Wassaja

Carlos Montezuma "Wassaja"
National Archives and Records Administration
Born	Wassaja 1866 Four Peaks, Arizona Territory
Died	January 31, 1923 (57)
Cause of death	Tuberculosis
Resting place	Ba Dah Mod Jo Cemetery Fort McDowell Cemetery
Nationality	Yavapai
Alma mater	University of Illinois, Northwestern University
Occupation	Doctor, Activist

Carlos Montezuma or Wassaja (born c.1866; died 1923) was a Yavapai-Apache Native American,activist and a founding member of the Society of American Indians. His birth name Wassaja, means "Signaling" or "Beckoning" in his native tongue. Wassaja was kidnapped by Pima raiders along with other children to be sold or bartered. Wassaja was then purchased by an Italian photographer Carlo Gentile in Adamsville, for thirty silver dollars. Gentile renamed him "Carlos Montezuma". Montezuma was the first Native American student at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, and only the second Native American ever to earn a Medical Degree in an American University after Susan La Flesche Picotte. Wassaja was the first Native American male to receive a medical degree. Until his death Wassaja fought to support the rights of his Yavapai people and other Native Americans.

"I am a full-blooded Apache Indian, born around the year 1866... some where near Four Peaks, Arizona Territory", wrote Dr. Montezuma, introducing himself in a letter written in 1905 to the Smithsonian Institution. He was named "Wassaja" (which means "signaling" or "beckoning") by his parents. His father was a chief named Co-cu-ye-vah and his mother was named Thil-ge-ya. In October 1871, at the age of 5, he was captured by Pima raiders together with other children to be inslaved or bartered. Wassaja was brought to Adamsville, a mixed Anglo and Mexican village, and offered for thirty silver dollars to itinerant Italian photographer Carlo Gentile, who happened to be in the area for his ethnographic work on Native Americans. Gentile, a cultured and liberal man from Naples who had moved to America in the 1850s, adopted Wassaja as his own son and renamed him "Carlos Montezuma" as an enduring and proud reminder of the child's cultural heritage, partly after himself, partly from the Montezuma ruins near Adamsville.

In the following years, Wassaja/Carlos accompanied his adoptive father in his pioneering photographic and ethnographic expeditions in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. For a few months in 1872–73 they even joined the theatrical troupe of Ned Buntline and Buffalo Bill, where the boy Wassaja was featured as Azteka, the Apache-child of Cochise in the Wild West melodrama. The Scouts of the Prairie in cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, while Gentile produced and sold promotional carte de visite of the cast members.