The Pima are a Native American Indian people who made (and still make) their home in the deserts of southern Arizona and northern Mexico. While the name 'Pima' was given to them by the Spanish, the tribe knew themselves by the name O'odham, which by different accounts means "river people" or "the people." For the Piman tribe, their narratives did not rely on the written word. Instead, their narratives were generally carried down through song, storytelling, rhetoric, and other oral traditions. It is through the orature of the Native American people that American literature makes its first marks.