**THE FORT MOJAVE INDIAN TRIBE**

The Mojave Desert lies between the Great Basin Desert to the north, and
the Sonoran Desert to the south, and includes part of southeastern
California and southern Nevada. The Mojave spreads over 15,000 square
miles and is called a high desert with altitudes ranging from below sea
level in Death Valley, to 4,500 feet. Various areas are covered by sandy
soil, gravel, and salt flats. Winter rainfall, in varying amounts,
produces spring wildflowers on the desert floor. The physical features
and the altitude determine the plants and animals of the various areas
of the desert. The Mojave is home to the Joshua tree, creosote bush,
bighorn sheep, coyotes, jackrabbits, and sidewinders.

At present, the Mojave area contains over 15 reservations of Native
Americans. Among these is the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, whose offices
are in Needles, California.

The pre-contact Mojave were known as the "Pipa Aha Macav," "the people
by the water." Evidence suggests that the ancestors of the Mojave came
to the area of the Colorado River soon after the last ice age. For
perhaps as long as 8,000 years, they depended on crops of the cyclical
spring floodwaters of the river to irrigate their beans, corn, pumpkins
and other plants native to the area. All members of the family worked at
the planting, weeding, and harvesting. The people also fished, and
trapped small animals along the riverbank; with the hides of rabbits,
beavers, etc. providing the little clothing they required. The men made
bows and arrows for hunting. Other tools included stone knives,
scrapers, choppers, hammerstones, string and rope. Before dams and flood
control, the riverbanks were lined with groves of cottonwood, willow,
and stands of arrow weed. The Mojave were expert basket weavers, as
these examples illustrate.

A Mojave house was rectangular, with a sloping roof that extended to
form a covered porch. The frame and horizontal

beams were made from large cottonwood logs. Arrow weed was used for the
thatch roof and the wall covering. Some houses were filled in with mud
from the river. The door and smoke hole were the only openings, but most
of the cooking was done outside. Winter houses may have been built on
excavation of a few feet in the sand. Summerhouses may have been built
nearer to the river. There is no evidence that they used sweathouses for
bathing.

Men wore willow bark breech clothes and fiber sandals if they were
traveling far. Women wore a front and back skirt made from the inner
bark of the willow, cottonwood, or mesquite tree. Body and face painting
were used as well as tattooing with a blue cactus ink. (Slaves as well
as married women were identified by chin tattoos.) One author has stated
that the Mojave believed that a person must be tattooed in order to
enter the here---after. They might, instead, go down a "rat-hole."(1)

Cremation was practiced by the Mojave to enter the spirit world. All
property and belongings of the deceased were placed on the pyre with the
body to accompany the spirit. The name of the deceased person was never
again spoken.

1.  From: Smith, Gerald A. The Mojave Indians. San

Bernardino County Museum Assoc., 1977, p. 16.

The Mojave lived in a system of clans that they believed had been given
to them in the First Time. The clans were named for things above and
below the earth. There were 22 patrilinear clans (today there are 18)
with the children taking the name of their father's clan. However, only
the women used the clan name and were required to marry someone from
another clan. Leadership was divided among the leaders of three villages
with a hereditary chief, a manager for entertainment, war leaders and
the shamans who had curative powers.

The Mojave people were relatively healthy before the contact with the
Europeans. The shaman used singing, laying on of hands, blowing, and
conversation to try to cure his patient. Life for the shaman could be
dangerous because, if too many of his patients died, the tribe might
execute him for malpractice.

They were a very spiritual people and placed great importance in their
dreams. All aspects of their lives, war, politics, love, etc., were
dictated by this source of knowledge. Through the dreams, "sumach a'hot"
a person might be given a direction or an ability to do something better
than other tribal members. To receive a special gift, a person needed to
go through a time of fasting and other trials. These gifts were to be
used to better the tribe, as well as the individual.

The Mojave could be a fierce people who were willing to defend their
land, but they were also willing to venture away from it. They became
excellent traders, going as far as the Pacific Coast to trade surplus
crops, baskets, and beautiful pottery for items they valued, such as
shells.

