Mohave

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Mohave

Name

Several meanings for the name Mohave, or Mojave (both pronounced moe-HAH-vee), have been suggested. It may come from the Native word hamakhava, which means “mountain peaks,” referring to The Needles, mountain peaks in California. Or it may come from the word ahamakav, or ahamecav, which means “people who live along the river.”

Location

The Mohave lived in sprawling settlements on both sides of the Colorado River, which separates California and Arizona and extends into lower Nevada. Their homeland was once about 200 miles (322 kilometers) long and 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide. Modern-day members of the tribe live with descendants of three other tribes—Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo—on or near the 270,000-acre Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation (located mostly in Arizona, with about 43,000 acres on the California side). The people of that reservation are collectively known as Colorado River Indians. Other Mohave live on or near Fort Mohave Reservation, which has acreage in California, Arizona, and Nevada, and tribal offices in Needles, California. Some members of the tribe live on the Fort McDowell reservation in Arizona along with the Apache and Yavapai.

Population

In 1800 there were about three thousand Mohave. In 1900 there were about two thousand, with five hundred on the Colorado River Reservation, about one thousand near Fort Mohave, Arizona, and about two hundred in Needles, California. In the 1990 U.S. Census, 1,645 people identified themselves as “Colorado River.” No one identified themselves as “Mohave.” The 2000 census showed 1,707 Colorado River Indians in the United States; of those 1,412 lived in Arizona. Population for the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe of Arizona was 1,519.

Language family

Yuman (rhymes with “human”).

Origins and group affiliations

The Mohave were the largest of the Yuman-speaking tribes living along both sides of the lower Colorado River. (The other Yuman-speaking tribes were the Yavapai, Maricopa, Quechan, Hualapai, Havasupai, Paipai, Kumeyaay, Cocopá, and Kiliwa) The Mohave were a desert people descended from the Patayan of late prehistoric times. Most Mohave migrated to the Mohave Valley (where Fort Mohave Reservation now stands) from the Mohave Desert to the east, settling along the Colorado River around 1150. The tribe later divided into two factions or groups: one preferred peace with whites and neighboring tribes; the other favored war.

Friends and allies of the Mohave included the Quechan, Yavapai, Cahuilla (see entry), Chemehuevi (a Southern Paiute tribe; see Paiute entry), and Tipai-Ipai. Their enemies included the Halchidhoma, Maricopa, Cocopa, Pima (see entry), Tohono O’odham (see entry), and, occasionally, the Walapai.

The Mohave have lived, they say, longer than anyone—living or dead—could ever remember in a hot, dry area made fertile by the yearly flooding of the Colorado River. An active and adventurous people, they made a name for themselves as expert runners. The Mohave traveled far and wide to trade and created a trail to the Pacific Coast that white settlers later found useful. The tribe was also feared because of its fierce warriors. Although white trappers and settlers characterized them as warlike, the majority of the Mohave preferred peace. Most attacks were carried out by kawanamis, or “brave men“. These were professional warriors who had special dreams that encouraged fighting. Reports of their attacks on California-bound wagon trains brought the Mohave to the attention of the U.S. military, and by 1865 they were being settled on reservations. There the people lived unhappily and impoverished for many years. By the late 1990s, though, with modern irrigation methods in place for more than 35 years, the Mohave enjoyed considerable prosperity.

History

Uneventful contacts with Spanish

Long before the Spanish first saw them, the Mohave were a large, unified tribe, even though families lived on sprawling, individually-owned farms rather than in villages. Their lives were simple and marked by few ceremonies or festivals. The Mohave people came together to defend their territory or to attack other tribes. The first overwhelming threat to their way of life came hundreds of years after their first contact with whites.

The tribe first encountered the Spanish in 1604, when Juan de Oñate (1552–1626) of Mexico explored the region where the Colorado and Bill Williams Rivers come together. It was another 172 years before the Spanish actually reached the Mohave Valley. When a Spanish priest, Father Francisco Garcés (1738–1781), arrived in 1776, he estimated the Mohave population to be three thousand. But as far as the Spanish were concerned, the Mohave Valley was too dry, barren, and remote to be on any interest. Contact between the two groups remained minimal, except for an occasional Mohave raid for horses at Spanish missions in California.

