Sobaipuri. A Piman tribe formerly inhabiting the
main and tributary valleys of San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers, between lon. 110°
and 111°, and the Rio Gila between the month of the San Pedro river and the ruins
of Casa Grande, and possibly eastward of this area in south Arizona. Missions were
established among them by the Spaniards in the latter part of the 17th and
beginning of the 18th centuries at Guevavi, Suamca, and San Xavier del Bac, to
which numerous visitas were attached. According to Bourke "the Apaches have
among them the Tze-kinne, or Stone-house people, descendants of the
cliff-dwelling Sòbaypuris, whom they drove out of Aravypa cañon and forced to
flee to the Pimas for refuge about a century ago" (Jour. Am. Folk-lore, 114,
Apr.-June 1890); and Bandelier (Arch. Inst. Papers, iii, 102, 1890) states that
"the Apaches caused the Sobaypuris to give up their homes on the San Pedro and
to merge into the Pápagos." It would seem, therefore, that the extinction of
the Sobaipuri as a tribe was due to depredations by the Apache and that their
remnant was absorbed by the Papago, their western neighbors, of whom indeed they
may have been but a part. In later years the Papago occupied at least one of the
former Sobaipuri towns-San Xavier del Bac.
Former settlements ascribed to the Sobaipuri are:
