the Piman stock, living south of the Casa Grande.
The total number of Pimas, Papagoes and Maricopas in the U. S. is now estimated at about 8000, the Pimas alone as 4000.
I am not a linguist, or a philologist, and my time was short with these people, and I did not go to any extent into their language, or study its grammar. Their voices were soft and pleasant, and I was continually surprised at the low tones in which they generally conversed and the quickness with which they heard. But their words were most awkward to my tongue. There were German sounds, and French sounds, too, I would say, in their language, and there were letters that seemed to disappear as they uttered them, or never to come really forth, and syllables that were swallowed like spoonfuls of hot soup.
But I trust that I am substantially correct in the words that I have retained in the stories and that I have written them so that the English reader can pronounce them in a way to be understood.
The accent is generally on the first syllable.
[1] What the Pimas call the haht-sahn-kahm is the wickedest cactus in Arizona. The tops of the branches fall off, and lie on the ground, and if stepped on the thorns will go thru ordinary shoe leather and seem to hold with the tenacity of fish-hooks, so that it is almost impossible to draw them out.