Irataba

Irataba, also known as Yara tav, Yarate: va, Arateve; c. 1814 – 1874, was a leader of the Mohave Nation. He was a renowned orator and one of the first Mohave to speak English. He became the nation’s Aha macave yaltanack, an elected, as opposed to hereditary, leader.

About Irataba in brief

Summary IratabaIrataba, also known as Yara tav, Yarate: va, Arateve; c. 1814 – 1874, was a leader of the Mohave Nation. He was a renowned orator and one of the first Mohave to speak English. Irataba first encountered European Americans in 1851, when he assisted the Sitgreaves Expedition. In 1858 Mohave warriors attacked the first emigrant wagon train to use Beale’s Wagon Road through Mohave country. He became the nation’s Aha macave yaltanack, an elected, as opposed to hereditary, leader. He negotiated the creation of the Colorado River Indian Reservation. In 2002, the US Bureau of Land Management designated 32,745 acres in the Eldorado Mountains as Ireteba Peaks Wilderness. In March 2015, Mohave Tribal chairman Dennis Patch credited Iratabas with ensuring that the Mohaves stayed on land they had lived on since time immemorial. Some consider Ir ataba a great leader who championed peace, but others feel he should have done more to defend theMohave way of life. The Mohave gave name to the Grand Canyon where the Needles where the canyon empties into the river in present-day Arizona, near the Nevada and California border. He died in 1874 and was buried in a cemetery near Parker, Arizona, where a sports venue, Iratabe Hall, is also named after him. In doing so, he became the first Native American from the Southwest to meet an American president.

He received considerable attention during his tours of the U.S. capital, and of New York City and Philadelphia, where he was given gifts, including a silver-headed cane from Lincoln. He also led several hundred of his supporters to the Colorado river valley. The majority of Mohave preferred to remain in their ancestral homelands near Fort Mohave and under the leadership of their hereditary leader, Homoseh quahote, who was less enthusiastic about direct collaboration with whites. In the mid-19th century, the three geographical groups were composed of the Huttohahah group, who lived near the east bank of theColorado River and occupied the central portion of the government portion of a Mohave Valley called the Hohohah Valley. The Huttahah was the hereditary leader of a group that lived in the central part of the valley and occupied a portion of it called the Mohohawk Valley. In his later years, he continued to lead the Mohahawk group in their ongoing conflicts with the Paiute and Chemehuevi. He encouraged peaceful relations with whites, served as a mediator between the warring tribes in the area, and continued to be a leader in his tribe’s wars with the ChemeHuevi and Paiute. He is buried in the Pueblo of Pahuttah, in the state of Hohuttah.