Oats are seldom raised in that region. They are called "white tassels" by the Pimas. Barley is the universal grain feed of Arizona, and there is a ready market for the small quantity the Pimas raise.
Vegetables
Watermelons, muskmelons, pumpkins, and squashes are extensively cultivated. The watermelons are preserved until after the 1st of January by burying them in the sands of the river bed. The 
Fig. 7. Gourd canteen. pumpkins, squashes, and muskmelons are cut in strips and dried, the best-keeping varieties being left in the storehouses until midwinter (pl. XXXV, f). According to tradition the first pumpkins, called rsasʼkatûk, were obtained from the Yumas and Maricopas.[1]
There are three species of wild gourds 
Fig. 8. Gourd rattle. that are quite common along the Gila, namely: Cucurbita fœtidissima H.B.K., C. digitata Gray, and Apodanthera undulata Gray. Cultivated gourds have been known to the Pimas for a long period—how long it is impossible to say. The Papagos have a tradition that this plant was introduced by Navitco, a deity who is honored by ceremonies at intervals of eight years—or, if crops are bountiful, at the end of every four years—at Santa Rosa. The gourd is used as a canteen (fig. 7), and if it becomes cracked a rabbit skin is stretched over it which shrinks in drying and renders the vessel water-tight again. Dippers and canteens are occasionally made of gourds, but the chief use of gourds seems to be in the form of rattles (fig. 8) which contain a little
- ↑ When Garcés was among the Yumas in 1774 they were raising "countless" calabashes and melons—"calabazas y melones, perhaps better translated squashes and cantaloupes, or pumpkins and muskmelons. The Piman and Yuman tribes cultivated a full assortment of cucurbitaecous plants, not always easy to identify by their old Spanish names. The sandia was the watermelon invariably; the melon, usually a muskmelon, or cantaloupe; the calabaza, a calabash, gourd, pumpkin, or squash of some sort, including one large rough kind like our crook-neck squash. * * * Major Heintzelman says of the Yumans, p. 36 of his Report already cited (H. R. Ex. Doc. 76, 34th Cong., 3d sess., 1857]: 'They cultivate watermelons, muskmelons, pumpkins, corn, and beans. The watermelons are small and indifferent, muskmelons large, and the pumpkins good. These latter they cut and dry for winter use [they were brought to Pimería before the Maricopas came to Gila Band].'" Note In Coues' On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer, New York, 1900, I, 170.