Important Dates

1827: A battle breaks out between the Mohave and Jedediah Smith’s expedition.

1858: Fort Mohave is established to protect American settlers from Indian attacks.

1859: The Mohave are defeated, ending resistance against white settlement.

1865: The Colorado River Reservation is established, with acreage in Arizona and California.

1870: Fort Mohave Reservation is established, with acreage in California, Arizona, and Nevada.

c. 1945: Members of the Hopi and Navajo tribes join the Mohave and Chemehuevi on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation.

1963: The Colorado River Indian Tribes win an important water rights case, and reservation economy improves.

1983: The state of California passes legislation calling for the development of a radioactive waste depository. Ward Valley, 22 miles from Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, is chosen as the site. Native American opposition to the proposal begins.

War with whites and neighboring tribes

During the 1820s American fur trappers traveled through Mohave country, prompting considerable bloodshed. One of the best-known battles occurred in August 1827 when the Mohave nearly wiped out a trapping expedition led by American fur trader and explorer Jedediah Smith (1799–1831). And in 1851 the tribe attacked a group led by Lorenzo Sitgreaves (1810–1888), who was looking for a route for a transcontinental (spanning the nation from coast to coast) railroad. At other times the tribe cooperated with whites. They guided an expedition of white travelers through the desert to the Pacific Coast in 1853–54. But when faced with the destruction of their natural resources by whites, they defended their territory.

Throughout the early period of American trapping and westward expansion, the Mohave also warred with neighboring tribes. Between 1827 and 1829 they fought the Halchidhoma, who invaded their land. The Mohave expelled the tribe from their valley. Later the Mohave permitted the poverty-stricken Chemehuevi to occupy their lands until war broke out between the tribes in 1865. The Chemehuevi were driven back into the desert, but they reached peace with the Mohave in 1867.

The Mohave suffered a disastrous military defeat at the hands of the Pima (see entry) and Maricopa tribes in 1857, but still persisted with attacks on white settlers. Their 1858 attack on a wagon train bound for California was a call to arms for the U.S. military. It resulted in the establishment of a U.S. military post in the Mohave Valley for the protection of white settlers. (This post was later named Fort Mohave.) The post’s commander was ordered to bring the Mohave “to submission.” Mohave resistance did not end until many Mohave warriors had been slain by American soldiers in an 1859 battle.

Reservation lands lost

The Colorado River Indian Reservation was established in 1865 for all the Native Americans along the Colorado River and its tributaries. The Mohave and the Chemehuevi were confined to nearly 270,000 acres on both sides of the river. The government promised to build modern irrigation works on the reservation, and Mohave Chief Irretaba settled there with a fairly large group of people. But another Mohave chief named Hamoseh Quahote, along with a great majority of the tribe, refused to leave the Mohave Valley. Later, after a railroad was built through Mohave lands, some Native people changed their minds and moved south to the Colorado River Indian Reservation. Those who remained behind were settled at Fort Mohave Reservation, established in 1870, where they endured prejudice and humiliation by white settlers.

The Mohave had been on their reservations for only a short time before their lands were reduced. By 1887 the Santa Fe Railroad company owned a large portion of Fort Mohave Reservation land.

In 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the United States entered World War II (1939-45; a war in which Great Britain, France, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan), the federal government interned Japanese-Americans, confining them to camps because of their race. (The government feared that Americans of Japanese descent might help Japan invade the United States, although no evidence of this ever existed.) Many Japanese-Americans were detained at the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation. In return for accommodating these prisoners, the U.S. War Department promised the Native Americans it would not keep the land permanently and would make land and irrigation improvements on the reservation.

After World War II the United States developed a new policy of moving “surplus” Indians from one reservation to another. The government offered farming land on the Colorado River Indian Reservation to some Hopi and Navajo, and members of those tribes are now considered Colorado River Indians.

