MOHAVE WARRIORS OF YESTERDAY

The Grand Canyon

the Proterozoic, which left in its seaweeds and crustaceans a record of the first life beginning on Earth. But now again the persistent forces of destruction began, the solution of limestone by rainwater, heat, and cold, which expanded and contracted the rock, frost that cracked it, erosion by windbown sand. And again the surface was a rolling plain.the Earth. Of a third period, there remain but a few isolated buttes: the Devonian, the "Age of Fishes," when amphibians and land plants began to form. Yet so clear is the pattern before and after this gap that there is little doubt that there were more submergences whose deposits here were washed away without a trace. The story resumes with another deep submergence, during which the Redwall deposit was laid down. As the uplift slowly followed, the red Supai muds were deposited in the shallow water and then the Coconino sandstone on the beaches by strong currents. Each grain of sand is distinctly formed and polished. This leaves little doubt that the uplift was exceedingly slow. Still remains another submergence, deposit, and uplift, showing the top layer of Kaibab limestone, which forms the present surface of the high northern plateau. With this ends one of the great periods in geological history, the Carboniferous, in which all the oldest coal deposits in the world were accumulated and laid down under great pressure. It was the "Age of Amphibians," of sharks, and sea monsters. Primitive flowering plants and the earliest conebearing trees began to form. Back-boned animals came into being for the first time. It ends too the third great geological era, the Paleozoic, 340 million years long. The end of all "ancient life" forms, as the Proterozoic was of all primordial life. And yet these last four formations the Redwall, Supai, Coconino, and Kaibab - took shape in its last period, the Carboniferous, and end the story of the Grand Canyon. What about the two following eras? The Mesozoic, era of medieval life, 140,000,000 years long, the "Age of Reptiles," of the great land monsters, the dinosaurs, and the flying reptiles. The Cenozoic, era of modern life, the age of man, of modern animals and plants. Already it is 60,000,000 years in extent. Around the Grand Canyon, remnants of its formations rise on the horizon. Vermilion Cliffs to the north, Cedar Mountain to the east. Red Butte to the south. All the rest has been swept away by the great red river as it cut the Canyon. They were, in fact, the river's tools, every grain of sand, every frostshattered boulder, every mountain peak. The teeth by which time has cut a visible gash through eternity. This, then, is the story of the Grand Canyon. The geological record of an Earth at least 2,000,000,000 years old, nearly three-quarters of which transpired before the first record of life, and all but 1,000,000 years before man came into existence. Over three miles thick it is, yet the whole of man's evolution is not represented by so much as the thickness of one sheet of paper. We know so little, and we are so contemptuous of each other's knowledge. The oldest man here, the red man, has spoken in the science we call "myth." The white man speaks in the myth we call "science." Yet their identical story of these million missing years could be written on this paper in a few paragraphs.

“Kwanami's here!” the boy called into the clapboard shack, as I walked around a Model T without wheels and waved at him. Kwanami, the Mohave Indian word for “warrior.” That meant me. Not because I had distinguished myself by any war prowess, but because, as a fledgling anthropologist on my first field assignment, I asked so many questions about the ways of the warriors in the days before the white interlopers entered Mohave territory. lined face breaking into a reserved smile. On the wall behind him hung ceremonial replicas of weapons used in combat by Mohaves in the days when their name was feared by Indian tribes for hundreds of miles around.

Only two weeks before my arrival, the chief had suffered a stroke. His death seemed imminent, and relatives were summoned from Parker and the Phoenix Indian School to be present at the cremation rites. But the patriarch had fooled them. Although his funeral pyre, consisting of odds and ends of lumber, was still in readiness beside the shack, he was now able to sit up and respond to hours of questioning.

I distributed cigarettes among the Indians and began my interrogations. My interpreter, a stocky, genial middle-aged man with one blind eye, transposed my queries into Mohave. The chief responded in the dignified tongue of his people. The interpreter relayed the answers to me, as my pencil moved busily over my notebook.

Other Mohaves listened or conversed among themselves. A grandmother bounced a chubby baby on her knee, calling shrilly, "Kenoosh! Kenoosh! Aaaa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa!" This, apparently, was the Mohave equivalent of "kitchy-koo."

My knowledge of Mohave warfare increased as the chief, looking deep into the recesses of his memory, recalled the glories of former times. He was the teacher, the younger Mohaves and I the pupils. We learned how things were "in the old days."

In aboriginal times, the Mohaves regarded warfare as, in a sense, a sport, somewhat as people today consider football. It was great fun to surprise an enemy camp, to kill and scalp, to make a speedy and successful getaway; and then, upon the return home, to celebrate the victory. The Mohaves were an aggressor people, but they fought not primarily for territorial aggrandizement. Nor, unlike the Apaches, were they concerned with booty. War was enjoyable, a means of achieving personal glory. It furnished an outlet for their turbulent energies.

One hundred and seventy miles down the Colorado

Mohave Warriors of Yesterday

In their dreams, spirits appeared to them, conferring the power for success in war. He dreamed of seizing ferocious mountain lions or bears by the legs and splitting them asunder.

River lived the Yuma tribe, kinsmen of the Mohaves. The Yumas, too, delighted in fighting, frequently combining forces with the Mohaves in raids upon the peaceful Maricopas, who lived near the junction of the Gila and Salt rivers, southwest of the site of Phoenix. The Yumas and Mohaves also engaged in joint raids upon the Cocopas, a tribe living near the delta of the Colorado River at the head of the Sea of Cortes. Other tribes along the Colorado, occupying the region between the Yumas and Mohaves, were subjected to such constant pressure in a kind of squeeze play that the survivors finally abandoned their homes and fled east across the desert to join the Maricopas.

