|
Havasupai Indian Tribe
History
Havasupai (blue or green water people). A
small isolated tribe of the Yuman stock (the nucleus of which is
believed to have descended from the Walapai) who occupy Catract
canyon of the Rio Colorado in north west Arizona. Whipple
(Pac. R.R. Rep., III, pt, 1, 82, 1856) was informed in 1850 that
the "cosninos" roamed from the Sierra Mogollon to the San
Francisco mountains and along the valley of the Colorado
Chiquito. The tribe is a peculiarly interesting one, since of
all the Yuman tribes it is the only one which has developed or
borrowed a culture similar to, though less advanced, than that
of the Pueblo peoples; indeed, according to tradition, the
Havasupai (or more probably a Pueblo clan or tribe that became
incorporated with them) formerly built and occupied villages of
a permanent character on the Colorado Chiquito east of the San
Francisco Mountains, where ruins were pointed out to Powell by a
Havasupai chief as the former homes of his people. As the result
of war with tribes farther E., they abandoned these villages and
took refuge in the San Francisco Mountains, subsequently leaving
these for their present abode. In this connection it is of
interest to note that the Cosnino caves on the upper Rio Verde,
near the north edge of Tonto basin, central Arizona, were named
from this tribe, because of their supposed early occupancy by
them. Their present village, composed of temporary cabins or
shelters of wattled canes and branches and earth in summer, and
of the natural caves and crevices in winter, is situated 115
miles north of Prescott and 7 miles south of the Grand canyon.
The Havasupai are well formed, though of medium stature. They
are skilled in the manufacture and use of implements, and
especially in preparing raw material, the buckskin. The men are
expert hunters, the women adept in the manufacture of baskets
which, when lined with clay, serve also as cooking utensils.
Like the other Yuman tribes, until affected by white influences
during recent years, their clothing consisted chiefly of
deerskin and, for the sake of ornament, both men and women
painted their faces with thick, smooth coatings of tine red
ocher or blue paint Prepared from wild indigo; tattooing
scarification for ornament were also sometimes practiced. In
summer they subsist Chiefly on corn, calabashes, sunflower
Heeds, melons, peaches, and apricots, which they cultivate by
means of irrigation, and also the wild datila and mescal, In
winter principally upon the flesh of game, which they hunt in
the surrounding uplands and mountains. While a strictly
sedentary people, they are unskilled in the manufacture of
earthenware and obtain their more modern implements and
utensils, except basketry, by barter with the Hopi, with which
people they seem always to have had closer affiliation than
their Yuman kindred. Their weapons in war and the chase
were rude clubs and pikes of hard wood, bows and arrows, and
formerly slings; but firearms have practically replaced these
more primitive appliances. The gentile system of descent or
organization seems to be absent among the Havasupai, their
society consanguineally being patriarchal, They are polygamists,
the number of wives a man shall have being limited apparently
only by his means for supporting then. Betrothals by purchase
are common, and divorces are granted only on the ground of
unfaithfulness. The Havasupai occupy a reservation of about
38,400 acres, set aside by Executive order in 1880 and 1882.
Their population was 300 in 1869, 233 in 1902, 174 in 1905.
Index of Tribes or Nations
|
|
Order Family Tree Maker 2012