Mohave or Mojave ( Mojave: 'Aha Makhav) are a Native American people indigenous to the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

in the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

. The Fort Mojave Indian Reservation includes territory within the borders of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, and

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

. The Colorado River Indian Reservation includes parts of California and Arizona and is shared by members of the

Chemehuevi The Chemehuevi ( ) are an indigenous people of the Great Basin. They are the southernmost branch of Southern Paiute. Today, Chemehuevi people are enrolled in the following federally recognized tribes: * Colorado River Indian Tribes * Cheme ...

Hopi The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado ...

, and

Navajo people The Navajo or Diné are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Navajo language, Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Din ...

s. The original Colorado River and Fort Mojave reservations were established in 1865 and 1870, respectively. Both reservations include substantial senior

water rights Water right in water law is the right of a user to use water from a water source, e.g., a river, stream, pond or source of groundwater. In areas with plentiful water and few users, such systems are generally not complicated or contentious. In o ...

in the Colorado River; water is drawn for use in irrigated farming. The four combined tribes sharing the Colorado River Indian Reservation function today as one geo-political unit known as the federally recognized

Colorado River Indian Tribes The Colorado River Indian Tribes (, ) is a federally recognized tribe consisting of the four distinct ethnic groups associated with the Colorado River Indian Reservation: the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo. The tribe has about 4,277 enrol ...

; each tribe also continues to maintain and observe its individual traditions, distinct religions, and culturally unique identities.

Culture

In the 1930s, George Devereux, a Hungarian-French anthropologist, did fieldwork and lived among the Mohave for an extended period of study. He published extensively about their culture and incorporated psychoanalytic thinking in his interpretation of their culture.

Language

The

Mojave language Mohave or Mojave is the native language of the Mohave people along the Colorado River in northwestern Arizona, southeastern California, and southwestern Nevada. Approximately 70% of the speakers reside in Arizona, while approximately 30% reside i ...

belongs to the

River Yuman A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of its course if it run ...

branch of the Yuman language family. In 1994 approximately 75 people in total on the Colorado River and Fort Mojave reservations spoke the language, according to linguist

Leanne Hinton Leanne Hinton (born 28 September 1941) is an American linguist and emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. Education and career Hinton received her PhD in 1977 from UC San Diego, with a dissertation entitl ...

. The tribe has published language materials, and there are new efforts to teach the language to their children."Mohave."
''Ethnologue.'' Retrieved April 11, 2012.

Religion

The Mohave creator is ''Matevilya,'' who gave the people their names and their commandments. His son is ''

Mastamho Mastamho, sometimes also referred to as ''Mustamho'', is the creator deity of the first Mohave people along the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert and Colorado Desert. Mastamho is the grandson of the Earth Mother (in South America referred to as ...

,'' who gave them the River and taught them how to plant. Historically this was an agrarian culture; they planted in the fertile floodplain of the untamed river, following the age-old customs of the Aha cave. They have traditionally used the indigenous plant

Datura ''Datura'' is a genus of nine species of highly poisonous, Vespertine (biology), vespertine-flowering plants belonging to the nightshade family (Solanaceae). They are commonly known as thornapples or jimsonweeds, but are also known as devil's t ...

as a deliriant

hallucinogen Hallucinogens, also known as psychedelics, entheogens, or historically as psychotomimetics, are a large and diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mo ...

in a religious sacrament. A Mohave who is coming of age must consume the plant in a rite of passage, in order to enter a new

state of consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

History

Much of early Mojave history remains unrecorded in writing, since the Mojave language was not written in precolonial times. They depended on oral communication to transmit their history and culture from one generation to the next. Disease, outside cultures and encroachment on their territory disrupted their social organization. Together with having to adapt to a majority culture of another language, this resulted in interrupting the Mojave transmission of their stories and songs to the following generations. The tribal name has been spelled in Spanish and English transliteration in more than 50 variations, such as ''Hamock avi'', ''Amacava,'' ''A-mac-ha ves'', ''A-moc-ha-ve'', ''Jamajabs'', and ''Hamakhav''. This has led to misinterpretations of the tribal name, also partly traced to a translation error in Frederick W. Hodge's 1917 ''Handbook of the American Indians North of Mexico'' (1917). This incorrectly defined the name Mohave as being derived from ''hamock,'' (three), and ''avi,'' (mountain). According to this source, the name refers to the mountain peaks known as

The Needles The Needles are a row of three stacks of chalk that rise about out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, United Kingdom, close to Alum Bay and Scratchell's Bay, and part of Totland, the weste ...

in English, located near the Colorado River. (The city of Needles, California is located a few miles north from here). But, the Mojave call these peaks ''Huukyámpve','' which means "where the battle took place," referring to the battle in which the God-son, Mastamho, slew the sea serpent.

