Paths of Life

Colorado River Yumans—Mohave, Quechan, Cocopa, Maricopa

In the arid Southwest, flowing rivers were magnets that attracted people to hunt, farm, and gather foods along their fertile banks. Most of the peoples of the Colorado River, such as the Mohave, Quechan, Cocopah, and Maricopa, were speakers of Yuman languages and shared cultural traditions.

The history of the Colorado River region is one of cultural diversity and interaction among these many different peoples. They traded, traveled, intermarried, shared resources, formed political alliances, and sometimes fought bloody battles—both among themselves and with non-Yuman speakers such as the Pima and Chemehuevi.

As Spaniards and Anglo-Americans moved into the region, they also competed for the river and its lands. Eventually, the U.S. Government forced the Yuman-speaking peoples onto small reservations a fraction the size of their original homelands.

Today, the lands of the Colorado River Indian Reservation are shared with Hopi and Navajo immigrants, resulting in new interactions between cultures on the Colorado River.

Read the essay, Gathering of the Old Ones: Oral Traditions, by Amelia Flores