Quotes About Mohaves

Or send her reasons why she does not wish to come." Burke's caveat may have been inspired by the knowledge that a year earlier when the Whipple party had spent a week with the Mohaves, Olive had not presented herself, or by Francisco, who had talked with Espaniole months earlier and may have gleaned that Olive preferred to stay.

the Mohaves were highly nationalistic, their sense of patriotism had always been more a mental than a territorial construct—one that would soon be tested.

Olive acquired the nickname "Spantsa," which meant "rotten vagina" or "sore" vagina. 23 She may have been menstruating when she arrived, wrapped in rags, or she may have been perceived as unhygienic by comparison to the Mohaves, who bathed every day in the Colorado River, unlike whites, for whom a splash of toilet water was considered a substitute for washing. 24

In the coming years, Irataba emerged — from the perspective of the federal government — as the leader and spokesperson not only of the Mohaves, but of all the Colorado River tribes.

The Mohaves were friendly with the Yavapais and the Quechans; enemies of the Pimas, the Maricopas, and the Cocopas; and merely tolerant of the Chemehuevis, who in the 1830s had moved into the valley below them on the western side of the river — an area the Mohaves yielded to them because they believed departed spirits lived there, making it dangerous.

When they weren't farming alongside the other Mohaves, the girls spent their first summer with the tribe gathering mesquite, collecting wild vegetables with the women, or swimming naked in the Colorado.