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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]

Contents

History and traditional culture

Population

See also

Notes

References

External links

History and traditional culture

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:

Population

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]

See also

★ Chemehuevi traditional narratives

★ Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas

Notes

1. History
2. An Online Chemehuevi Dictionary Elzinga, Dirk
3. Mithun (1999:542)
4. Ute-Southern Paiute
5. Kroeber (1925:883)
6. Clemmer and Stewart (1986:539)
7. Leland (1986:612)

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.

External links

★ Official Tribal Page