The Yuma Reclamation Project: Irrigation, Indian Allotment, and Settlement Along the Lower Colorado River

Chapter 2: Quechan Land

According to the Quechan creation myth, Kumastamxo, the younger of two great spiritual leaders of the Yuman tribes, lived with his various peoples atop a flat-topped mountain known as Avikwamé, the place of creation. The several Yuman tribes then all descended from the top of Avikwamé to inhabit their respective territories. The Quechan, however, followed xam kwatcán, meaning “another going down,” or a trail different from the others. Hence, it is assumed that the Quechans adopted their tribal name from the word kwatcán.1 Outside of their tribal setting, the Quechans have more commonly been known as the Yumas. Yuman, a branch of the Hokam family of languages, is the linguistic grouping to which the Quechans belong. It encompasses the Indian tribes occupying the bottomlands and delta of the lower Colorado River from the Mohave tribe, near present-day Needles in the North, to the Cocopa, who in aboriginal times inhabited the area near the Gulf of California (map 2.1). In addition to the Mohave, Quechan, and Cocopa, several other tribes of Yuman lineage once occupied the banks of the lower Colorado, including the Halyikwamai, Kohuana and Halchidhoma, while the Maricopa inhabited the lower Gila Valley. Presumably, it was the nonYuman Pima, Papago (Tohono O’odham), and other tribes who referred to the Quechans as Yum, but C. Daryll Forde believes it is possible that the Spaniards, who were using the term Yuma in the eighteenth century, introduced it among the Indians.2 Regardless, Quechan is the proper name of the river tribe that has traditionally inhabited the lower Colorado River region near the Gila River confluence. River Civilizations The tribal homelands of the Cocopa, the Quechan, and the Mohave had the advantages of being larger and more productive than those occupied by the other tribes. These three tribal nuclei, being sufficiently distant from one another, permitted the rise of three strong and independent river i฀2 j Quechan Land 20 t h e y u m a r e c l a m at i o n p r o j e c t tribes, who expanded at the expense of the smaller river tribes found in the area.3 The centrally located territory of the Quechan tribe was the pivotal point in intertribal strife, for it was at the Colorado-Gila confluence that dispersal of the river tribes apparently emanated. In the nineteenth century, the Halchidhoma, Halyikwamai, and Kohuana were expelled from the Colorado region.4 The displaced tribes migrated eastward along the lower Gila Valley to join the Maricopa Indians. In contrast to the exodus of these tribes, a small group of eastern Diegueños, the Kamia, moved into Quechan territory prior to 1850, and eventually came to locate in the area south of Pilot Knob. The Kamia recognized the territorial claim of the Quechans to the land they occupied and lived there as guests of the Quechan. They also served as a buffer group between the Quechans and the Cocopa. Traditional enmities between individual tribes were no doubt related to competition over the same general type of habitat, for the Yuman river people recognized themselves to be bottomland agriculturalists and considered the floodplains their exclusive domain.5 But traditional allim a p 2 . 1. Yuman river tribes of the lower Colorado River. (Based on A. L. Kroeber, Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America, Map 1a: Native Tribes of North America; and Raymond W. Stanley, “Political Geography of the Yuma Border District,” 1:51) Quechan Land 21 ances among tribes also existed, as the powerful Quechan and the Mohave river tribes and several smaller groups typically allied themselves against the Cocopa and its tribal allies. At one time, the territory held by the Quechans might have extended along both banks of the Colorado River, from several miles south of the Gila confluence to approximately sixty miles north, near present-day Blythe, but its undisputed tribal core area focused on the strategic crossroads at the confluence of the Colorado and Gila rivers (map 2.1).6 From this center the tribal territory expanded outward in concert with population pressure within the core area and conversely with the resistance of neighboring tribes.7 The Quechan, like other Yuman tribes, regarded themselves as national entities with considerable tribal solidarity, and their land was thought of as a country. Fred Kniffen notes, however, that it is difficult to determine precisely the areal divisions...