This examination of the Spanish treatment of the Arizona and Southwest Indian tribes will first consider those peoples and their relationships with each other. By first looking at the possible origin of the Southwestern U.S. Indian tribes, one can see who the Spaniards encountered in the late 1700s and thus know what effect the Spaniards would have on them. Additionally, one might understand what those tribes are doing about that effect today.
Both Fr. Kino, the Catholic priest delegated by Spain to oversee the exploration of the Southwest, and Capt. Manje, the military officer overseeing the soldiers assigned to this operation, had their own reasons for writing the documents they left, so one can also see what they thought they were doing and compare that to what they actually did, see what legacy they thought they were leaving and compare it to the legacy they actually left.
Lucille Hooper, a 1918 University of California research fellow, related an intriguing story paralleled by a Quechan legend. Although her editor noted that the Cahuilla are more linguistically connected to the Shoshonean tribes to the west and concluded "with all their geographical proximity to the Yuma and Mohave, the Desert Cahuilla partake essentially of the native civilization of the Shoshonean coastal tribes of southern California," Hooper's story almost certainly is the same as that repeated by the Arizona Quechan, indicating a common origin. In the Cahuilla story of Mukat and Tamaioit that Hooper relates, the people decide they must kill Mukat: Frog does this by sneaking under Mukat's house and catching his defecation in his mouth.
According to Robert Bee, the Quechans "recognized themselves as a single tribe," although the Arizona desert required small villages sparsely located and changing with the Gila River, leading Spaniards to think the clans were distinct tribes. One of the Quechan creation stories, perhaps the most important, incl...