Government “civilizes” Mohave

As the Mohave mourned the loss of their ancient homeland, the government set about “civilizing” and educating them in white ways. Schools and churches were built, and the Native people were instructed in modern farming techniques. Between 1870 and 1890 the Mohave were plagued by disease and poverty. Improved irrigation methods brought some prosperity in the twentieth century, but much of the tribe’s traditional culture has been lost over the years.

Religion

The Mohave believe they were sent forth from Spirit Mountain (Mt. Newberry in Nevada) by their spiritual guides, Mutavilya and Mastamho, to be Earth’s caretakers. Mutavilya built a Great Dark House, the place where the first Mohave dreamers received knowledge from their spirit guides.

The people have always relied upon dreams for spiritual guidance and knowledge. All the talents, skills, and successes they enjoy in life are received in dreams. Great dreams came only to a few chiefs, braves, healers, and singers who had to perform courageous deeds to show their dreams were real. According to Mohave beliefs, these great dreams first occurred in the womb, were forgotten, and then reoccurred in adolescence. There were few religious ceremonies among the Mohave; religious expression was mainly through songs. (See “Oral literature.”)

The Mohave did not believe in heaven. They said that four days after a body was cremated (burned), the spirit went to the land of the dead, where deceased relatives met the ghost. A pleasant, pain-free period followed, with plenty of good things to eat. The soul then died again and was cremated by other ghosts, repeating the cycle until, eventually, the soul turned to charcoal in the desert. The Mohave who had not been tattooed in life were thought to pass down a rat hole at death.

Religious leaders, whose names meant the “one who is good,” gave feasts and hosted victory celebrations. Their importance declined after European contact, when public religious ceremonies began to vanish in Mohave life.

Christian missionaries came to the reservations to convert the Mohave at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first Presbyterian church was built in 1914, and many other groups have had an influence on the tribe since then. Religious denominations with followers on the reservations include Catholics, Pentecostals, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some Mohave still practice the Native religion.

Mojave Words

a’avk … “hear”
aha … “water”
amam … “eat”
’anya … “sun”
haly’a … “moon”
hatchoq … “dog”
’iipa … “man”
isvark … “sing”
iyuuk … “see”
thinya’aak … “woman”

Language

The Mohave are regarded as the first speakers of the Yuman language. In 1997, about 5 percent of Fort Mohave tribal members still spoke the language; the figure at the Colorado River Indian Reservation was 15 percent. In addition to English, many tribal members speak Spanish. Efforts to revive the Native language have been undertaken by Fort Mohave’s Aha Makav Cultural Society. According to studies done by the Summer Language Institute (SIL) International in 2000, most adults on the reservation speak Mohave, but many children do not.

Government

The Mohave did not have a formal government, but were a unified tribe and joined together in defense against enemies. Long ago any man who had special power bestowed on him in a dream claimed the position of head chief, but at some point in the tribe’s history, the position became hereditary, that is, passed down from father to son. Although they had a chief, no single person or group held a great deal of power over any other. The tribal chief served mainly as an overseer, looking after tribal welfare and providing an example of proper behavior to his people. During battles he took charge of the war chiefs, whom he also chose.

The last Mohave chief died in 1947. Present-day Mohave reservations are governed by elected tribal councils in accordance with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. At the Colorado River Indian Reservation the tribal council is advised by the Mohave Elders Standing Committee. At Fort Mohave a tribal chairperson and an elected seven-member council govern the reservation. The task of tribal councils is complicated by the fact that, when governing, the council must take into account tribal laws and the laws of the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Economy

Farming was the main economic activity among the Mohave. The men cleared the land and planted and tended the fields, which were then harvested by women. Unlike many other Native groups, the Mohave recognized private ownership of property. A piece of land not already in use could be taken over, cleared, and planted; it was then considered private property. In years when the Colorado River did not rise high enough to flood their fields, the Mohave depended on hunting, fishing, and gathering food.

On the reservations the tribe endured poverty and hardship when the federal government was slow to deliver on promises of improved irrigation techniques. When a reliable system was introduced in the early twentieth century, the economy improved.