Ancestral lands

The Mojave held lands along the river that stretched from Black Canyon, where the tall pillars of First House of Mutavilya loomed above the river, past Avi kwame or Spirit Mountain, the center of spiritual things, to the Quechan Valley, where the lands of other tribes began. As related to contemporary landmarks, their lands began in the north at

Hoover Dam The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado, Black Canyon of the Colorado River (U.S.), Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, d ...

and ended about one hundred miles below

Parker Dam Parker Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam that crosses the Colorado River downstream of Hoover Dam. Built between 1934 and 1938 by the Bureau of Reclamation, it is high, of which are below the riverbed (the deep excavation was necessary in ...

on the

, or ''aha kwahwat'' in Mojave. The most famous incident in the 19th century was the adoption of Olive Oatman after her family was massacred by another tribe, all prior to them living on the reservation.

19th–20th centuries

In mid-April 1859, United States troops, led by Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman, on the Expedition of the Colorado, moved upriver into Mojave country with the well-publicized objective of establishing a military post. By this time, white immigrants and settlers had begun to encroach on Mojave lands and the post was intended to protect east-west European-American emigrants from attack by the Mojave. Hoffman sent couriers among the tribes, warning that the post would be gained by force if they or their allies chose to resist. During this period, several members of the Rose-Baley Party were massacred by the Mojave. The Mojave warriors withdrew as Hoffman's armada approached and the army, without conflict, occupied land near the future Fort Mojave. Hoffman ordered the Mojave men to assemble on April 23, 1859, at the armed stockade adjacent to his headquarters, to hear Hoffman' terms of peace. Hoffman gave them the choice of submission or extermination and the Mojave chose submission. At that time the Mojave population was estimated to be about 4,000, which composed 22

clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societie ...

s identified by

totem A totem (from or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage (anthropology), lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While the word ...

s. Under American law the Mohave were to live on the Colorado River Reservation after its establishment in 1865. However, many refused to leave their ancestral homes in the Mojave Valley. At this time, under jurisdiction of the War Department, officials declined to try to force them onto the reservation and the Mojave in the area were relatively free to follow their tribal ways. In the midsummer of 1890, after the end of the

Indian Wars The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, was a conflict initially fought by European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas agains ...

, the War Department withdrew its troops and the post was transferred to the Office of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior. Beginning in August 1890, the Office of Indian Affairs began an intensive program of assimilation where Mohave, and other native children living on reservations, were forced into boarding schools in which they learned to speak, write, and read English. This assimilation program, which was Federal policy, was based on the belief that this was the only way native peoples could survive. Fort Mojave was converted into a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

for local children and other "non-reservation" Indians. Until 1931, forty-one years later, all Fort Mojave boys and girls between the ages of six and eighteen were compelled to live at this school or to attend an advanced Indian boarding school far removed from Fort Mojave. The assimilation helped to break up tribal culture and governments. In addition to English, schools taught American culture and customs and insisted that the children follow them; students were required to adopt European-American hairstyles (which included hair cutting), clothing, habits of eating, sleeping, toiletry, manners, industry, and language. Use of their own language or customs was a punishable offense; at Fort Mojave five lashes of the whip were issued for the first offense. Such corporal punishment of children scandalized the Mojave, who did not discipline their children in that way. As part of the assimilation the administrators assigned English names to the children and registered as members of one of two tribes, the Mojave Tribe on the Colorado River Reservation and the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation. These divisions did not reflect the traditional Mojave clan and kinship system. By the late 1960s, thirty years after the end of the assimilation program 18 of the 22 traditional clans had survived.

Population

Estimates of the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) put the 1770 population of the Mohave at 3,000 and

Francisco Garcés Francisco Hermenegildo Tomás Garcés (April 12, 1738 – July 18, 1781) was a Spanish Franciscan friar who served as a missionary and explorer in the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. He explored much of the southwestern region of North Amer ...

, a

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...

missionary-explorer, also estimated the population at 3,000 in 1776 (Garcés 1900(2):450). A.L. Kroeber estimate of the population in 1910 was 1,050. By 1963 Lorraine M. Sherer's research revealed the population had shrunk to approximately 988, with 438 at Fort Mojave and 550 at the Colorado River Reservation.Sherer 1965

Current status

The Mohave, along with the

, some

, and some

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

, share the Colorado River Indian Reservation and function today as one geopolitical unit known as the federally recognized

; each tribe also continues to maintain and observe its individual traditions, distinct religions, and culturally unique identities. The Colorado River Indian Tribes headquarters, library and museum are in

Parker, Arizona Parker (Mojave language, Mojave 'Amat Kuhwely, formerly 'Ahwe Nyava) is the county seat of La Paz County, Arizona, La Paz County, Arizona, United States, on the Colorado River in Parker Valley. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, ...

