Tag Archives: Mexican crafts

Arizona Centennial Week: Secrets of Southern AZ

Celebrating Centennial

Today kicks off Arizona’s Centennial Week, the Arizona Territory became the State of Arizona on February 14, 1912. This week A Traveler’s Library will take a look at Arizona from several different angles, starting with folk customs.

Destination: Arizona

Book: A Border Runs Through It, Journeys in Regional History and Folklore (NEW 2011) by Jim Griffith [A Top Pick Selection in the Best Books of the Southwest 2011]

Cascarone: Easter Egg Extraordinaire
Cascarone: Easter Egg Extraordinaire

Jim Griffith, an expert in the culture and folklore of the pimeria alta has served as my guru on a variety of subjects regarding my adopted state, including crafts, language and foods.  One of the first things I learned from reading and listening to “Big Jim” and other historians of Arizona is that I live in what the 16th to 18th century Spanish called this region–northern Pima land.  They extended their southern territory in today’s Mexico into what is now northern Sonora Mexico and Southern Arizona.  The Spanish dubbed the native people of those lands the Pima.  Today these natives have reclaimed their own name–Tohono O’odham, which means The Desert People. Continue reading Arizona Centennial Week: Secrets of Southern AZ