Irataba
Irataba was a leader of the Mohave Nation, known as a mediator between the Mohave and the United States. He was born near the Colorado River in present-day Arizona. Irataba was a renowned orator and one of the first Mohave to speak English, a skill he used to develop relations with the United States.
Irataba first encountered European Americans in 1851, when he assisted the Sitgreaves Expedition. In 1854, he met Amiel Whipple, then leading an expedition crossing the Colorado. Several Mohave aided the group, and Irataba agreed to escort them through the territory of the Paiute to the Old Spanish Trail, which would take them to southern California. Noted for his large physical size and gentle demeanor, he later helped and protected other expeditions, earning him a reputation among whites as the most important native leader in the region.
Against Irataba's advice, in 1858 Mohave warriors attacked the first emigrant wagon train to use Beale's Wagon Road through Mohave country. As a result, the U.S. War Department sent a detachment under Colonel William Hoffman to pacify the tribe. Following a series of confrontations known as the Mohave War, Hoffman succeeded in dominating the natives, and demanded that they allow the passage of settlers through their territory. To ensure compliance, Fort Mohave was constructed near the site of the battle in April 1859. Hoffman also imprisoned several Mohave leaders. Having been an advocate for friendly relations with the whites, Irataba became the nation's Aha macave yaltanack, an elected, as opposed to hereditary, leader.
As a result of his many interactions with U.S. officials and settlers, Irataba was invited to Washington, D.C., in 1864, for an official meeting with members of the U.S. military and its government, including President Abraham Lincoln. In doing so, he became the first Native American from the Southwest to meet an American president. He received considerable attention during his tours of the U.S. capital, and of New York City and Philadelphia, where he was given gifts, including a silver-headed cane from Lincoln. Upon his return he negotiated the creation of the Colorado River Indian Reservation, which caused a split in the Mohave Nation when he led several hundred of his supporters to the Colorado River valley. The majority of the Mohave preferred to remain in their ancestral homelands near Fort Mohave and under the leadership of their hereditary leader, Homoseh quahote, who was less enthusiastic about direct collaboration with whites. As leader of the Colorado River band of Mohave, Irataba encouraged peaceful relations with whites, served as a mediator between the warring tribes in the area, and during his later years continued to lead the Mohave in their ongoing conflicts with the Paiute and Chemehuevi.
As noted by ethnographer Lorraine Sherer, "to some he is an heroic figure, to others he was a white collaborator who did not stand up for Mojave rights." The Irataba Society, a non-profit charity run by the Colorado River Indian Tribes, was established in 1970 in Parker, Arizona, where a sports venue, Irataba Hall, is also named after him. In 2002, the US Bureau of Land Management designated in the Eldorado Mountains as Ireteba Peaks Wilderness. In March 2015, Mohave Tribal chairman Dennis Patch credited Irataba with ensuring that "the Mohaves stayed on land they had lived on since time immemorial."
Background
Irataba's name, also rendered as Ireteba, Yara tav, Arateve, Yarate:va, and Yiratewa, derives from the Mohave language phrase eecheeyara tav, which means "beautiful bird". He was born into the Neolge, or Sun Fire clan of the Mohave Nation. He lived near a rock formation that gave its name to Needles, south of where the Grand Canyon empties into the Mohave Canyon in present-day Arizona, near the Nevada and California border. The Mohave lived in houses along the riverbank in the Mohave Valley, during winter in half-buried dwellings built with cottonwood logs and arrowweed covered in earth, and in the summer in open-air flat-roofed houses called ramadas.In the mid-19th century, the Mohave were composed of three geographical groups; Irataba was the hereditary leader of the Huttoh Pah group, who lived near the east bank of the Colorado River and occupied the central portion of the Mohave Valley. Mohave government consisted of a loose system of hereditary clan leaders with a head of the entire nation. They were often involved in conflicts with the Chemehuevi, Paiute, and Maricopa peoples. Irataba was a member of the Mohave warrior society called kwanami, who led groups of warriors in battle and were dedicated to defending their lands and people.
Little is known of Irataba's family relations, except for the name of his son Tekse thume, and his nephews Qolho qorau and Aspamekelyeho. Olive Oatman, who lived with the Mohave for five years, later stated that Irataba was the brother of the former chief, presumably Cairook, with whom Irataba clearly had a close relationship. One anecdotal description states that Irataba had several wives, among them a Hualapai woman who had been taken as a captive and who is also described as having a young son. He also had at least one daughter, the mother of his granddaughter Tcatc who was interviewed in the 1950s. She stated that Irataba had wanted to leave his land deeds and medals to his brother's sons, but that they were eventually lost.
In contemporary accounts Irataba was described as an eloquent speaker, and linguist Leanne Hinton suggests that he was among the first Mohave people to become fluent in English, which he learned through his many interactions with Anglo-Americans. Like many Mohave men, Irataba was very tall, particularly by 19th-century standards; the United States Army estimated his height at in 1861. American author Albert S. Evans, writing in The Overland Monthly, referred to him as "the old desert giant". Edward Carlson, a soldier based at Fort Mohave who knew Irataba well in the 1860s, described him as having a powerful frame, but also a "very gentle" and "kind ... demeanor".
