Yava-Who?: Yavapai History and (Mis)Representation in Arizona's Indigenous Landscape

On September 30, 1864, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Arizona Territory Charles D. Poston submitted his annual report to Commissioner of Indian Affairs William P. Dole. Arizona had only been separated from its neighbor to the east, New Mexico, the previous year, and Superintendent Poston and other territorial officials were trying to make sense of affairs in the newly stand-alone territory. Poston was particularly concerned with the so-called Apache menace. Apaches, he wrote, "prey upon the enterprise of this exposed frontier with an unparalleled audacity." They wantonly "harassed" and "murdered" white Arizonans, and their "subjugation or extermination … ought not to be delayed." The violence was so bad, in Poston's telling, that settlers around the territorial capital at Fort Whipple (Prescott) "have kept one hundred men in the field for more than a year at their own expense," under the leadership of Colonel King Woolsey.¹ Poston expressed particular disdain for a group he referred to as "Apache Mojaves." They were a "mongrel race of Indians" who inhabited the lands between the Verde and Colorado rivers and led a "nomadic and pilfering life." While they were "not bad Indians," their homelands were at the center of the fantastically rich mining operations of central Arizona, which would come to include gold, silver, and copper. Because of this, they were in "continual danger of slaughter from the miners and frontiersmen" who had invaded their homelands.² This less-than-friendly introduction was among the first references to "Apache Mojaves" in the official record of the Office of Indian Affairs. And it was a misidentification. The people to whom Poston was referring were Yavapais, who have been largely misidentified, misrepresented, and misunderstood for centuries.

Poston was simply the latest in a long line of individuals who failed to take the time to recognize the uniqueness of Yavapai culture and history, and distinguish us from neighboring groups. In fact, this failure dates back to the Spanish borderlands period. Antonio de Espejo, a wealthy Spanish entrepreneur, funded and led an expedition to New Mexico and Arizona in 1582–83. Espejo was principally in search of gold and mineral wealth. Guided by Hopis, his party were the first Europeans to record interactions with Yavapais. Diego Pérez de Luxán, who served as the chronicler of the Espejo expedition, described Yavapais as "a mountain people," who "fled from us … when they heard unfamiliar sounds." When the party finally made contact with the justifiably nervous Yavapais, the Spaniards found that they had "built a hut of branches [a wah'boon'yah'vah or traditional Yavapai brush dwelling]. Six paces from it was a large painted cross, with four small ones on the sides. All the men, women, and children were seated in a row, with their heads low, singing. … They had crosses of colored sticks on their heads and gave us bowls of mescal with piñon nuts and bread made from them." Yavapais showed the Spanish party ore from nearby mines on Walkeyanyanye (Mingus Mountain), and then guided them to the mines. The Europeans were hopeful of finding gold but disappointed to find only copper.³ A similar visit, once again guided by Hopis, brought a small party under Marcos Farfán de los Godos to Yavapai territory and Walkeyanyanye in 1598. Because of the crosses, which represented the four sacred directions to the Yavapais, Spaniards took to calling us cruzados ("people with crosses").⁴

While the present essay could not possibly cover the entirety of Yavapai interactions with outsiders, and the ways in which these interactions have framed understandings of Yavapai history and culture, suffice it to say that the lack of substantive knowledge about Yavapais is deeply rooted in the accounts of interactions written by explorers, colonizers, and those who wished us exterminated. Most commonly, we were mistaken for our Western Apache neighbors. In truth, misidentification is key to understanding perceptions of Yavapais, as well as our frequent invisibility within the Indigenous landscape. Furthermore, such ignorance persists to the present, even among those who are otherwise knowledgeable about the Indigenous...