If it were established as a fact that the lands in question were, or were included in, the ancestral home of the
Walapais in the sense that they constituted definable territory occupied exclusively by the
Walapais (as distinguished from lands wandered over by many tribes), then the
Walapais had "Indian title".
On 21 March 1868 over seventy-five Walapais attacked mail rider Charles Spencer and two soldiers escorting him.
They plotted to kill Crook when he next visited the post, but Walapai scouts informed army officers of the plot.
There the Walapai scouts led the late-September attack on the Yavapais, who were soundly defeated, losing forty combatants.
The dubious reliability of this informant's reminiscences is indicated by his next assertion: "Walapai Charlie learned English while imprisoned at Fort Whipple." There is excellent evidence that Walapai Charlie, Cherum's half brother, learned to speak English prior to the Walapai War.
in the Hualapai Mountains at Walnut Creek.(31) "There were nine places in this canyon where the Walapais raised garden.
We reported thirteen Pai names for bands extant around 1860, and grouped them in three named subtribes identified by the Pai themselves.(4) Even Braatz labeled the Walapai and Havasupai as "a single social field of thirteen regional bands"(5)
He has Pai (actually Havasupai band members) "coalesce" into local bands "ranging in size from ten to fifty-five members" who hunted in groups.(10) We summarized military reports of Pai hunting-gathering camp sizes during the Walapai War (of 1866 to 1868): twenty to nearly two hundred individuals.(11)
Levi Levi didn't; Walapai Charley didn't" (Bill McGee via Tim McGee [wife], 2 December 1952, 25).(45)
"The majority of ethnological reports on North American Indian cultures that were written by American-trained ethnologists during the period 1910-40 were couched in the `ethnographic present' and purported to describe the `aboriginal' cultures of various Indian groups."(2) That is, anthropologists having a "normative" perception of culture pattern essentially ignored historical changes in Native American cultures and behaviors.(3) This ahistorical presentation of static culture characterized classic theoretical formulations as well as ethnographies of specific groups, including the Walapais and Havasupais.(4)
Those troops perceived Cherum as chief of the Walapais despite his youth.(23) Undoubtedly cognizant of the army's Mojave conquest, Cherum cooperated with the soldiers by tracking lost prospectors.
The Walapais promptly interdicted Haikoo travel along the wagon road between Hardyville and Fort Whipple.