Irataba lived through a tumultuous period of Mohave history where the people went from being a politically independent nation to coming under the political control of the United States, and the events surrounding his role in these encounters are well documented. Most historical sources for the life of Irataba come from descriptions by white explorers or government agents with whom he interacted, or from contemporary newspapers that reported on his visits to the East Coast and California, and on the conflicts in Arizona territory. Some Mohave versions of the events also exist: in the early 20th century anthropologist A. L. Kroeber interviewed Jo Nelson, a Mohave man who participated in many of the events and knew Irataba personally; another version was told to ethnographer George Devereux by Irataba's granddaughter Tcatc, and versions recounted by members of the Fort Mohave band of Mohave, the descendants of Homoseh quahote, were recorded by ethnographer Lorraine Sherer during the 1950s and 1960s.
Contact with emigrants and explorers
Irataba assisted Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves during his 1851 exploration of the Colorado. On March 19, 1851, a family of Brewsterite settlers, the Oatmans, who were traveling by wagon train in what is now Arizona, were attacked by a band of Western Yavapai, probably the Tolkepaya. They captured two survivors of the attack: the 14-year-old Olive Oatman and her 7-year-old sister, Mary Ann. After a year with the Yavapai, the girls were sold to the Mohave, and adopted into the Oach clan where they lived with the family of a Mohave man called Tokwatha a friend of Irataba. Olive remained with the Mohave until February 22, 1856, when Tokwatha, having been warned that having a white girl among them might be seen as an offense by whites, brought her to Fort Yuma carpenter Henry Grinnell, releasing her in return for two horses and some blankets and beads. Irataba may have learned about Anglo-Americans and their society from Oatman, and knowing her may have contributed to his generally favourable disposition towards Whites.Whipple Expedition
On February 23, 1854, Irataba, Cairook, and other Mohave people encountered an expedition led by military officers Amiel Whipple and J.C. Ives, as the group approached the Colorado en route to California. Whipple and his men counted six hundred Mohave gathered near their camp, trading corn, beans, squash, and wheat for beads and calico. By the end of their commerce, the party had purchased six bushels of corn and two hundred pounds of flour. The Mohave played a traditional game played with a hoop and pole, and the two groups entertained themselves with target practice, the Mohave using bows and arrows and the whites firing pistols and rifles. When the expedition had difficulty crossing the Colorado on February 27, several Mohave jumped into the water and helped salvage the supplies.Irataba and Cairook agreed to escort the group across the territory of the Paiute to the Old Spanish Trail that would take them to southern California. German artist Balduin Möllhausen accompanied the Whipple Expedition, and made drawings of several Mohave, including Irataba. Möllhausen's drawings were featured in Ives' 1861 congressional report, making Irataba "among the first named likenesses of California Indians ever published".
Ives Expedition
In February 1858, Ives returned to the area in a paddle steamer named Explorer. He was leading an expedition up the Colorado from the south, and he wanted Irataba to guide them. The Mohave gave permission to navigate the river, and Cairook, Irataba, and a 16-year-old Mohave boy named Nahvahroopa joined them. Möllhausen again accompanied the expedition, and was impressed with the Mohave guides, later noting Irataba's enthusiastic handshake and lamenting that their only form of communication was sign language. He also noted that Irataba and the Mohave readily began wearing European clothes given to them by members of the expedition, and showed great interest in smoking tobacco. Aside from the friendship shown to him by Irataba and Cairook, Ives noted that the Mohave appeared less friendly than on earlier occasions, a change that he attributed to their contact with Mormons, who were in conflict with the US and had succeeded in converting some Mohave.Irataba guided the party into the Mohave Canyon, indicating the location of rapids and advising the Explorer pilot of convenient places to anchor while camping for the night. When they reached the entrance to the Black Canyon of the Colorado, the ship crashed against a submerged rock, throwing several men overboard, dislodging the boiler, and damaging the wheelhouse. Using their skiff, the crew towed the Explorer to the shore, where they camped for three days while repairing the vessel. The expedition had relied on beans and corn provided by the Mohave during the previous weeks; as their supplies dwindled they grew increasingly anxious about the arrival of a resupply pack train from Fort Yuma. Irataba volunteered to hike towards the Mohave Valley to try to locate the supplies that had been requested several days earlier. He also warned that the expedition was being watched by Paiutes.
When Irataba returned he informed Ives that he would not venture any deeper into the territory of the Hualapais, but agreed to help them locate friendly guides in the region before parting company. Irataba was reluctant to venture into the canyon because he feared the party would be ambushed by Paiutes aligned with Mormons. After enlisting three Hualapai guides, Irataba prepared to take his leave from the expedition and return to the Mohave community. On April 4, the Mohave received payment for their services; Möllhausen described the exchange: "Lieutenant Ives informed Irataba that he had been authorized by the 'Great Grandfather in Washington' to give him two mules ... for his loyalty and his trustworthiness so that he could take his possessions and those of his companions more conveniently to his home valley." The next morning, as they were preparing to leave: "Irataba was visibly moved ... and in his sincere eyes expressed so much honesty and loyalty as can only be found in an unspoiled nature ... I maintain that there was not one in our expedition who did not feel a certain sadness to see this huge man with ... a harmless soul leave."