Chemehuevi
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The Chemehuevi (chem-a-wa'-ve) are a Native American tribe who presently live with the Mohave in and near the Colorado River Reservation in Arizona. For more information about activities on the Reservation see Mohave. The tribe also lives with the Paiutes on various California reservations.
The Chemehuevi were originally a desert tribe among the Numu or Paiute-Shoshone nations. The Chemehuevi lived in the eastern Mojave Desert and later the Chemehuevi Valley along the Colorado River in California. The most comprehensive collection of Chemhuevi mythology was gathered by Carobeth Laird (1895-1983) and her 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.
This book is the first ethnography of the Chemehuevi traditional culture and is thus far the only one. It contains chapters on the organization of the tribe, shamanism, "Places, Trails, and Tribes," mythology, and a glossary of the Chemhuevi language (with some grammatical notes).
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]
A few words of Chemehuevi basic vocabulary, illustrating its place as a Shoshonean language, are the following:
- nïmï — person (note the final vowel is nasalised)
- pah (or paah) — water
- tïvah — pine nut
- tïmpa — mouth
- tïhiya (variant: tïhïï) — deer
Note that Laird uses a barred i which is represented here as ï for the vowel she describes as follows: "an impure vowel somewhat resembling oo in book, but with a slightly different position of lips and tongue; not to be confused with u in but (which does not occur in Chemehuevi), or oo in boot" (p. 278, The Chemehuevis).
Note the pair of words "pine nut" and "mouth." They are what is known as a minimal pair because their defining difference is the consonant that is in their centers. That is, the single difference between these two words is the labial consonant in the middle (a consonant which you use one or both lips to pronounce). One is written "v" and the other is written "mp" by Carobeth Laird. While the "v" is soft and continuous, the "mp" is hard and explosive. This distinction of soft and emphatic is true in both Northern Paiute and Shoshone as well, as Sven Liljeblad points out, although the consonants themselves are not pronounced exactly the same in all three languages. In Northern Paiute, for example, pine nut can be written tïba and mouth can be written, tïbba. The first "b" is given in the international linguistic as the Greek beta, β as it is pronounced as a soft "b"--almost a "v"--and is not plosive but is gently affricated and continuous. While the bb is a particularly hard and emphatic b. So pine nut in Northern Paiute can be written, tïβa.
Sven Liljeblad of Idaho State University in Pocatello, whose 300,000 entry lexicon of Northern Paiute and Shoshone languages is in the Great Basin Indian Collection of the University of Nevada, Reno, developed a phonemic alphabet for Paiute-Shoshone, using the ordinary letters of the Roman alphabet commonly in use. In it, the softness or hardness of consonants is represented and makes possible cross-language comparisons such as that given above. In his transcription, for example, pine nut is tyba while mouth is tyb'a. (Here, the Roman letter y is used to represent a vowel (--related to the ï--) which is produced in the back of the throat as is a Russian vowel nearly identical to it in sound.
[edit] Population
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) proposed a combined 1770 population of 1,500 for the Chemehuevi, Koso (Western Shoshone), and Kawaiisu.
An Indian agent reported the Chemehuevi population in 1875 to be 350 (Clemmer and Stewart 1986:539). Kroeber estimated the combined population of the Chemehuevi, Koso (Western Shoshone), and Kawaiisu in 1910 as 500. U.S. Census data put the Chemehuevi population in 1910 as 355 (Leland 1986:612).
[edit] See also
[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, 1976.
- 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.
