Sobaipuri (Amerind tribe)

The Sobaipuri are one of many indigenous groups occupying Sonora (including present day Arizona) at the time Europeans first entered the American Southwest.

They are a Piman group who occupy southern Arizona and northern Sonora (the Pimería Alta) in the 15th-19th centuries.

They are a subgroup of the O'odham or Pima, surviving members of which include the Tohono O'odham and the Akimel O'odham.Debate still surrounds whether the Sobaipuri and other O'odham groups are related to the prehistoric Hohokam who occupied a portion of the same geographic area and were present until about the 15th century.

This question is sometimes phrased as the Hohokam-Pima or Salado-Pima continuum, phraseology that questions whether there is a connection between the prehistoric Hohokam and the first historic groups cited in the area.

A key piece of the puzzle has recently been found when it was discovered that there were O'odham/Sobaipuri present in the late prehistoric period (Seymour 2007a).

Chronometric dates from multiple sites on the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers have produced evidence of Sobaipuri occupation in the 15th century (Seymour 2007, 2008; www.sobaipuri.com).

The position is no longer defensible that no one was present after 1400 and that there was a substantial population decline in the prehistoric period (Seymour 2007c,d).

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