Article July 12, 1900 Issue

Original Irrigators of the West

Galveston (Tex.) Semi-Weekly News

Four hundred years ago, according to the narrative of that intrepid Spanish adventurer, Cabeza de Vaca, the portion of southern Arizona now occupied by the Gila Indian reservation, grew luxuriant crops of fruit and maize for the friendly Pima Indians. This explorer describes them very much as they are to-day. They occupied the same lands as at present and were industrious farmers and irrigators, as they continued to be for many years after the acquisition of Arizona by the United States. They have raised corn, wheat, pumpkins, beans, sorghum, and vegetables in profusion; they have lived in small villages and held their lands in severalty, and they are expert weavers of fine blankets and cotton fabrics. All this has been accomplished through irrigation, practised by them since before the discovery of the new world.

What is the situation in this reservation to-day? Those philanthropists who bewail the passing of the American Indian, may well turn their attention to the destitute condition of the Pima Indians, brought about by the push of the white settler and the criminal neglect of the government, whose wards the Indians are.

The Pimas have always been friends of the whites and enemies of the Apaches. They gave aid and succor to the early white pioneers and their tepees were always open to peaceable whites or Indians when hard pressed by the savage foe. It is to-day their boast that their hands have never been stained by the white man's blood. It was under these conditions that they were joined about a century ago by the Maricopas, who came as fugitives from the more powerful Yuma tribe. When the belligerent Apaches broke out upon the warpath, the troops of the United States often obtained substantial aid and subsistence from the gentle Pimas. Their agriculture has been carried on entirely by irrigation with water diverted from the Gila River. The tribes have always supported not only themselves, but have shared their world's goods with the poorer Indians to the south of them not favored by irrigation. They have learned readily at the Government Indian School and their progress towards modern civilization has been regarded as one of the encouraging features of the Indian problem. During the last ten years their irrigating water—their life blood—has been taken away from them, and they are perforce, lapsing into indolence, misery, and vice.

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