Farming remains the major source of income for the Mohave. Cotton, alfalfa, wheat, feed grains for livestock, lettuce, garbanzo beans, peanuts, tomatoes, and melons are their major crops. The Fort Mojave Reservation also supplies Bermuda grass seed to the turf-grass industry. The Mohave attained a higher standard of living beginning in the 1960s, when they started leasing reservation lands to development corporations and farming operations. Unemployment on the reservations remained extremely high at the end of the twentieth century with 41 percent of job seekers at Fort Mohave and 25 percent of job seekers at the Colorado River reservation unable to find work.

With the opening of casinos and tourist facilities in the 1990s, the unemployment situation improved. Many service businesses both on and off the reservation brought in additional income. Tribal employment is also a major source of jobs. Leasing property has provided extra income and led to land development and home building. By the early 2000s the unemployment rate at Colorado River was less than 10 percent; Fort Mojave’s unemployment was less than 5 percent.

Daily life

Families

Families usually consisted of seven or eight persons, including parents, children, and other relatives. Families related to each other through the male line might settle near one another for a time, but the Mohave moved about frequently.

Buildings

During most of the year the people lived in single-family, open-sided, flat-roofed structures that provided more shade than shelter. Winter homes were low, sloping, rectangular structures made of arrowweed (a large brushy shrub that grows in clumps resembling corn shocks) attached to poles and covered with mud. They built their dwellings over a circular hole in the ground. From floor to ceiling, the homes measured about five feet (1.5 meters) high, but almost half of that was underground. A low door on the eastern side of the dwelling served as both an entrance and an escape hole for smoke from indoor fires. Although they lived along the Colorado River, the Mohave did not build boats or canoes.

Clothing and adornment

The Mohave were big-boned, exceptionally tall, and physically stronger than any other tribe in the United States. The desert region where they lived was subject to extremes of heat and cold, and when it was hot the Mohave wore little or no clothing. Men sometimes wore narrow breechcloths, garments with front and back flaps that hung from the waist. Women might wear front and back aprons or short skirts woven from the fibrous inner layer of willow bark.

Blankets of rabbit, badger, or rat skin provided warmth in the evenings and during cold weather, and badger skin sandals protected their feet during travel. Both men and women wore their hair in bangs over the forehead. Women let their hair hang long in back, while the men twisted theirs into many thin strands and held them in place with mesquite gum. Both sexes took pride in their long, glossy black hair, frequently cleaning it by plastering it with a mixture of mud and boiled mesquite bark. Both sexes painted their faces, and body tattooing was common.

During the early to mid’twentieth century Mohave men often wore overalls, tight undershirts, usually painted black or striped, and bright handkerchiefs around the neck. Many Mohave women adorned themselves with creative glass bead decorations.

Food

Plant life

The Mohave lived in small farming communities scattered in clusters along the bottomlands of the lower Colorado River. The region’s vegetation consisted of piñon (pine nut) trees, desert shrubs, cactus, mesquite shrubs, and screwbeans (the spiral-shaped pod of the screwbean tree). Arrowweed, cottonwoods, cane, and willows grew at the river bottoms. The sandy earth sloping upward from the river supported cacti and creosote bushes (pronounced KREE-uh-sote; evergreen desert shrubs).

They grew more than half of the food they ate. Their crops included corn, melons, pumpkins, gourds, beans, sunflowers, grasses, and herbs. They also grew tobacco and cotton. Men punched holes in the moist river soil using a planting stick with a wedge-shaped point. Women followed, dropping seeds in each hole and covering them with soil by hand. No fertilization was necessary because flooding enriched the soil. Crops not used immediately after harvesting were dried in the sun and stored in huge baskets.

Animal life

Scarce food and water forced wildlife to roam widely, and the Mohave rarely saw big game. They hunted an occasional deer, a project that required a profound understanding of life in the desert and a keen eye. When a hunter caught a deer, he traded it to other Mohave for fish and farm products because it was considered bad luck for him to eat his own kill. Mostly, though, meat came from quail, rabbits, rodents, and river fish. Men set up weirs (small fences of sticks built across a river or stream), or heated and bent cactus thorns into hooks to catch fish. They broiled mullet or lumpfish on hot coals or prepared them with corn as a stew.

