While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Mohave (from hamok 'three', avi
‘mountain'). The most populous and war like of the Yuman
tribes. Since known to history they appear to have lived on both sides of the
Rio Colorado, though chiefly on the east side, between the
Needles (whence their name is derived) and the entrance to Black canyon. Ives,
in 1857, found only a few scattered families in Cottonwood valley, the bulk of
their number being below Hardyville. In recent times a body of Chemehuevi have
held the river between them and their kinsmen the Yuma. The Mohave are strong,
athletic, and well developed, their women attractive; in fact, Ives
characterized them as fine a people physically as any he had ever seen. They are
famed for the artistic painting of their bodies. Tattooing was universal, but
confined to small areas on the skin. According to Kroeber (Am. Anthrop., Iv, 284, 1902)
their art in recent times consists chiefly of crude painted de, orations on their
pottery.
Though a river tribe, the Mohave made no canoes, but when necessary had
recourse to rafts, or balsas, made of bundles of reeds. They had no large
settlements, their dwellings being scattered. These were four-sided and low,
with four supporting posts at the center. The walls, which were only 2 or 3 feet
high, and the almost flat roof were formed of brush covered with sand. Their
granaries were upright cylindrical structures with flat roofs. The Mohave
hunted but little, their chief reliance for food being on the cultivated
products of the soil, as corn, pumpkins, melons, beans, and a small amount of
wheat, to which they added mesquite beans, mescrew, piñon nuts, and fish to a
limited extent. They did not practice irrigation, but relied on the inundation
of the bottom lands to supply the needed moisture, hence when there was no
over-flow their crops failed. Articles of skin and bone were very little used,
materials such as the inner bark of the willow, vegetable fiber, etc., taking
their place. Pottery was manufactured. Baskets were in common use, but were
obtained from other tribes.
According to Kroeber, "there is no full gentile system, but something closely
akin to it, which may be called either an incipient or a decadent clan system.
Certam men, and all their ancestors and
descendants in the male line, have only one name for all their female relatives:
Thus, if the female name hereditary in my family be Maha, my father's sister, my
own sisters, my daughters (no matter how great their number), and my son's
daughters, will all be called Maha. There are about twenty such women's names,
or virtual gentes, among the Mohave. None of these names seems to have any
signification. But according to the myths
of the tribe, certain numbers of men originally had, or were given, such names
as Sun, Moon, Tobacco, Fire, Cloud, Coyote, Deer, Wind, Beaver, Owl, and others,
which correspond exactly to totemic clan names; then these men were instructed
by Mastamho, the chief mythological being, to call all their daughters and
female descendants in the male line by certain names, corresponding to these
clan names. Thus the male ancestors of all the women who at present bear the
name Hipa, are believed to have been originally named Coyote. It is also said
that all those with one name formerly lived in one area, and were all considered
related. This, however, is not the case now, nor does it seem to have been so
within recent historic times." Bourke (Jour. Am. Folklore,
ii, 181, 1889) has
recorded some of these names, called by him gentes, and the totemic name to which each corresponds, as follows: Hualga (Moon),
O-cha (Rain-cloud), Ma-ha
(Caterpillar), Nol-cha (Sun), Hipa (Coyote) Va-had-ha (Tobacco), shul-ya
(Beaver), Kot-ta (Mescal or Tobacco), Ti-hil-ya (Mescal), Vi-ma-ga (a green
plant, not identified), Ku-mad-ha (Ocatilla or Iron Cactus) ,Ma-li-ka (unknown), Mus (Mesquite), Ma-si-pa (Coyote).
The tribal organization was loose, though, as a whole, the Mohave remained quite
distinct from other tribes. The chieftainship was hereditary in the male line.
Their dead were cremated. The population of the tribe in 1775-76 was
conservatively estimated by Garcés
(Diary, 443, 1900) at 3,000, and by Leroux,
about 1834 (Whipple, Pac. R. R. Rep., iii,1856), to be 4,000; but the latter is
probably an overestimate. Their number in 1905 was officially given as 1,589, of
whom 508 were under the Colorado River school superintendent, 856 under the Ft
Mohave school superintendent, 50 under the San Carlos agency, and about 175 at
Camp McDowell, on the Rio Verde. Those at the latter two points, however, are
apparently Yavapai, commonly known as Apache Mohave.
No treaty was made with the Mohave respecting their original territory, the
United States assuming title thereto. By act of Mar. 3, 1865, supplemented by
Executive orders of Nov. 22, 1873, Nov. 16, 1874, and May 15, 1876, the present
Colorado River Reservation, Arizona, occupied by Mohave, Chemehuevi, and Kawia, was
established.
Pasion, San Pedro, and Santa Isabel have been mentioned as rancherias of the
Mohave.
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