Tucson, Arizona: Black Creek, Dark Spring, or Black Base?

Tucson, Arizona, took its name from an O’odham village on the Santa Cruz River. Old books translate it as black creek, dark spring, or black base.

The village was there long before Spanish soldiers built a fort on the spot. The translations came much later, and the books that wrote them down between 1883 and 1916 didn’t agree.

A village before a fort

In 1910 the Smithsonian’s Handbook of American Indians described Tucson as a former rancheria, a native farming village, “probably of mixed Papago, Sobaipuri, and Pima,” on the site of the modern city. As an Indian town, the handbook says, it “was doubtless prehistoric.” The people old books call Papago are today’s Tohono O’odham.

Spanish missionaries reached it in the late 1690s, and the name started its long trip through other people’s alphabets. In 1776 the Spanish moved their presidio there from Tubac, as the Presidio de San Agustín del Tuquison. The handbook lists how the name came out in old records and maps: Tuguison, Tuquison, Tubson, Tuczon, Tugson. One traveler in 1829 wrote “Toison” and translated it as “golden fleece.” That’s how far a name can drift once it’s out of its own language.

Five translations, one color

Here’s the thing: every translation of the native word has something dark in it.

• Black creek. Patrick Hamilton’s 1883 guide to the territory says Tucson “is said to be a Pima word. It is pronounced Chook-son, by that people, and means ‘Black creek.’” Henry Gannett’s 1905 federal place-names bulletin repeats “black creek.” The historian H. H. Bancroft, writing in 1889, questioned Hamilton’s pronunciation, “or at least that such was the original Pima pronunciation.”
• Dark spring. By 1916, James McClintock wrote, “general acceptance” had gone to “dark or brown spring,” and “even the spring itself has been shown,” near what was then the Elysian Grove. He agreed that in the Papago language “styuk-son” means dark or brown spring.
• Foot of the black hill. McClintock then sided with Dr. M. P. Freeman of Tucson, who had learned “from Papago sources” of a little village “at the foot of Sentinel Peak” called “Styook-zone,” meaning “the village at the foot of the black hill.” Since “the Indians consulted seem to agree,” McClintock wrote, it’s “probably to be preferred.”

The Smithsonian handbook gives the Papago form as Tu-uk-so-on’, “black base,” “in allusion to a dark volcanic stratum in an adjacent mountain.” GNIS, the government’s official list of place names, holds two of these at once: a Piman word meaning “a dark or brown spring,” and a Papago word meaning “water at foot of black mountain.” Today, Mission Garden, a nonprofit garden at the foot of Sentinel Peak, spells the village name Cuk Ṣon (or S-cuk Ṣon) and says Father Kino wrote it down as Tucson.

So nobody’s quite sure which English phrase is right, and you’ll find all of them in print. What the sources do agree on is where it came from: a native village on the Santa Cruz, and a word with something dark in it.

How you say it

Even the sound has moved. McClintock noted in 1916 that the usual pronunciation was “Too-sahn,” while Mexicans and some pioneer Americans said “Took-sone.” He was clear that the word “has no connection with Spanish.” If you want another Arizona name that started as a native word and got reshaped by Spanish speakers, the state’s own name has a story like that.

Sources & further reading

• Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, part 2 (Smithsonian, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1910), p. 832. The village “probably of mixed Papago, Sobaipuri, and Pima,” Tu-uk-so-on’, “black base,” the presidio of 1776 and the list of old spellings, including “Toison.”
• James H. McClintock, Arizona: Prehistoric, Aboriginal, Pioneer, Modern, vol. 1 (1916), p. 132. The pronunciations, “dark or brown spring,” and Dr. M. P. Freeman’s “village at the foot of the black hill.”
• Patrick Hamilton, The Resources of Arizona, 2nd ed. (1883), p. 44. “Chook-son” and “Black creek.”
• H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889). His doubt about Hamilton’s pronunciation (p. 619, note); the spellings Tuison and Tuguison in Anza’s records of 1775 (p. 382, note).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 304. “Derived from an Indian word meaning ‘black creek.’”
• GNIS feature 43534 (U.S. Geological Survey). “Dark or brown spring” and “water at foot of black mountain.”
• Mission Garden. The village site at the foot of Sentinel Peak, the spellings Cuk Ṣon and S-cuk Ṣon, and Kino writing the name down as Tucson.