How a Geological Engineer Became Fluent in 'O'odham and Published an Authoritative Tome on the 'O'odham Language of Place
- How a Geological Engineer Became Fluent in 'O'odham and Published an Authoritative Tome on the 'O'odham Language of Place
Preface, by David Yetman
In 2012, Harry Winters, a semi-retired geological engineer from Arizona with international experience, self-published a large book entitled 'O'odham Place Names: Meanings, Origins, and Histories, Arizona and Sonora. It weighs nearly eight pounds and contains what can only be described as an astonishing amount of information, nearly all of which is available in no other written source. Harry describes more than 600 places, attending each with its 'O'odham toponym, an analysis of the name, and its significance. Many descriptions are accompanied by color photographs, often taken by noted Southwest geologist and photographer Pete Kresan.
The scope of Harry's work is vast, and his attention to detail extraordinary. When I first saw the book, I asked Harry how it was possible that a peripatetic engineer could become so intimately fluent in a Native American language and the landscapes of the people who speak it that he could put together this truly remarkable volume? His answer was humble, erudite, and, even more important, utterly charming. Southwestern expert Bill Broyles and I subsequently asked Harry to compose an essay explaining how this happened. What follows is his response. [End Page 618]
How I Mined a Career, Traveled the World, and P ursued My Love of Languages
Prospecting and Spanish
My family goes back a long time in Arizona. My mother was born in Phoenix in 1913. She was the eighth of nine children of Anthony Greff. I believe my father was born in Birmingham, Alabama. His father was an expert mechanic. According to my father and his mother, for some time in the period 1915 to 1925 my paternal grandfather lived in Nacozari, Sonora, a mining town about 75 miles south of Douglas, Arizona. He worked for Moctezuma Copper Company, a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge Corporation, as the mechanic in charge of maintenance of the mine hoist at the Pilares underground copper mine. For a time my father lived with him in a boarding house and went to school there. He always remembered his time in Nacozari as one of the happiest of his life. He remembered seeing the ore trains coming out of the Porvenir Tunnel headed for the concentrator at Nacozari. He used to say that if my mother died before him, he would like to retire in Nacozari. My mother did die before he did, but by that time he was crippled from strokes. He never did get back to Nacozari, although he lived to see me estimate the ore reserves and design an open pit mine plan for the large La Caridad copper mine near there in 1974–1975. My father's mother, who was separated from my grandfather, worked as a practical nurse at the mining company hospital at Cananea, Sonora, while she tried to find my father. When she did find him at Nacozari, she brought him to Tucson and, according to him, placed him in a Christian Brothers school.
My mother's father had lost his first wife, with whom he had three children. I believe he lived in Buffalo, New York, at that time. After her death, he married Elizabeth Striegel, a German immigrant from the farming village of Wagenstadt, Emmendingenland, in Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. My wife and I have been there twice. It is in a beautiful area. The Greffs moved west and eventually settled in Phoenix, Arizona. They had six children, including my mother. They had a dairy farm near Sixteenth Street and Roosevelt. Their house was at 1449 East Roosevelt. It had a small kitchen with a bathroom off to one side. This made for a short trip from the stove to the bathtub with the hot water kettle. I know because I lived in the house in 1954–1955. There was a [End Page 619] dining room (Haben Sie das Brot?), a small bedroom, and a sitting room with a couch that folded out into a bed. The...