The people were great talkers and singers. Often the telling of one of
their myths could take up to five or six evenings. In addition to these
tales in the long song cycles, the people tell other kinds of myths,
including an origin myth, migration legends, sources of clan traditions,
and coyote and miscellaneous tales. Other forms of entertainment
included casting a pole at a rolling hoop, football races, dice games,
guessing games, and a game of tossing pumpkin rings onto a wooden pin.

In 1604, a search for silver led Don Juan Onate through the Mojave area,
but it wasn't until 1775 that contact was made with them by Fray
Francisco Garces. He found the tall, attractive people to be friendly,
and several of them traveled with him for several months. During this
time, his travels included a visit to the Havasupai Indians in the Grand
Canyon in 1776.

After contact with Jedediah Smith and James Ohio Pattie, violence flared
and there followed 20 years of warfare with the trappers from various
companies. It reached its peak when 26 Mojave were killed by trappers
from the Hudson Bay Company in 1847.

In 1850, the United States annexed the territory, and trouble with the
United States Army commenced. However, in 1854, Lt. Amie Weeks Whipple
claimed the Mojave people's friendship as he and his men surveyed and
mapped a railroad route from Ft. Smith, Arkansas to the Pacific Ocean.
The Mojave hoped that this would give them new trade opportunities. A
wagon route soon followed Whipple's survey route and a fort was built
near present-day Needles, California, to guard the river crossing.
Troubles continued, and by 1859, the cry was "Wipe out the Mojave!"
which resulted in 700 Indian fighters being sent south from San
Francisco.

The Civil War closed Fort Mojave but, by 1865, the U.S. government
created the Colorado Indian Reservation near Parker, in the southern
range of the tribe. In addition to splitting the tribe into two parts,
the 1890 transfer of the fort from the War Department to the Department
of the Interior led to the site becoming one of the industrial boarding
schools designed to eliminate native languages and culture. The adults
were taught Anglo farming methods, but had no land on which to farm.
Many went to work for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (later the Santa
Fe), mines, and riverboats. The Mojave people were now urban Indians.

In 1911, by Presidential order, The Fort Mojave Indians were granted a
reservation, made up of the old military land on the California and
Nevada sides of the river, and checkerboard land on the Arizona side,
totaling 31,300 acres. (The checkerboard layout came about because the
government had given every other section of land to the railroad.)

After a devastating flood in 1936, the tribe bought more land

outside Needles to build a new town. The leadership of the tribe changed
completely in 1957, when they approved the Fort Mojave Constitution,
which had a seven member tribal council.

Since then, the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe has fought many battles in
Congress and the courts to protect its land and assets. They took "the
long route through the legal system to prevent dissolution of
Reservation lands to secure rights to the water of the Colorado River."
(2) The tribe's water rights were stated

2\. Fort Mojave Indian Tribe. [Celebrating Change]{.underline}. Needles,
CA, 2001. /p.141.

in "Arizona vs. California," which divided the Colorado River water
among the claimants. Because Western water law uses the principle of
"first in use, first in right," the Tribe has "first call." The Tribe
has a diversion right to 132,537 acre-feet of the river water that is
not subject to any state's control. Careful planning has allowed the
Tribe to construct housing on a large scale, casinos, commercial
centers, and to continue with a large scale agri---business on
reservation land.

Other legal battles have included the threat to close a major regional
highway to make the point that the state had never acquired a Tribal
right of way, and a continuing battle against the building of a low
level nuclear waste dump on the reservation property.

Three casinos, an RV park, the Mojave Resort Golf Course, leases to
Calpine for two power sites, shopping centers, and other land uses are
among their assets. The Tribe is the largest employer in the southern
Mojave Valley, and has full tribal employment, new health care and
recreational facilities, cultural heritage preservation sites, and
educational scholarships for tribal members. With a goal of economic
self-sufficiency, the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe is looking forward to
expanding its cultural and economic opportunities.