History
Much of the pre-surrender history of the Mojave is still to be revealed and written, since the Mojave language was unwritten in precolonial times. They depended on oral communication to transmit their history and culture from one generation to the next. The impact of outside culture shattered their social organization and fragmented the Mojave transmission of their stories and songs.
The tribal name has been spelled with over fifty variations, such as Hamock avi, Amacava, A-mac-ha ves, A-moc-ha-ve, Jamajabs, and Hamakhav. The resulting incorrect assumed meanings can be partly traced to a translation error in Frederick W. Hodge's 1917 Handbook of the American Indians North of Mexico, which incorrectly defined it, "Mohave (from hamock, three, avi, mountain)." According to this source, the name refers to the picturesque mountain peaks called the Needles, located near the Colorado River a few miles south of the city of Needles, California. The Mojave call these peaks Huqueamp avi, which means "where the battle took place," referring to the battle in which the God-son, Mastamho, slew the sea serpent.
Read more about this topic: Mohave People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)