Kwatsáan

The Quechan, who call themselves Kwatsáan, meaning those who descended, and are also known as the Yuma, are a Yuman-speaking people of the lower Colorado River. They traded with the Pima of southern Arizona, the pueblos of New Mexico and peoples of the Pacific coast.

Their first lasting European contact came in the winter of 1774 with the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. The chief Palma travelled to Mexico City and was baptized in February 1777, but friendship collapsed when mission livestock trampled Quechan fields during a drought.

In July 1781 the tribe rose up, killing four priests and thirty soldiers and destroying the missions of Bicuñer and Purísima Concepción. A Spanish expedition the next year did not restore the settlements, and the crossing remained in Quechan hands; in the 1820s they and the Mohave drove the Halchidhoma off the Colorado.