We’re not one of the better-known sites in the National Park System, and at only 1,120 acres, we’re not one of the largest, either. It’s not unusual for visitors to Tonto National Monument to ask us about our strange name. And, yes, even to a character in radio, television and movies.
The name seemed fitting as far as early Spanish explorers were concerned, and the insulting word eventually stuck to an entire region of southern Arizona. At least one other major band, the Chiricahua, thought these remote kinsmen were so strange that they had to be tonto. So this may be the best story we can piece together: The most isolated of the Apache bands were disconnected from their cousins by both geography and dialect. Arizona historian Kathy Block suggests that the Tonto Apaches’ close relationship with the Yavapai Indians influenced their language, and the resulting accent led other Western Apaches to call them foolish. Many scholars agree that the name Tonto derived from the Chiricahua name for Western Apaches - bini édiné - meaning “people without minds.” This may have referred to the fact that they spoke a different dialect - in other words, they talked funny. The Rim Country Museum in Payson tells us that other Apaches may have called them tonto “because of their willingness to live near the white man.” The Tonto National Forest website suggests that other Apaches may have thought of them as tonto because they settled in such a difficult place, you’d have to be crazy to live there. We can probably assume that they did not refer to themselves as tonto. Who were these people and how did they get such a name? As with most questions related to history and anthropology, there are no simple answers. The rugged upland deserts, canyons and mountains roughly corresponding to today’s Tonto National Forest were their homeland. Who came up with these names? What do they mean? Sometimes they come from one person, sometimes a whole culture-but the stories behind these memorable… See more ›Īll of these place names in Arizona, including Tonto National Monument, are directly related to the branch of Western Apaches known as the Tonto Apaches. Tuzi … What? The Origins of 12 Unusual National Park Names
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