Tohono O’odham means “desert people,” and it’s the name the people of this land call themselves. This map of the Tohono O’odham Nation prints Mission San Xavier del Bac, Queen of Angels Mission, Baboquivari Middle School, Indian Oasis Primary Elementary School, Tohono O’odham Community College and Kitt Peak National Observatory, from Ahan Owuch out to Ak Chin, and it names Aguirre Peak, Allens Peak and the village of Ali Chukson too.
The Nation’s lands reach into Pima County, Pinal County and Maricopa County in southern Arizona.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave modern data the look of a vintage atlas. The shaded relief of the desert’s mountains comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The Nation governs four separate pieces of land, more than 2.8 million acres in all, about the size of Connecticut, and its southern edge is the border with Mexico. Sells is the capital and the largest community.
A nation of the Sonoran Desert
The tribal government and most of the people have set aside the old outside name, Papago, since the 1980s. The Spanish had learned it from a neighboring people’s word for them, Ba꞉bawĭko’a, “eating tepary beans.” President Ulysses S. Grant’s executive order created the San Xavier Indian Reservation around the mission in 1874, the Gila Bend reservation followed in 1882, and a third reservation was set up in 1916 with Indian Oasis, today’s Sells, as its headquarters. The people adopted their first constitution in 1937 as the Papago Tribe of Arizona, and in January 1986 the members of the three reservations voted in a new one that took the name Tohono O’odham Nation and set up a government of three branches. Today the Nation is organized into 11 districts. When the 1853 Gadsden Purchase drew a border across their land, the people were split between the United States and Mexico, and many still travel each year to San Xavier del Bac and to Magdalena, Sonora, for the feast days of St. Francis.
The people speak their own language, O’odham, which the Nation’s page counts as the 10th most-spoken Indigenous language in the United States, and the Nation’s schools teach it along with the culture. By the same page’s account, the tribe makes more basketry than any other tribe in the country. The saguaro harvest begins in June, when villages traveled out to the saguaro stands; the fruit is gathered with a kuibit, a long harvesting tool made from a pair of saguaro ribs bundled together, and made into syrup, jam and a ceremonial wine. Since 1938 the Nation has held the Sells Rodeo and Parade in its capital each February.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Weavers, writers and a visit from Dr. King
Ofelia Zepeda, born in Stanfield in 1952, is a poet and a Regents’ Professor of Tohono O’odham language and linguistics at the University of Arizona. She wrote A Papago Grammar in 1983 from recordings of native speakers because no textbook existed for her classes, helped shape the reservation’s policy encouraging the language in every grade, and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999. Terrol Dew Johnson of Sells began weaving baskets at ten and became known for gourd baskets filled with finely woven bear grass. In 1996 he and Tristan Reader founded Tohono O’odham Community Action in Sells, which grew from a community garden and basket classes into two farms, an art gallery and the Desert Rain Café, opened in 2009 to serve traditional foods; its farms grow tepary beans and squash. The White House named him a Champion of Change in 2011. Annie Antone, a weaver who lives on the Gila Bend reservation, makes coiled baskets of yucca, devil’s claw and bear grass with pictures all her own, and she has exhibited as far away as the British Museum.
On September 20, 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Tucson, and the next day he asked to be driven out to Sells. He told his host he had never been on an Indian reservation. The tribal leaders were surprised to see him and felt honored that he had come, and on the drive back he spoke of his thanks for the chance to meet them.
Around the map
Mission San Xavier del Bac stands on the San Xavier reservation, about 10 miles south of downtown Tucson, at a place the O’odham call Wa:k, “Water Place,” for springs that no longer flow. Eusebio Kino began the first church about 2 miles away in 1700, and today’s church was built between 1783 and 1797 by a large O’odham workforce; its page calls it the oldest European structure in Arizona. It still serves the community that built it, it became a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and on the Friday evening after Easter the San Xavier Festival brings a torch-light parade of Tohono O’odham and Yaqui tribal members.
Kitt Peak National Observatory sits in the Quinlan Mountains on the Nation’s land, about 55 miles west-southwest of Tucson. It was founded in 1958 on land leased from the Tohono O’odham under a perpetual agreement, which the Council approved by a wide margin, and in 1976 its Mayall telescope found methane ice on Pluto. Just below the summit are the Gardens of the Sacred Tohono O’odham Spirit I’itoi. From Kitt Peak you can see Baboquivari Peak, the most sacred place to the Tohono O’odham and the home of the creator, I’itoi; the O’odham call it Vav Giwulik and regard it as the navel of the world, where the people came up after the great flood.
Tohono O’odham Community College was chartered by the Nation in Sells in 1998, was fully accredited in 2003, and introduces every student to the Himdag, the O’odham way of life. Sells itself was named Indian Oasis by the Ménager brothers in 1912 and took its English name in 1918; its O’odham name means “tortoise got wedged.” Ali Chukson is ʼAli Cuk Ṣon in O’odham, “Little Tucson,” a village of 113 people at the 2020 census, and Ak Chin is a small rural village on the reservation. In O’odham farming, ak cin, “mouth of the wash,” names the way of readying fields as the summer storm clouds built. Queen of Angels Mission, Baboquivari Middle School, Indian Oasis Primary Elementary School, Ahan Owuch, Aguirre Peak and Allens Peak have their places on the sheet as well.
This map makes a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for everyone who calls Tohono O’odham Nation home, from San Xavier to the border country, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the land as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Tohono O’odham Nation map.
Sources
- Tohono O’odham Nation, Wikipedia
- Tohono O’odham people, Wikipedia
- Mission San Xavier del Bac, Wikipedia
- Kitt Peak National Observatory, Wikipedia
- Baboquivari Peak Wilderness, Wikipedia
- Tohono O’odham Community College, Wikipedia
- Sells, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Ali Chukson, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Ak Chin, Pima County, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Ofelia Zepeda, Wikipedia
- Terrol Dew Johnson, Wikipedia
- Annie Antone, Wikipedia
