Josephine Thomas, 1963The Cocopa or Cocopah live in the delta region of the lower Colorado River, which encompasses parts of Arizona in the U.S. and Baja and Sonora in Mexico. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Cocopa migrated from the north sometime between 1000-1 BCE. Cocopa origin myths tell that the people are descended from twin gods who began under the waters and emerged to create the heavens and earth.

The Cocopa language is part of the Yuman family. Linguists have broken this language family down into four branches—Pai, River, Delta-California and Kiliwa. The Cocopa language is of the Delta California branch of Yuman and is closely related to the now extinct dialects of Halyikwamai and Kahwan, which were amalgamated into the Maricopa language in the nineteenth century.

Because of their location on the Colorado River, historians believe that the Cocopa may have been among the first Native people in the Southwest to encounter Europeans. In 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Alarcón wrote that the were a Cocopa tall, well-built people who welcomed the Spanish with shells, beads, and finely tanned leather. Alarcón also noted that he saw 6000-7000 men, indicating that the Colorado delta was heavily populated by Native Americans in the 16th century.

Word slip for Cocopa terms for "sing"

The audio selections above were recorded by James M. Crawford, a linguist who was a student of Mary Haas at the University of California, Berkeley. Crawford worked with the Cocopa in Arizona from 1962 to 1965, including Josephine Thomas, recording songs, stories, and several thousand words. This work became the focus of his dissertation, The Cocopa Language (1966), which in turn formed the basis of Crawford’s Cocopa Dictionary (1989), the definitive linguistic work on the Cocopa language.

Collections with Cocopa audio recordings:

James Crawford, collector. Recordings of Native American languages, 1953-1973.