And yet, my informants insisted, most of the Mohaves were peaceable. It was the warrior class, the kwanamis, that was responsible for the recurrent hostilities. The kwanamis dominated the tribe, outranking in prestige even the tribal chief. There was no effective control over the kwanamis; they went Out to fight whenever the spirit moved them. Other men might voluntarily join a war party, but the kwanamis were "different." Kwanamis had "dreamed right." In their dreams, spirits appeared to them, conferring the power for success in war.

Mohave Warriors of Yesterday

while the unborn soul resided at Avikwame, “ghost mountain,” the sacred mountain of the Mohaves.

Spirits appeared in the dreams of a future kwanami, teaching him what he needed to know for success in warfare. He dreamed of the hawk, a predatory bird he would later emulate in combat. He dreamed of going through dust, signifying that he would come through battle unscathed. He dreamed of seizing ferocious mountain lions or bears by the legs and splitting them asunder.

Since the kwanami acquired the necessary knowledge in dreams, it was unnecessary to undergo a special course of training. But it was necessary for the adult kwanamis to ascertain which boys were dreaming properly. Thus, boys between the ages of four and six underwent a series of tests or ordeals. They were pushed into bees' nests or lashed across the back with switches. A boy who cried would never become a kwanami, but he who fought back or accepted the torture stoically - ah, there was a boy destined for future glory.

A boy who passed the ordeals was set apart from other children. Their games were beneath him, and besides, he played “too rough” for the Mohave small-fry. The “brave boys” went hunting, practiced marksmanship with bows and arrows, and ran long distances to develop endurance. They became obsessed with the desire to fight, dreaming of the day when they might meet the enemy and kill.

The thought-life of an adult kwanami, likewise, was dominated by his supreme concern for battling the foe. He lived in a Spartan manner, eating and drinking little, and he always ate alone. Women held no interest for him. Agricultural pursuits were beneath his dignity. He tarried in secluded places, meditating on warfare. Many of the kwanamis were great barrelchested, muscular, broad-shouldered men, weighing well over 200 pounds.

The weapons of the Mohaves included clubs and a five-foot bow of willow or mesquite wood with arrows of sharpened arrow-weeds. The arrows were not particularly lethal, and warriors often continued to fight after being hit several times, arrows bristling from their bodies like the quills of a porcupine. Much more deadly was the halyawhai, a great wooden club shaped like an old-fashioned potato-masher, which was used effectively in hand-to-hand combat.

The victory was celebrated by women and little boys, who danced around the scalps for days and nights in a pantomime of warfare.

The warriors wore only a breechclout and sandals, their long hair bound up at the back of the head with rawhide. The entire face was painted black, with geometric designs in red, black, and white adorning the body.

Mohave war tactics terrorized their enemies. They attacked on foot, in a definite battle formation. In the lead ran the standard-bearer, a kwanami who carried a feathered pike, a four-foot length of mesquite wood, to which were attached twenty pairs of hawk feathers. The standard-bearer was sworn never to retreat, and should he fall in battle, another kwanami immediately picked up the standard.

Next came the archers, followed by men with the potato-masher clubs. A clubber seized an enemy by his long hair, smashed his face, and threw him over his shoulder to smaller men armed with heavy straight clubs, like small baseball bats, with which they cracked the skull of the foe.

When a major expedition against the Maricopas was projected, several scouts preceded the war party, locating trails, waterholes, and enemy settlements. Sometimes they audaciously disguised themselves and entered Maricopa houses in the dark of the evening, sitting among the enemy and listening to the conversations.

Before the kwanamis departed for battle, a dance of incitement lasting for 24 hours was held, the women cavorting about with scalps taken in previous battles.

Six days were required for the warriors to traverse the desert to Maricopa country. The lean, fit warriors took very little food, walking rapidly in silence across the forbidding desert. Commented my interpreter, “I'd get lost. We're just old tubs of lard nowadays.” A few women, relatives of kwanamis, were included in a war party. The women functioned chiefly as morale-builders, exhorting the warriors to valorous deeds. One Mohave described a woman in a war party thus: “She makes a noise like a preacher. She eggs them on.” These women were provided with bats for self-defense, and occasionally participated in the melee.

Attacks were always by surprise. The Mohaves swooped down upon an enemy settlement at dawn, shrieking hideously, with annihilation of the foe the aim.

Two essential members of any war party were the shaman, or medicine man, who treated the wounded, and a special scalper, who dreamed his power to scalp. Contact with the enemy was believed supernaturally contaminating, hence if anyone other than the scalper should take a scalp, he would go insane and “holler in the night.” The scalper looked for an enemy with “nice, long, heavy hair.” Spotting his victim, the scalper would knock down the “longhair,” break his neck, cut off his head with a stone knife, and run away to a nearby gulch, where he might scalp undisturbed. The scalps taken by the Mohaves were tremendous, including the ears and everything above the bridge of the nose.

On the return journey the warriors fasted, and dove immediately into the Colorado River upon reaching their destination. These ablutions, for purification purposes, were repeated each morning for four days.

The victory was celebrated by women and little boys, who, painted like warriors, danced around the scalps for four days and four nights in a burlesque pantomime of warfare. The warriors themselves, above such trivialities, retired to their dwellings.

The day of the kwanami is past. The man who in former times might have been a warrior today works on the railroad tracks at Needles, or farms his land on the Colorado River Reservation near Parker. But in hours of leisure, burly men lie on the grass in the little park behind the railroad station at Needles, apparently deep in meditation, perhaps dreaming of the hawk and the club, oblivious of the bustling of the mercenary whites around them.