Mohave

ETHNONYMS: Amojave, Jamajabs, Soyopas

Orientation

Identification. The Mohave were a farming people whose name for themselves, "Hamakhav," has been translated to mean "people who live along the water." In the 1970s, two thousand Mohave lived on the Colorado Indian Reservation and the Fort Mohave Reservation, both located along the Colorado River at the Arizona-California border.

Location. Aboriginally, the Mohave occupied both sides of the lower Colorado River, roughly the region along the border between the present-day states of Arizona and California. The center of their homeland was the Mohave Valley. Mild winters, hot summers, and low annual precipitation characterize the climate of this region. The central geographical feature is the Colorado River, which flows southwest through canyons and floodplains to the Gulf of California. Before the river was dammed in the twentieth century it overflowed its banks each spring, depositing rich silt on the floodplains cultivated by the Mohave. Cane and arrowweed and cottonwood and willow groves grew along the river bottoms. Rabbits were common at the lower elevations inhabited by the Mohave, while large game such as deer were scarce.

Demography. The Mohave numbered about 3,000 in 1770, 4,000 in 1872, and only 1,050 in 1910. The dramatic population loss at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries was due to disease and poverty stemming from their subjugation by the U.S. government in 1859. The population had increased to 1,500 by 1965 and to 2,000 in the 1980s.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Mohave speak a dialect of the Yuman language, which is classified in the Hokan-Siouan language family.

History and Cultural Relations

The ancestors of the Mohave are believed to have migrated to the Mohave Valley from the Mohave Desert well before European contact, perhaps as early as a.d. 1150. First White Contact was with Spanish explorers in 1604, but from that time until the 1820s the Mohave remained relatively free from and unchanged by European influences. In the 1820s European-American trappers and traders entered the Mohave country, and their encounters with the Mohave were sometimes violent. In 1858 the Mohave attacked a wagon train of White settlers in response partly to intrusions into their territory. A year later they were dealt a disastrous defeat by federal troops. They subsequently were relocated to the Colorado Indian Reservation, established in 1867, and the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, established in 1880.

The Mohave were allies of the Quechan and Yavapai, but enemies of the other River Yuman peoples, the Halchidhoma, Maricopa, and Cocopa. The Pima and Papago were also counted as traditional enemies. During the nineteenth Century the Mohave engaged in a long period of warfare with their enemies, which came to an end when they were defeated by the Pima and Maricopa in 1857.

Settlements

Mohave dwellings consisted of open, pole-framed ramadas for use in warm weather and low, log-framed, thatch-roofed houses covered with a layer of sand for use in the winter. Settlements were neighborhoods of dispersed homesteads situated above the floodplains where crops were planted. Generally, settlements were several miles apart from each other.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. The Mohave planted maize, beans, pumpkins, and melons. The rich silt deposited on their farmlands by spring floods made crop rotation and fertilization unnecessary. The basic farming tools were a planting stick with a wedge-shaped point and a slightly curved wooden weed cutter. Fish were the primary source of animal protein in the diet and were caught with nets, weirs, and scooplike baskets. Deer, rabbits, and other animals, hunted with bow and arrow, and gathered beans, seeds, and fruits supplemented the diet. In recent times the Mohave have practiced irrigation farming and earned income from leases of their reservation lands.

Industrial Arts. Industrial arts were not well developed. They made crude willow twig sieves, scoops, and baskets for use in fishing. Coiled pots of clay tempered with sandstone were also manufactured. These were fired in open wood fires and used as water jars, cooking pots, platters, plates, and bowls. The Mohave also built crude reed rafts for crossing rivers.

Trade. The Mohave participated in an extensive trade network that brought them abalone shells from native peoples in southern California, cotton cloth from the Pueblos to the east, and deer meat from their Walapai neighbors in return for agricultural produce.

Division of Labor. Men cleared land for planting and women harvested the crops; both men and women participated in planting and cultivation. Women were also responsible for collecting wild foods, food preparation, and making baskets, and men were responsible for hunting and fishing, working skins and making skin clothing, making tools and weapons, and building houses.

Land Tenure. Farmland belonged to those who cultivated it. Land could be sold and could be appropriated if unused simply by clearing it and beginning cultivation.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Patrilineal exogamous clans existed, but they were without leaders and played no role in the ceremonial life of the Mohave. Clan names had totemic import, but totemic taboos were either insignificant or lacking. Descent was patrilineal.

Kinship Terminology. Mohave kinship terminology followed the Hawaiian system.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage involved neither formal ceremony nor significant property transaction. Clan exogamy prevailed in the choice of spouse, but beyond that individuals were free to arrange their own marriages. Polygynous marriages were permitted, but not common. Postmarital residence was either matrilocal or patrilocal, depending on personal preferences and individual circumstances. Divorce was a simple affair, involving only the separation of the couple at the will of either partner.

