Special Collections holds a substantial amount of material related to the Quechan people, whose contemporary reservation is located in extreme southwest Arizona on the Colorado River. Collections cover the mid nineteenth century through the late twentieth century.
Synonymy
Quechan (pronounced kwet∙SAHN, after Elmer M. Savilla in his memoir, Along the Trail, or “One Little Indian” [s.l., E.M. Savilla, 1996?]) or kwacá∙n (“those who descended”) is the autonym. Another orthography has kwacá∙n as Kwtsaan. “Yuma” appears in Spanish and English, apparently derived from the Akimel and Tohono O’odham term yu∙mĭ. See also Goddard, Handbook of North American Indians, v.10, p. 97.
Contains the writing and recollections of a U.S. Army surgeon that cast an ethnographic eye at the Quechan people. Palmer’s notes document life and cultural practices.
Contains a memoir written by a U.S. Army physician, Dr. Joseph Kirby Corson, with portions dealing with his time at Prescott and including relationships with Quechan; letters to Corson speak to 1880 conflicts, role of Quechan, Mohave, Chemehuevi, and Paiute.
Includes correspondence on Fort Yuma issues during the early 1930s, including changes in the course of the Colorado River, accretion of new lands, and non‐Indian squatters.
Includes correspondence and manuscripts prepared well after Tuttle’s experiences. Letters include experiences at Fort Yuma, descriptions of crops, and references to Hualapai, Mohave, Tohono O’odham. Tuttle’s manuscripts on steam navigation speaks to the Cocopah and Quechan laborers, Mohave humor and safe‐guarding Fort Mohave, conflicts with the Apaches in the 1870s, and Hualapai communication networks.
One of two copies Robert Parke Russell’s transcription of nineteenth‐century newspaper stories related to La Paz County, Arizona. The text is invaluable for its index, including references to Yuma [Quechan] and numerous other tribes.
Include materials on Quechan lands, non‐Indian lessors, and the tribe’s desire to preclude BIA from negotiation. Several folders speak to grants through the Community Action Program (CAP) and the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in the latter 1960s, establishing a variety of educational and development programs administered by the tribe.
Include correspondence on grants and needs for housing, road construction, repair, and improvement to roads and bridges. Also present is correspondence and legislation around compensation to leaseholders for lands reverted to the Quechan.
Includes a project‐and‐research file, dated 1970‐1973, which speaks to Quechan development and land disputes.
Arizona Historical Society Materials
The materials located in this section can be found at the Arizona Historical Society Tucson location, an institution separate from the University of Arizona. There you can find manuscript materials, photographs, oral histories and books that highlight Indigenous life in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. This selection represents only a small fraction of the Arizona Historical Society's materials related to Indigenous life in the borderlands. Please contact their archivists for questions about additional materials.
