Mohave
The Mohave or Mojave lived in the Mojave Desert on both sides of the lower reaches of the Colorado River in Arizona and California in the southwestern United States . The current tribal name is an alienation of their ethnonym as Pipa Aha Makav or 'Aha Makhav ("people along the aha kwahwat (river), i.e. the Colorado River").
The Mohave are the northernmost Indian tribe of the River Yuma , whose groups lived on the lower Colorado and central Gila Rivers ; their language - the Mohave (Mohaje) or Hamakhav - belongs to the river Yuma languages from the Hoka language family .
The main groups of the "River Yuma" from north to south were the Mohave, Quechan (Kwtsaan) and Cocopa (Xawiƚƚ kwñchawaay) (along the Colorado River) as well as the Halchidhoma (Xalychidom Piipaash) and Maricopa (Piipaash) (along the central Gila River and the Salt River).
residential area
The Mohave now inhabit almost the same area as they used to. The green valley of lower Colorado is surrounded by a dry desert and was inundated annually by floods before the construction of the large dams. Each time a large amount of mud was deposited - fertile farmland. The settlements were spread along the river basin on both sides of the Colorado and extended from the Black Canyon of the Colorado and El Dorado Canyon in the north to the south past Spirit Mountain (in Mojave (Hamakhav): Avi-Kwame ; in Uto-Aztec: Tlalocan ) , the center of creation for all Yuma-speaking tribes in the Newberry Mountains from Nevada south to the Quechan Valley. Thus, their tribal area reached north of the Hoover Dam south to the Picacho Mountains and Chocolate Mountains about 100 miles below Lake Havasu (dammed by Parker Dam) on the Colorado River. Trade routes led to the Pacific Ocean . The present Fort Mohave reservation was established in 1865 and, although relatively small, extends over three states: California , Nevada and Arizona .
Socio-political organization
During the first contact with the Spanish in the 16th century, the tribal area of the Mohave was the one with the greatest population density in the whole of the southwest.
The Mohave were divided into three main geographic groups, each of which lived along the west and east banks of the Colorado River:
- Matha Iyathum / Matha-Lyathum or "Northern Mohave" : lived from the Black Canyon of the Colorado River south to the Mohave Valley, their northernmost settlement Tavaku ("cottontail rabbit mound") was upstream from Cottonwood Island .
- Hutto-pah or "Middle / Central Mohave" : lived along the east bank of the Colorado River in the center of the Mohave Valley .
- Kavi Iyathum / Kavi-Lyathums or "Southern Mohave" : lived from the Mohave Valley south to south of the Needles Peaks, several rock needles ( The Needles ) on the east bank in the Mohave Mountains.
Like most River Yuma, they had a strong tribal organization and a strong sense of ethnic identity. The Mohave regarded themselves as an independent nation with sovereignty over "their" territory and also referred to themselves as Hanuikhava . The three main groups of the Mohave were united as a "nation" on several levels - politically (common tribal council and election of chiefs), cultic-religious (gathering for central rituals) and due to the ongoing intertribal wars among the River Yuma, which were generally high ritualized, harsh and cruel. This "common identity" was particularly evident in times of war and the Mohave were able to quickly mobilize several hundred warriors.
In addition, the Mohave had a patrilineal clan system , which, according to tradition, was given to them by their cultural hero Mastamho . The once 22 clans (today this number is reduced to 18) each elected a clan chief, who together formed the tribal council of the Mohave.
In addition, there was a chief named aha macav pina ta'ahon , who led the nation together with the leaders of the three main groups and the clan chiefs. However, he was always dependent on the approval of the tribal council. The chief (tribal chief) was given authority for a certain period of time due to special skills or merits. As a rule, this does not involve powers of authority, only reputation and status.
history
The Mohave were a warlike people, often fighting against neighboring tribes and sometimes traveling great distances to wage war against other tribes. They maintained friendly relations with the Yuma , Chemehuevi , Western Apaches, and Yavapai , but viewed the Pima , Papago , Maricopa, and Cocopa as traditional enemies.
Juan de Oñate's expedition passed through the lands of the Mohave in 1604, but it wasn't until 1775 that they saw the first white man, Brother Francisco Garces , whose records state the tribe as friendly. The men would run around naked, while the women would wear rabbit and beaver fur cloaks . He called the Indians Jamabab .
In 1826 Jedediah Smith , an American mountain man , came to the Mohave with his people. Although the Indians treated the trappers kindly, hatred and hostility should arise between the two groups in the future. The Mojave believed that all animals had a right to exist, and it was incomprehensible to them that the trappers left the beaver carcasses on the bank after they had peeled off their fur. In 1827 a fight broke out between Mohave and trappers who had caught beavers from the river. In exchange, the Indians demanded a horse from the whites in vain. Four days later, two dead trappers and 16 dead Mojave were found. In the same year, the Indians attacked Jedediah Smith again, killing nine trappers. Violence between whites and Mohave increased over the next 20 years and culminated when trappers from the Hudson's Bay Company killed 26 Mojaves.
