Epilogue

The Shoshone living in Death Valley were known as the Panamint Shoshone. In the 1850’s, the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was essentially a slave act where any white citizen could take any Indian child to any justice of the peace and state that he wanted to adopt the Indian child. The child was immediately placed in the custody of that person. The same process could be followed for an entire family, after which the family became indentured servants. To leave was punishable by death at the hands of the owners.

By the 1860’s, after repeal of the act, there were approximately only 150 Shoshone left in Death Valley. In 1866, the Treaty of Ruby Valley granted the United States rights-of-way across Western Shoshone territories. The federal government officially took the Panamint Shoshone primary ancestral lands with the creation of Death Valley National Monument in 1933. Three years later, the Park Service officially allowed the Panamint Shoshone to remain on forty acres at Furnace Creek. Still, the Panamint Shoshone were not a federally recognized tribe until 1983 when their name became the Timbisha Shoshone.

As a result of continued mistreatment by Park Service employees, most of the Timbisha moved from Death Valley north into Bishop to live as guests of their distant cousins, the Northern Paiute, on the Bishop Reservation.

It wasn’t until 1994 that the Secretary of the Interior was instructed to work with the Timbisha Shoshone to find a suitable reservation. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit tried unsuccessfully to remove them off the last remnant of their traditional homelands.

The Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act was ratified in November, 2000. A total of 7,700 acres were restored to the tribe as a reservation. This includes the Death Valley Indian Community where they are the majority residents at Furnace Creek.

The small tribe of the Timbisha Shoshone was historically among, if not the most, oppressed people in the United States.

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The history of the Aha macave has only recently been uncovered because the Aha macave had no written language. Their language was spoken only. The Aha macave or Mojave as they are known today were the largest and most war-like of the Yuman tribes. Their ancestral lands stretched from the area around the Hoover Dam today to the area surrounding the Parker Dam. The Aha macave hunted, however their chief sustenance came from their cultivated crops grown along the Colorado River. To this they added mesquite beans, fish and pinion nuts.

By act of March 3, 1865, the Colorado River Reservation in Arizona was established for members of the Aha macave, Chemehuevi and Kawia tribes.

In April, 1859, Fort Mojave was established to provide a shelter for emigrants to California and a base of operations against the Aha macave (Mojave) Indians. Captured Aha macave were held prisoner at the fort. In 1861, the fort was abandoned and burned out of fear of Confederate forces in the area.

In 1863, the post was re-established and assigned protection duties for travelers along the Mojave and Prescott roads. In 1870, the fort became the center of the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation. The Army gave the Aha macave the choice of submission or extermination, and the majority of them chose submission. Only small numbers remained outside of the reservation and fort.

From 1890 when Fort Mojave came under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior until 1931, an era of ‘de-indianizing’ the Aha macave took place. Tribal ties were broken, they were forbidden to use their own language as well as most of their traditional ways. They were given five lashes if they spoke in their native tongue. The children were forced to attend a boarding school where they were transformed to white, with haircuts, clothing, eating habits, manners, industry, language…all white customs. They were also given English names and forbidden to use their Aha macave names.

From a population of thousands, in 1963 the population of Aha macave at Fort Mojave was 438 and at the Colorado River Reservation, 550.

Today, their tribal headquarters, library, and museum are in Parker, Arizona.

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