Domestic Unit. The nuclear family was the basic unit of Mohave economy and society. Extended family members sometimes cooperated in farming activities.

Inheritance. No personal property was inherited since Personal possessions were burned at death. In the twentieth Century land was loosely inherited through the male line. Theoretically, daughters had a claim on their father's land as well, but rarely exercised it.

Socialization. Parents were indulgent and permissive with their children; discipline was mild and rarely physical. The young were allowed considerable sexual freedom and were encouraged to enjoy sexual pleasures. As knowledge and skills were thought to be obtained from dreams, education and instruction were informal. Girls were secluded for a short period of time at their first menstruation; dreams during this period of seclusion were considered to be important omens.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Mohave settlements constituted local groups or neighborhoods, the cores of which were Patrilocal and bilocal extended families. Women occupied a relatively high status in day-to-day life, but in the religious realm they held a distinctly subordinate position.

Political Organization. The Mohave were loosely organized into three regional groupings or bands, each composed of several local groups. A head chief, whose position was inherited patrilineally, existed; however, he exerted little authority. Other influential men in Mohave society were war leaders, Religious leaders who were the managers of entertainment and festivals, and shamans, each of whom gained prominence and influence through dreaming. Below the head chief were subchiefs of the various regional bands and, below them, local group leaders who gained influence through dreaming and demonstration of oratorical skills.

Social Control. Scorn and ridicule was heaped on those whose dreams proved false when their enterprises failed. Shamans who consistently failed in their charge to cure the sick or who were suspected of witchcraft might be put to death.

Conflict. Disputes often occurred when the periodic river flooding obliterated property boundary markers. Such disputes were sometimes settled in pushing matches or stick fights on the contested property.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. A deity named Mastamho was believed to have been responsible for the creation of the land and teaching the people how to live. When his work was complete, Mastamho transformed himself into a nondeity fish eagle. Other supernaturals were few and were not worshiped nor the object of prayer. Dreaming and dream interpretation were the foundation of Mohave life. Dreams were believed to be the source of knowledge, skills, courage, success in love and war, and shamanistic power. Dreams were of two types: omen dreams, which foretold the future, and great dreams, which were the source of power and were obtained by select individuals before birth and rediscovered in adolescence. During the nineteenth century many Mohave converted to Christianity.

Religious Practitioners. The main religious leaders were men who organized feasts and celebrations and performed ceremonies believed to strengthen the solidarity of the tribe.

Ceremonies. Religious ceremonies were limited to the recitation of dreams and the singing of song cycles received in dreams. In the singing of song cycles ceremonial paraphernalia consisted of gourd rattles and baskets used as drums for accompaniment.

Arts. Pottery was painted with a yellow ocher applied with a small stick. Tattooing was a common practice, as was face painting, especially among the women. Both sexes were Commonly tattooed with lines or rows of dots down the chin, and women sometimes added lines across their cheeks and forearms. Since the close of the nineteenth century Mohave women have sold decorated pottery and animal figurines to tourists in Needles, California, near the Fort Mohave Reservation.

Medicine. Illness was believed to derive from a number of sources, including contact with aliens, dreaming, loss of one's soul, ghosts, and sorcery, in addition to physical wounds from arrows and poisonous animals. Illnesses were cured by shamans who were specialists in specific types of illness and who possessed the ability to cure by means of power obtained in "great dreams". Shamans were also believed to be capable of causing disease and death through sorcery.

Death and Afterlife. Funeral ceremonies consisted of the cremation of the deceased and his or her possessions, Speeches concerning the deceased, and the singing of song Cycles. Wailing accompanied the approach of death and cremation. In addition, mourning ceremonies consisting of ritual reenactments of warfare were held to honor important Warriors and chiefs. Mentioning of the names of the dead was taboo. The Mohave believed that after death the soul or ghost of the deceased remained for four days before journeying to the land of the dead, where it was greeted by the souls of deceased relatives and underwent a series of cremations and transformations after which it ceased to exist.

Bibliography

Castetter, Edward F., and Willis H. Bell (1951). Yuman Indian Agriculture: Primitive Subsistence on the Lower Colorado and Gila Rivers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Dutton, Bertha (1976). The Rancheria, Ute, and Southern Paiute Peoples. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Kroeber, Alfred L. (1953). Handbook of the Indians of California, 726-780. Berkeley: California Book Co.

Stewart, Kenneth M. (1983). "Mohave." In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 10, Southwest, edited by Alfonso Ortiz, 55-70. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

GERALD F. REID