Maria Chona’s life was during a transitional time for her people. When she was born, her Tohono O’odham people lived their lives in a traditional way without many outsiders. Tohono O’odham had contact and were influenced by the Spanish, but still retained many aspects of their culture. Towards the end of her life, around 1936, Chona’s people had connections to Tucson and Anglo outsiders. This was a stark contrast from when she was born. In Chona’s elderhood, Ruth Underhill, an Anglo anthropologist and student of Franz Boas, spent time with her and recorded various stories about Chona’s life. Underhill compiled Chona’s life story in a book, Papago Woman. Despite Underhill not knowing the Tohono O’odham language, she recorded a very detailed account of Chona’s life. First, it should be addressed that an ethnography can never be a perfect and exact representation of a person’s life. A subject may forget to mention various details or have a lapse in memory,
…show more content…
Underhill writes, “I was always running about in those days, looking at these things, acting strange. My mother saw it and she did not think it was right… He [grandmother’s brother] sang all night, and in the morning he said, ‘You could be a medicine woman.’ ‘That cannot be,’ said my father. “We have one medicine man in the house and it is enough.” So the medicine man said he would take out my crystals. He leaned over me and sucked them out of my breast, one by one...Then he made a hole in a giant cactus and put them inside. Then he looked at me and said, ‘They will grow again, for it is a gift.” (page 52). Despite her great uncle’s encouragement, Chona listened to her father and mother and did not become a medicine woman. Chona stayed within the allowed role of a woman. Yet, with her independent spirit, she healed babies as an elder as well as made songs and had
Underhill writes, “I was always running about in those days, looking at these things, acting strange. My mother saw it and she did not think it was right… He [grandmother’s brother] sang all night, and in the morning he said, ‘You could be a medicine woman.’ ‘That cannot be,’ said my father. “We have one medicine man in the house and it is enough.” So the medicine man said he would take out my crystals. He leaned over me and sucked them out of my breast, one by one...Then he made a hole in a giant cactus and put them inside. Then he looked at me and said, ‘They will grow again, for it is a gift.” (page 52). Despite her great uncle’s encouragement, Chona listened to her father and mother and did not become a medicine woman. Chona stayed within the allowed role of a woman. Yet, with her independent spirit, she healed babies as an elder as well as made songs and had