SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE HAVESU-PAI INDIANS. 



BY 



R. W. Shufeldt, M. D. 

 (With Plates xxv, xxvi.) 



Several years ago when the writer had the opportuuity of studying 

 some of the tribes of our Indians in the southwest, especially those 

 found in northwestern New Mexico and over the adjacent boundary of 

 Arizona, he met with Mr. Benj. Wittick, formerly a photographer in 

 the employ of the U. S. Geological Survey, who was making a collec- 

 tion of photographs of the Indians of that region. He had visited that 

 least known tribe of Arizona Indians, the Havesu-pai, of the so-called 

 Su-pai Caiion, and had obtained some excellent pictures of theuj. I 

 was so fortunate as to secure prints of Mr. Wittick's photographs of 

 that race. As we have no good illustrations of those people that I am 

 aware of, it is hoped that the two plates we are enabled to reproduce 

 here of them will be found useful to the anthropologist. 



In every sense of the word the Havesu-pais are a dying race. There 

 is but a remnant of them now in existence; I have heard it said, less 

 than two hundred. Thej^ exist in one of the grandest caQons in all 

 Arizona, living in their primitive lodges along the bank of the stream 

 that passes through it. Upon looking up such matter as had been 

 written upon this departing tribe of Indians, I found it to be exceeding 

 meager; indeed there is little or nothing known about them. From 

 the very inaccessible i^lace of their abode they have been very rarely 

 seen, and only on few occasions by scientific men. Mr. Albert S. 

 Gatschet of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution 

 confirmed this opinion, and said that those Indians were known in 

 former times by the name of " Koxoninos," or "Cochnichnos," but that 

 they were the "Cosninos" of the Moquis of Arizona. Properly they 

 should be known by the name that the Yumas call them, that is the 

 Havesu-pai, or Avesu-pai, meaning the " down below people, or a tribe 

 or race that live down in the caiion." "Paya, pai," being " all, people." 

 They themselves claim to be (descended from the Wolapai. 



In Vol. Ill of the Pacific Railroad Reports, Whipple barely alludes 

 to them. On page 80 of that work he states that " upon old Sj)anish 



Proceedings National Museum, Vol. XIV— No. 859. 



387 