In the 1840s, a road (English. California Trail ) led to the California gold fields through the Mohave area. In 1858 there was a dispute with the gold prospectors passing through , which escalated in an attack on a motorcade. The result was the construction of Fort Mohave on the east bank of the Colorado in 1859 to ensure peace (the ruins of the fort can still be visited today). The US Army took five chiefs hostage to prevent further attacks by the Mohave. They were later killed in an attempted breakout, according to army reports. To make the Mohave aware of the futility of further resistance, a chief was sent to Los Angeles and Washington DC so that he could recognize the power of the Americans. Impressed as desired, he used his influence with the Mohave, who subsequently made peace with the whites.
Presumably by the Mohave Indians, Olive Oatman was kidnapped in 1851 and released four years later.
Way of life and culture
Like other River Yuma, the Mohave were mostly farmers who benefited from the annual flooding of the Colorado River. These floods brought regular fertilization of the arable land through the deposition of mud, and thus made irrigation unnecessary. The planting season began immediately after the flood had drained. Unlike some of the desert farmers of the highland Yuma further east, whose agricultural efforts were accompanied by extensive rituals asking for success, the Mohave knew almost no rituals associated with harvesting. In addition to the farm work, there was considerable fishing, hunting and the gathering of wild vegetables .
The main social unit of the Mohave was the family and the inheritance in the paternal line . There were no settlements, but scattered houses were found where suitable land was available for cultivation. The fields belonged to the family who made them arable. Formal leadership among the Mohave was usually a tribal chief who exercised his hereditary office as guide and advisor. Reputation was gained through success and bravery in combat, in which all physically capable men participated under the leadership of a single war chief . The warriors were divided into archers , clubs , and spearmen , and the fight was highly stylized.
The Mohave believed in a supreme creator Mutavilya and his son, the culture hero Mastamho , to whom they owed the existence of the river and the knowledge of plant cultivation. A central role in their ethnic religion played dreams , which the Mohave believed to be the only source of certain knowledge. Virtually everything in Mohave culture was related to dreams. Even the myths had to be dreamed again and again, because the oral tradition could not replace the "actual participation" in the mythical dream event. Since the different members of the tribe naturally had different dreams, it was discussed intensively and it was not uncommon for a dispute to arise. The medicine man was trusted to have particularly powerful dreams that could cure diseases, but also cause them. This assumption put him in an uncertain position.
The Mohave knew about 30 ceremonies and rituals, which were mainly singing, rattling and baskets being hit in order to heal. Each ceremony lasted a night or more and consisted of 100 to 200 songs. Public ceremonies consisted of sung cycles of rhyming chants based on a legend, usually a travel story. Some cycles consisted of hundreds of songs. Typical of the Mohave were their tattoos , consisting of lines and points on the face.
The dead were cremated and all their possessions with them so that he could accompany them to the spirits. In order to prove their love for the dead, the mourners often gave their belongings to the stake. The dead man's name was never mentioned again. Many of the old ceremonies are still held. Today - according to the ongoing surveys of the evangelical-fundamentalist conversion network Joshua Project - 65 percent of Mohave Christians (two thirds of them Protestant), 20 percent profess traditional religions, 15 percent are atheists.
Many Mohave now make a living from agriculture or find wage labor in nearby towns such as Needles , California. Some Mohave women make cloaks decorated with beads, but the handicrafts are insignificant. Although more than half of the Mohave still speak their mother tongue, according to the assessment of SIL International it is listed as an endangered language with status 8a (moribund / dying out).
The Fort Mohave Reservation (96 km²) and the Colorado River Reservation (1,077 km²), which is shared with other tribes, now have around 1,120 tribesmen.
literature
- William C. Sturtevant (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest Vol. 9, 1979 ISBN 0-16-004577-0
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest Vol. 10, 1983 ISBN 0-16-004579-7
- Tom Bathi: Southwestern Indian Tribes. , KC Publications, Las Vegas 1995
Web links
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christian F. Feest : Animated Worlds - The religions of the Indians of North America. In: Small Library of Religions , Vol. 9, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-451-23849-7 . Pp. 113-114.
- ↑ a b Barry M. Pritzker: A Native American Encyclopedia. History, Culture and Peoples. Oxford University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-513877-1 . P. 47.
- ↑ Joshua Project: United States ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Mohave, Mojave), accessed January 2, 2016.
- ↑ Ethnological information according to ISO language code 639-3: mov on ethnologue.com. SIL International , accessed January 2, 2016.
