 Yuma Indians
YUMAS
(Yahmdyo, "son of the captain.") One of the chief divisions or tribes of the Yuman family, formerly residing on both sides of the Rio Colorado next above the Cocopa, or about sixty miles above the mouth of the river, and below the junction of the Gila. Fort Yuma is situated about the center of the territory formerly occupied by them. These Indians, for the most part, are on the California side, their reservation being established in that state, but as their history is closely connected with Arizona, it is probably not out of place to give this short sketch of the tribe. When Onate visited the locality in 1604-05, he found the Yumas established in nine rancherias on the Colorado, entirely below the mouth of the Gila. Physically the Yuma were an athletic people, tall, straight, and sinewy, superior in this respect to most of their congeners. They were brave and, as we have seen, were at war with the whites until conquered by Major Heintzelman in 1853, since which time they have been peaceful. They were in no sense nomadic, seldom leaving their villages, where, like the Mohave, they practiced a rude agriculture, raising corn, beans, pumpkins and melons. This tribe was much demoralized through contact with the whites during the early 60 's. They are now making rapid advances in civilization. The Apache-Yumas, or Yulkepaia, which, according to Corbusier, probably means "spotted belly sparrows," was a body of Yuman Indians known as Apache-Yumas, said by Corbusier in 1886, to have sprung recently from a mixture of Yumas, Mohaves and Yavapais. They claimed as their home the desert stretch of western Arizona between the Colorado river and the country of the Yavapai, over which they roamed until placed on the Verde reservation, (Arizona, in May, 1873. In 1875 most of these, numbering in all about five hundred, were removed to the San Carlos reservation. They speak the Yuma dialect. They were warlike and gave our soldiers and settlers much trouble before they were finally subdued The History of Arizona by Thomas Edwin Farrish 1918 |