Cocopah Indian Tribe – Susan Feathers

Chapter 1

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free.”
Aldo Leopold, from the Foreword to A Sand County Almanac.

20,000 – 3,000 B.C.

The River People came from the north, over the land bridge between Asia and North America during the ice age. They were part of the Pacific Coastal language group that may have mixed with later groups from the plains. About 3,000 B.C., some of the River People migrated south. They eventually settled alongside a mighty river, so powerful and turbulent, it carried canyons to the sea. It flowed red and fast at its origin, reshaping jagged rocks to smooth boulders while carving its bed in the soft red and yellow limestone of canyons with each passing year.

There were many tribal groups that took up residence on this river. From time to time they warred among themselves to gain more land or to protect their hunting grounds. Eventually, territories were established and the River People came to occupy the portions of the river where it channeled into thousands of inlets, lagoons, and estuaries before giving itself to the sea: the delta.

For millennia, a riverine way of life was lived by the River People, adapted to fit the river’s seasonal flows and natural resources, such as the rich silt left behind on the riverbanks as spring floodwaters receded. The River People farmed in these muddy recesses, rich with minerals. They grew many varieties of beans, corn, and grains, melons and herbs. The rich soil and seasonal floods supported the growth of forests of mesquite trees, tall cottonwoods, and tangles of willows that provided a natural habitat for many animals and birds. The leguminous mesquite trees dropped thousands of seedpods each season. The bitter-tasting beans were roasted and ground to brew a drink, while the pod was ground into a sweet tasting flour. In modern times this flour was discovered to naturally maintain a person’s blood sugar level.

The river supported many varieties of fish, which the River People learned to spear and net with skill. Salmon, chub, mullet, and native trout provided lean protein, while the creatures in the mesquite forests—deer, wild turkey, quail, rabbit, and fowl—provided fatty proteins for quick energy. On the lagoons and in the marshes, the geese and ducks provided more delectable meals. Nothing was better than a succulent goose roasted over the burnt embers of mesquite logs, under long clear nights when the River People enjoyed telling stories, singing, and dancing.

Much of the River People’s ways and means were established by trial and error, preserved in their stories and songs, and handed down from grandparent to parent to child. It was a certain kind of wisdom about how to live on the lands on which they worked, loved, and thrived. And so it was for thousands of years and hundreds of generations of the River People.

Moving to the Colorado River Valley in 1990 began a great period of personal growth and learning. Teaching children of migrant farm workers (who harvested lettuce in view of the classroom windows) and children of Colorado River Indian Tribes who lived on near-by reservations, I quickly learned the harsh realities of the cultural landscape as well as the natural landscape on which our life science lessons focused.

The following blog posts are three memories from living in the desert (1990-2008). The first is my initiation to the land’s elemental beauty and its stark realities. The second and third memories illustrate lifestyles in two desert cities with very different perspectives on how to live there – Phoenix and Tucson.

Because I was introduced very early in my time in Arizona to indigenous perspectives, I was able to more acutely measure the gap between native and contemporary points of view about the human relationship to nature, the meaning of community, and the underlying values that are at the roots of how cultures develop.

By getting to know Cocopah families – families whose nation was separated by the U.S. Mexico border and whose way of life on the Colorado River was fractured by the damming of the river – I witnessed the social, financial, emotional and spiritual devastation wrought by being unable to live by the values one holds dear and by which one knows oneself.

Another important stream of influence on my thinking was the environmental movement in which I was actively engaged through education, a daily endeavor that caused me to read the history of these great cities and to get involved in local citizens movements to create more sustainable ways of living there.

While we are going about our daily lives, critical problems such as over-drafting groundwater continue. Indigenous values that have been pushed to the background are emerging into the foreground. Are we paying attention? What can we learn about place and the art of living from the first people of a place?

I understand, now, why spiritual seekers often go to desert lands. There is quietude and mystery. Stories are hidden from casual view, unspoken but exerting their presence. The quest then is discernment.