The Chemehuevi are a Native American tribe who presently live with the Mohave in and near the Colorado River Reservation in Arizona. The tribe also lives with the Paiutes on various California reservations. "Chemehuevi" is a Mojave name applied to them; the Chemehuevi call themselves Nüwüwü ("The People", singular Nüwü).^[1][2] Their language, Chemehuevi, now considered by most linguists to be a dialect of the Ute language,^[3] is near extinction^[4]; during the filming of the 2008 American documentary film The Linguists, linguists Greg Anderson and K. David Harrison interviewed and recorded the last remaining speaker.

[edit] History and traditional culture

McKinley Fisher, a Chemehuevi man employed by the Indian Service at Colorado Agency, Arizona in 1957.

The Chemehuevi were originally a desert tribe among the Numu or Paiute-Shoshone nations. Post-contact, they lived primarily in the eastern Mojave Desert and later the Chemehuevi Valley along the Colorado River in California. They were a nomadic people living in small groups given the sparse resources available in the desert environment. Carobeth Laird indicates their traditional territory spanned the High Desert from the Colorado River on the east to the Tehachapi Mountains on the west and from the Las Vegas area and Death Valley on the north to the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains in the south. Throughout the ages, their traditional ancestral territory has spanned three states: Arizona, California and Nevada. They are most closely identifed as among the Great Basin Indians. Among others they are cousins of the Kawaiisu. (Laird 1976)

The most comprehensive collection of Chemehuevi history, culture and mythology was gathered by Carobeth Laird (1895-1983) and her second husband, George Laird, one of the last Chemehuevi to have been raised in the traditional culture. Carobeth Laird, a linguist and ethnographer, wrote a comprehensive account of the culture and language as George Laird remembered it, and published their collaborative efforts in her 1976 The Chemehuevis, the first and, to date, only ethnography of the Chemehuevi traditional culture.

Describing the Chemehuevi as she knew them, and presenting the texture of traditional life amongst the people, Carobeth Laird writes:

The Chemehuevi character is made up of polarities which are complementary rather than contradictory. They are loquacious yet capable of silence; gregarious yet so close to the earth that single families or even men alone might live and travel for long periods away from other human beings; proud, yet capable of a gentle self-ridicule. They are conservative to a degree, yet insatiably curious and ready to inquire into and even to adopt new ways: to visit all tribes, whether friends or enemies; to speak strange tongues, sing strange songs, and marry strange wives. [P. 4]

[edit] Population

Chemehuevi boy by Edward S. Curtis

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber estimated the combined 1770 population of the Chemehuevi, Koso (Western Shoshone), and Kawaiisu as 1,500, and the combined population of the Chemehuevi, Koso (Western Shoshone), and Kawaiisu in 1910 as 500.^[5] An Indian agent reported the Chemehuevi population in 1875 to be 350.^[6] Kroeber estimated U.S. Census data put the Chemehuevi population in 1910 as 355.^[7]

[edit] See also

Chemehuevi

• Chemehuevi traditional narratives
• Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Clemmer, Richard O., and Omer C. Stewart. 1986. "Treaties, Reservatons, and Claims". In Great Basin, edited by Warren L. d'Azevedo, pp. 525-557. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 11. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• Grant, Bruce. 2000. Concise Encyclopdia of the American Indian. 3rd ed. Wings Books, New York.
• Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
• Laird, Carobeth. 1976. The Chemehuevis. Malki Museum Press, Banning, California.
• Leland, Joy. 1986. "Population". In Great Basin, edited by Warren L. d'Azevedo, pp. 608-619. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 11. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• Liljeblad, Sven. 1959. "Indian People of Idaho". In History of Idaho, edited by S. Beal and M. Wells, p. 29-59. Lewis Historical Publishing, Pocatello, Idaho.
• Mithun, Marianne. 2004. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:Chemehuevi

• Official Tribal Page
• Chemehuevi Language Archive, 1970s Fieldwork and Analysis by Margaret L. Press