Room 31's Study of the Mojave Tribe

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Homes were usually just shade roofs called ramadas with four or six poles supporting a flat roof covered with bundles of reeds or grasses. For cold weather the house had side walls made from poles standing from the roof covered with bundles of grass and then with a layer of mud several inches thick. Sometimes a settlement would have one or two such houses larger than the rest where the leader lived. If the weather was very cold they would invite others to stay with them. It seems that neither the Mojave or Ouechan used sweathouses as most early Californians did. The Mojave Indians ate acorns, cactus, clover, cherries, plums, berries, prickly pear, and small game. There was a rain maker. He gathered the community. Then he sang, prayed, danced, and asked spirits for rain.The Mojave traded with other tribes for items they could not make such as wooden bowls, horns, spoons, and dentalium shell beeds. Both the Mojave and the Quechan also called the Yuma lived mostly in the east of the Colorado river in what is now Arizona and partly in California.