The Ahamacav (Mohave) Nation has been described by scholars as "sometimes friendly, sometimes deadly." This characterization of fierce loyalty to friends and just retribution toward enemies summarizes the Anglo-American experience of interaction with the Mohave Nation in the period of U.S. western expansion in the nineteenth century. Although no formal treaties were signed between Congress and the Mohave Nation, the Mohave people continue to honor the gentleman's agreement negotiated in 1859 with the representatives of the United States.
The Ahamacav, or "People along the River," continue to flourish on the banks of the Colorado River in what is now known as the southwestern United States. The tribe lives in an area that currently borders the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. The tribe maintains legal title to its critical aboriginal territory, and these areas are referred to now as the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation and the Colorado River Indian Reservation. The combined population in 1995 for both Mohave communities is approximately twenty-nine hundred.
These reservations are administered by different sovereign tribal governments under two separate legal jurisdictions. These governments were created and recognized by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and the tribal-council form of government that was adopted at the time does not separate the functions of the administration, the legislature, and the judiciary. However, both governments operate civil and criminal courts that protect and assert their legal jurisdiction on the reservations over their own members.
The historic economy of the tribe consisted of a combination of gathering and agriculture by men and women and of hunting and fishing by men. The lush environment of the river valleys provided an abundance of wild foods that were seasonally gathered. The most important of these foods were the honey mesquite bean and screwbean mesquite bean, which provided a significant nourishing staple in the Mohave diet. The Mohave agriculturalists also strategically adapted their cultivation to the flood patterns of the Colorado River and raised double crops of corn, beans, squash, and melons. Spanish contact later contributed wheat as another staple food crop. Several varieties of fish provided significant protein in the diet and were gathered by means of nets, scoops, and fishing lines. Large-scale trade with surrounding tribes, including distant tribes along the coast of southern California and the Pueblos along the Rio Grande, was also an important economic activity for the Mohaves. These established Mohave trade routes were later appropriated by U.S. Army engineers and eventually served as the basis for major portions of Interstate 40 and the Santa Fe railway.
The initial integration of the Mohave people into the cash economy of the United States was problematic. Mohave women were largely displaced because there was no primary role for them in the male-dominated American labor force. However, Mohave men quickly adapted to opportunities in irrigation farming, cattle ranching, and railway or mine work. Although some Mohave women worked as domestic help, laundresses, and nannies, many selected entrepreneurial opportunities by independently producing and marketing pottery, bead ornaments, and other goods to tourists along the railway. The phenomenal business these entrepreneurs did provided significant capital to Mohave families while the legal title to Mohave land was being legally and administratively resolved.
As Anglo-American appropriation of the economic resources of the area continued, large agricultural development schemes were promoted on both reservations as a means of integrating the Mohave into the regional economy of the United States. The Colorado River Indian reservation was first funded for an irrigation system in 1868 but large-scale agriculture did not begin there until the Poston Japanese internment camp was opened in 1942. The Japanese contributed significant labor and skill in subjugating the land, until their labor was replaced by Navajo and Hopi colonists who were settled at Colorado River after the internment camp was closed in 1945. Fort Mojave financed its own irrigation system in 1976. In 1995, tribal agricultural enterprises and the leasing of irrigated farmlands to non-Mohaves provided the basis for annual tribal government revenues between eight million and ten million dollars. The development of casino-style gambling on both reservations in 1995 promised to provide significant revenue following the repayment of capital improvement loans in the early twenty-first century.
Mohave tribal identity in both reservation communities remains strong, although the pattern of intermarriage with other tribes that began in the early 1900s and a trend toward intermarriage with other races that began in the 1960s continue to challenge and change individual concepts of identity as well as the community's sense of itself. Tribal concepts of identity continue to be based on residence in the community, kinship ties, and knowledge of language. These have clashed with Pan-Indian essentialist concepts of identity concerning racial appearance, blood quantum, and manifestations of the outward appearance of "culture." Recent assertions of tribal identity in response to Pan-Indianism have taken the form of formally recognized elders' groups, increased support for scholarship in history and material culture, and legal codes defining cultural instruction and enrollment.
The most critical problem affecting the tribe today is the serious growth of diabetes among the population. The damming of the Colorado River in the 1930s and the subsequent change in economy and diet are all contributing factors to the development of diabetes in the population. Culture is affected because the time available for the transmission of knowledge decreases when the average life span is reduced by twenty to thirty years; for example, language skills have dropped significantly, and proficiency remains only in the population over thirty years of age. At present, the Mohave communities are exploring ways to resolve this problem and to mitigate the long-term impact of diabetes.
The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber noted that the Mohave people were a rare example of a true nation. When attacked or challenged, the Mohaves set aside their personal differences and coordinated their skills as a group to achieve victory. The contact history of the Mohave Nation continues to reflect this strength as they protect their people and their resources for now and the future. The Mohave people continue to properly assert themselves economically, politically, and legally in order not just to survive, but to flourish. Their ability to adapt to change on their own terms must not be mistaken for a tendency toward assimilation; rather their actions demonstrate their continued strength as a unique people and nation.
Alfred Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California "The Mohave," (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1925); Gerald Smith, The Mojaves: Historic Indians of San Bernardino County (Redlands, Calif.: San Bernardino County Museum Association, 1977); Robert F. Spencer and Jesse D. Jennings, et al, The Native Americans: Prehistory and Ethnology of the North American Indians (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
Michael Philip Tsosie
Colorado River Indian Tribes
University of California at Berkeley