, about 40 miles (64 km) north of I-10. The Colorado River Indian Tribes Native American Days Fair & Expo is held annually in Parker, from Thursday through Sunday during the first week of October. The Megathrow Traditional Bird Singing & Dancing social event is also celebrated annually, on the third weekend of March. RV facilities are available along the Colorado River.

References

'' 39:417–422. * Devereux, George. 1939. "Mohave Culture and Personality". ''Character and Personality'' 8:91–109, 1939. * Devereux, George. 1938. "L'envoûtement chez les Indiens Mohave. ''Journal de la Société des Americanistes de Paris'' 29:405–412. * Devereux, George. 1939. "The Social and Cultural Implications of Incest among the Mohave Indians". '' Psychoanalytic Quarterly'' 8:510–533. * Devereux, George. 1941. "Mohave Beliefs Concerning Twins". ''

'' 43:573–592. * Devereux, George. 1942. "Primitive Psychiatry (Part II)". ''

Bulletin of the History of Medicine The ''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1933. It is an official publication of the American Association for the History of Medicine and of the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History ...

'' 11:522–542. * Devereux, George. 1947. "Mohave Orality". '' Psychoanalytic Quarterly'' 16:519–546. * Devereux, George. 1948. The Mohave Indian Kamalo:y. ''Journal of Clinical Psychopathology''. * Devereux, George. 1950. "Heterosexual Behavior of the Mohave Indians". ''Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences'' 2(1):85–128. * Devereux, George. 1948. "Mohave Pregnancy". ''Acta Americana'' 6:89–116. * Fathauer, George, H.. 1951
"Religion in Mohave Social Structure"
''The Ohio Journal of Science,'' 51(5), September 1951, pp. 273–276. * Forde, C. Daryll. 1931. "Ethnography of the Yuma Indians". ''University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology'' 28:83–278. * Garcés, Francisco. 1900. ''On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer: The Diary and Itinerary of Francisco Garcés''. Edited by Elliott Coues. 2 vols. Harper, New York

* Hall, S. H. 1903. "The Burning of a Mohave Chief," ''Out West'' 18:60–65. * Hodge, Frederick W. (ed.) ''Handbook of the American Indians North of Mexico'' (2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1917), I, 919 * Ives, Lt. Joseph C. 1861. ''Report Upon the Colorado River of the West,'' 36th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. Pt. I, 71. Washington, D.C. * Kroeber, A. L. 1925. ''Handbook of the Indians of California''. ''

Bureau of American Ethnology The Bureau of American Ethnology (or BAE, originally, Bureau of Ethnology) was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Departme ...

Bulletin'' No. 78. Washington, D.C. * Sherer, Lorraine M. 1966. "Great Chieftains of the Mohave Indians". ''Southern California Quarterly'' 48(1):1–35. Los Angeles, California. * Sherer, Lorraine M. 1967. "The Name Mojave, Mohave: A History of its Origin and Meaning". ''Southern California Quarterly'' 49(4):1–36. Los Angeles, California. * Sherer, Lorraine M. and Frances Stillman. 1994. ''Bitterness Road: The Mojave, 1604–1860,'' Menlo Park, California: Ballena Press. * Stewart, Kenneth M. 1947. "An Account of the Mohave Mourning Ceremony". ''American Anthropologist'' 49:146–148. * Whipple, Lt. Amiel Weeks. 1854. "Corps of Topographical Engineers Report". Pt. I, 114. * White, Helen C. 1947. ''Dust on the King's Highway''. Macmillan, New York. * Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1890–1891, II, vi * ''Reports of the Secretary of the Interior, 1891–1930,'' containing the annual reports of the superintendents of the Fort Mojave School from 1891 through 1930. * Pritzker, Barry M. ''A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. . * Sherer, Lorraine Miller. 1965. "The Clan System of the Fort Mojave Indians: A Contemporary Survey." ''Southern California Quarterly'' 47(1):1–72. Los Angeles, California. * Zappia, Natale A. (2014). ''Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540–1859.'' Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

External links

Fort Mojave Indian Tribe
official website
Colorado River Indian Tribes
official website
Colorado River Indian Tribes Public Library/Archive

NPR audio documentary {{DEFAULTSORT:Mohave people Native American tribes in Arizona Native American tribes in California Native American tribes in Nevada Mojave Desert