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The Man in the Maze is so important to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community it is featured on the great seal.Courtesy Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community

Several Tribes Share the Man in the Maze

By Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan

TUCSON, Ariz.—When Lisa Palacios looks into the Man in the Maze symbol, she does not see simply a maze and a man, but instead her heritage of being Tohono O'odham, which she proudly honors.

"The Man in the Maze is what I was told would help me find my way in life," said Palacios, a junior majoring in anthropology at the University of Arizona here.

Palacios said the walls in the maze represent the struggles, the battles and the problems she will encounter in life. But the continuation of the walls to the center of the maze means that life will move forward, she said.

"It's a reflection of life lived by many generations," she said. "I can definitely reflect on what little life I've lived so far."

Symbol is Important to Several Tribes

Ofelia Zepeda, a Tohono O'odham linguistics professor at the University of Arizona, said the maze is an identity marker for not only Tohono O'odham but also the Gila River and Salt River tribes.

"When I see it outside this area [Southwest], I make that connection with the Tohono O'odham Nation," said Zepeda.

However, there is very little written about the Man in the Maze, she said. A lot of women used to weave the maze into baskets and called it "I'itoi ki:k," meaning I'itoi's house. I'itoi is the name of the O'odham creator and the little man at the top of the maze. Ki:k in the O'odham language means home, Zepeda said.

Even though it is represented in baskets, Zepeda does not know how the basket weavers came to call it I'itoi's house. Nor does she know how it connects to the personal level O'odham associate it with.

"The symbol is hard to pinpoint in time," Zepeda said. "It is either something old that we no longer know or something more recently made passed down [by elders]." Zepeda said the maze is also found in petroglyphs but without the man in it.

Symbol's Origin is in Casa Grande Ruins Petroglyphs

The petroglyphs can be found at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, said Ronald Geronimo, a Tohono O'odham language and culture teacher at Tohono O'odham Community College. He is also working on his master's thesis in Native American linguistics and is a student intern at the Arizona State Museum.

Geronimo said the mazes are both the same but the way they were put on the wall is different. One maze was dug or scratched into the wall and the other was put there while the mud was still wet, when the structure was being built.

"I think a lot is unknown about the origins of the maze," Geronimo said. "But there is some evidence that it has been here quite a while."

The one that was put in the wet mud would indicate that it has been around as early as when the Hohokam Indians were here, he said. The other one could have been scratched in at a later date.

"These two mazes at the ruins seem to be upside down because the opening is at the bottom," Geronimo said. "I have heard that this is how the maze should be but somehow it changed to where the opening is now at the top."

Geronimo said he does not know how the Man in the Maze became the symbol of the Tohono O'odham Nation. But he suggested that perhaps the meaning and stories of the maze were important enough to be handed down from O'odham to O'odham, making it one of the reasons it has become an important part of the culture.

"There are some older books that have interviewed some O'odham elders and the elders mention that they heard about the maze from their elders," Geronimo said.

Sacred Maze Has Been Appropriated by Pop Culture

Unfortunately, this sacred maze has become commercialized on the Tohono O'odham Reservation. This includes tattoos, auto decals and T-shirts. Geronimo said sometimes O'odham try to show their pride in being O'odham, but they don't realize the pride in being O'odham doesn't have to be in the form of showing the maze everywhere and in everything.

"People don't realize that it can be disrespectful to show the maze with certain objects or in a certain manner," Geronimo said. "When we use the maze as just a symbol to say I am O'odham, it loses some of its meaning and purpose of being a representation of life."

Palacios, the college student, said although it is a bad thing to exploit the mazes, at the same time it helps spread the word. The Tohono O'odham are the indigenous Indians of America who live and prosper in today's world, she added.

"I hope that many of us (O'odham) see the Man in the Maze for what we are supposed to," Palacios said. "I hope that all of us can see the continuation of life after we hit the many walls that we do."

Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, Tohono O'odham, is studying journalism at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She is a graduate of the Freedom Forum's 2008 American Indian Journalism Institute. Last summer, she interned as a reporter at The Daily Times in Farmington, N.M.

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