Sometimes communal rabbit drives were held. The Mohave occasionally relied on insects, snakes, and lizards for food when game was scarce, or they dug up nourishing roots.

Education

There was little pressure placed on children to learn because the Mojave believed skills and talents came through dreaming. Children spent much time in play activities, often imitating adult behavior.

Once the Mohave were on reservations, the U.S. government took over the schooling of the children. They built boarding schools for Native youth in order to limit or remove their connections to their culture. Children were forbidden to speak their Native language and were even given new “American” names. By the end of the twentieth century a few Mohave reservation children still attended government-run boarding schools, but most children had enrolled in area public schools. At the start of the twenty-first century the Mohave had established schools or cultural centers where children could learn their Native language and traditions.

Healing practices

A medicine man’s power came from dreams, which were sent before birth or in early childhood by Tinyam, “The Night.” Tinyam would stand beside the young child and provide instruction on how to perform certain cures. Mohave medicine men were specialists; each could only cure one type of illness. Evil medicine men could cause illness.

The curing specialist might blow breath or spit on a patient with a fever or suck a swollen part of the ill person’s body to release evil. The identity of an evil medicine man who had caused an illness usually came to the patient in a dream. In the early days relatives of sick people sometimes killed a medicine man they thought caused an illness. Some medicine men welcomed such a death because they believed a special fate would be theirs if they died violently.

Mohave medicine men mistrusted white remedies. During the 1900s the medicine man’s influence all but disappeared, in part because the U.S. government discouraged these practices. Modern-day Mohave on the reservations have access to community hospitals as well as to hospitals operated by the Indian Health Service. The Colorado River Indian Tribes employ health experts and operate facilities on the reservation to deal with psychological problems and alcohol abuse.

Games

The Mohave enjoyed gambling and games involving skill, strength, and endurance. Among these was a hoop and pole game that required a person to have both a sure aim and good judgment under pressure, since participants bet heavily on the outcome. A hoop was set rolling, then one player slid a pole along the ground, trying to calculate when the hoop would roll onto the pole and stop. Dice-like counting games were played by women using counters made from shells.

Arts

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs (carvings or drawings on rock) left behind by ancient Mohave peoples can still be seen on the walls of Grapevine Canyon, the entrance to Spirit Mountain (Mt. Newberry in Nevada) where the Mohave people believe they originated. The petroglyphs tell how the Mohave came to be and record important information such as who passed through their territory and where water sources were located.

Crafts

Women wove burden baskets, made pottery, and fashioned glass beads, until European trade beads became more common. The beads they made came from ingredients they took from the necks of insects; some early observers thought these bugs might have been black beetles. Along with several other Yuman tribes, the Mojave used either large watertight baskets or huge pottery bowls up to three feet (one meter) in diameter to float supplies and children across streams when moving from place to place.

Oral literature

Mohave song cycles passed along tribal history, morals, and myths, which were extremely long and complicated and full of details about time and place. For example Mohave Bird Songs describe a travel route through the desert to the Pacific Coast and list every type of bird encountered on the way. One song cycle could consist of fifty to two hundred songs, and thirty cycles were sung at one time. The words to the songs came to the singer in dreams. Some song cycles required several days and nights to perform; they were often accompanied by the music of a gourd rattle or by drumming on a basket. By the 1970s there were few Mohave people left who knew how to perform the song cycles, and only fragments of the tribe’s oral literature were remembered.

Customs

Festivals and ceremonies

The Mohave did not wear masks or ceremonial costumes. Nor did they have rituals for rainmaking or crop growth, except in the very early times when members of the tribe sometimes drank cactus wine to bring forth rain. The main celebrations included the Scalp Dance (see “War rituals”) and girls’ puberty ceremonies, both of which died out by the early 1900s. Songs for cremation and the Mourning Chant were the only rituals still practiced in recent times.

War rituals

The Mohave were warlike because their spirit guide, Mastamho, predicted that each generation would have men with war powers. Therefore, when not hunting or gathering, Mohave warriors fulfilled that prophesy by going to war. Warfare was carried on by men who had experienced “great dreams” that gave them power in battle. However, if they were needed, most Mohave men were willing to fight, whether they had had a great dream or not.

