NOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN" BY EDWARD S. CURTIS
VOLUME 2- THE MOHAVE
LANGUAGE: Yuman
LOCATION: Nevada, California and Arizona-The Mohave lived in the valley of the Colorado river, where it crosses the three states at the Mohave valley
DRESS: The Mohaves wore little due to the extreme heat. Men wore a loin cloth, made of willow bark cloth. Women wore a a short skirt of the same material.
DWELLINGS: The Mohave house was built over a circular excavation, thatched with brush and covered with mud. Four posts were planted to support the roof timbers, which in turn supported the sloping wall poles.
RELIGION AND CEREMONIES: The Mohave's life is quite barren of ceremony and ritualism. The major ceremonies of the Mohave, "Maturity" and "War Dance," were obsolete to modern times. Mohaves main religious belief is of a spirit land that has an abundance of melons, beans, pumpkins, and game." A barren earth and the sunless sky came together, begetting gods and people."
QUOTES FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN:" "A barren earth and a sunless sky came together, begetting gods and people. Such, according to the myth, is the genesis of the Mohave, one of the principal branches of the Yuman family, possibly the parent people of the stock. Study of their myths and cult soon tells us that, compared with such other groups as the Navaho, the Pueblos, and the Plains tribes, their life is quite barren of ceremony and ritualism."
"Their (the Mohave) home is now, and was in traditional times, on the banks of the Colorado river, an environment into which they have so fitted themselves that they seem to have been always a vital part of it. To describe the Mohave without first speaking of their river would be like telling of the Makah of wind swept Cape Flattery without alluding to the sea that beats the sands of their very feet. The Colorado is like a river unto no other. Even the murmur of its waters in their never ceasing flow to the Southern sea is unlike the sound of other streams...but the Colorado is one unto itself. To look at its yellow surface and hear its low, sullen lap as its silt-laden waters flow by, is to think of a river of paint. For five hundred miles, gathering tribute from the rock walled gorge, it winds its deep and mighty course through the desert."
"Physically the Mohave are probably superior to any other tribe in the United States. men
and woman alike are big-boned, well-knitted, clear-skinned. Mentally they are dull and slow-brothers to the ox. The warm climate and the comparative ease by which they obtain their livelihood seem to have developed a people physically superb; but the climate and the conditions that developed such magnificent bodies did not demand or assist in the building up of an equivalent mentality... Nothing could illustrate the lack of ingenuity and thrift of this people better than the fact that, notwithstanding their home has always been on the banks of a navigable stream, they have never fashioned a boat or canoe for the purposes of navigation..."
"Not only in the foreordination of the medicine-men, but in every phase of Mohave life, dreams play a most important role. Whatever is dreamed will inevitably happen... Related to this belief is the passive submission of the Mohave to what he believes is fated to occur."