Carlos Montezuma's Wassaja Newsletter
The Carlos Montezuma collection contains several digitized volumes of the Wassaja newsletter that Yavapai intellectual and activist Carlos Montezuma, MD (1866-1923) self-published during the years 1916-1922. Wassaja means “signaling” or “beckoning,” and is Montezuma’s Yavapai birth name. The newsletter was a vital source of news about Indian affairs in an era that had few outlets for such information and contains valuable reports directly from people living within the Indian reservation system. As a prominent figure in the struggle for Indian rights who played a role in the founding of the Society of American Indians, Montezuma was an intellectual leader against Indian Bureau mismanagement; he was notorious for advocating an end to the reservation system and the abolition of the BIA. This collection helps to document different facets of Montezuma’s career as an Indian rights leader and his relationship to his home community of Fort McDowell.
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- All Subjects: Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Arizona
- All Subjects: Journalism and education-United States-History-20th century
Montezuma urges Mike Burns and the McDowell Indians to keep McDowell land and Verde River water; NOT to move to Salt River Reservation as proposed.
Replying to Montezuma's earlier January letter of the same year, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs C.F. Hauke tells Montezuma that it is in the best interests of the Fort McDowell Indians to move to the Salt River Reservation.
Letter to Montezuma from his cousin Charles Dickens: Dickens complains of the nosiness of a Mr. Coe (presumably the Indian agent?) and the misplacement of an earlier letter.
In the letter, Montezuma defends the water rights of the Fort McDowell community and the construction of a proposed dam, and states emphatically that "it is not their wish to move."
Letter from cousin Charles Dickens at McDowell, Arizona, requesting monetary help for an establishment of a store on the reservation: Dickens also promises to send Montezuma some baskets.