To carry out small raids, ten to twelve men performed the task without ceremony or ritual. For major battles, scouts were sent ahead to stake out a route, noting the location of water holes and enemy camps. Warriors then made surprise attacks on the enemy at dawn.

Mohave warriors divided into two groups: the first group were archers, who used 5-foot-long (1.5-meter-long) bows and arrows for long-distance fighting; the second group were clubmen, who rushed in for close fighting using heavy clubs and sticks. Each warrior carried a round shield made of horsehide or deerskin and a feathered stave (wooden pole). A fighter would plant his stave firmly in the ground and defend it to his death.

A special scalper always accompanied war expeditions, and the return of warriors was celebrated with a victory dance around enemy scalps mounted on poles. Young female prisoners were given to old men of the tribe to insult the enemy.

Running

Much of Mohave traveling took place on foot, and men were especially adept, often covering up to 100 miles (161 kilometers) a day across the desert. Running was an opportunity to meditate and to escape from evil spirits; it served a practical purpose as well. Teams of relay runners could communicate the location of enemies or water holes.

Puberty and pregnancy

Unlike many other tribes the Mohave did not regard puberty and pregnancy as occasions for complicated rituals. Menstruating girls sat in a secluded corner of their homes, resting quietly and avoiding meat and salt. At night they were laid in a warm pit. A pregnant woman was cared for tenderly, since the unborn child would be having its first—and possibly “great”—dream, and the dream might be adversely affected if the mother were unhappy or upset.

Courtship and marriage

A Mohave man courting his future bride brought her many gifts. If the young woman accepted the man’s advances, the couple began to live together. No ceremony was necessary to validate the marriage. The couple could live wherever they chose. They might, for example, take up residence at the bride’s home with her parents until they built a home of their own. If the partners’ union failed, they separated. Divorces were fairly common. Most men had only one wife, although it was permissible to have more than one. Divorces and remarriages remain common in modern Mohave society.

Funerals

The funeral involved more ritual than any other Mohave ceremony. Mourners typically gathered around the dying person to sing and wail. After death, they wrapped the corpse in a blanket and burned it, while mourners continued to wail and watch as the body departed to the afterworld. The person’s home and personal possessions were also burned. The Mohave never again spoke the name of the dead person.

A special mourning ceremony was held for certain warriors and chiefs after their cremation. This ceremony involved a 10-hour ritual in which men in war costumes ran back and forth carrying replicas of real weapons. The special house that was built to hold the spectators at this ritual was later burned together with the replica weapons. Runners then fled to the river and jumped in for purification.

The cremation and wailing ceremony continue to be the manner in which most Mohave mourn their dead. Some personal property is also burned when a person dies.

Current tribal issues

In the nineteenth century the Mohave gave up a large part of their homeland to the American government. At the end of the twentieth century they were being pressured by the state of California to permit the building of a radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley, a site 22 miles (35 kilometers) west of Needles in traditional Mohave territory. The Mohave and the Chemehuevi, who are also affected by the proposal, claim such a dump would contaminate the sacred Colorado River, threaten the tribes’ health and livelihood, and destroy the habitat of the desert tortoise, an important tribal symbol. Furthermore, the tribes assert that the project is a violation of their rights and see it as yet another attack on Native American culture, lands, and futures.

Little of traditional Mohave culture remains, as a result of longstanding efforts on the part of the federal government and other agencies to force the people to assimilate (become part of the larger American culture). Recent efforts, however, have been made to revitalize aspects of the culture. The tradition of running, for example, is gaining renewed meaning and popularity at Fort Mohave. Runner clans—groups of men and women who receive in dreams the desire and the power to run—have formed at the reservation. And Ward Valley, site of the proposed waste dump, became the site of “Spirit Runs,” communal relay runs with both a political and spiritual purpose.

In addition to protecting their water rights, the Fort Mojave people have been working with state and federal agencies to restore habitats for many endangered species, such as the desert willow flycatcher, the Yuma clapper rail, and the yellow-billed cuckoo. They are also active in presenting environmental education programs to schools and the surrounding communities.

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