Stealing The Gila: The Pima Agricultural Economy And Water Deprivation, 1848-1921

David H. DeJong

2009

University of Arizona Press

The Pima Indians (Akimel O’otham or Akimel O’odham) once had ample water – or at least sufficient water for their needs. They lived in an arid region, but they understood their river’s inconsistent water flows and developed effective irrigation systems that allowed them to farm, trade, and prosper. Contact with the Spanish in the late eighteenth century allowed them to shift to a wheat-based agriculture and trade the surpluses to Spain, Mexico, and the U.S. in turn. The Pima population grew, the irrigated area expanded, and the river continued to support their agricultural way of life. By the mid 19th century, the irrigated lands were producing over a million bushels of wheat a year and the Pima entered successfully into the market economy.

This being American history, the idyll could not last. The United States and Mexico fought a war that ended with the Pima still Mexican residents. That was good. Better, the war brought American troops and American immigrants, customers for Pima goods, a benefit for the Pima. The Pima were strong enough at this point to counter the Apache who deterred European settlers. But the treaty that ended the war, although it kept the Pima in Mexico, was not the final word. The Americans wanted a southern transcontinental railroad, and the Gadsden Purchase brought the Pima into American territory. That was bad. Those immigrants who had stopped at the Pima “oasis” en route to the gold fields or west coast farms now recognized that the Pima area was prime farm land for those with access to the river’s water.

From 1848 until 1868 the Pima increasingly involved themselves in the market economy, providing safe passage for immigrants as well as wheat and trade items for those passing through. However, with the first upstream diversion of the Pima’s lifeblood in 1869, and continuing until 1921, as DeJong clearly and thoroughly explains, the American newcomers and their government destroyed the Pima way of life, making a prosperous and independent people poor and dependent. Sometimes the Americans were sympathetic, but usually the sympathizers were half-hearted or ineffective, no match for those who were contemptuous of Indians and regarded them as incompetent and inferior beings who should be pushed aside to allow Europeans to use the water efficiently. Time after time Congress and the Indian affairs bureaucracy ignored the Pima’s needs and rights. White encroachment and government policy combined to divert the Gila River from the Pima irrigation channels, to dry up Pima acreage in order to water acres upstream all despite treaties banning the taking of Pima water. When squeezing their upstream water was insufficient, the next step was to reserve the Pima, to take “unused” lands after allotting acreages insufficient for sustenance much less the growing of agricultural surpluses for the broader economy. The Pima were reduced to stripping their lands of trees for firewood. By that time the white view was that the Pima were incapable of adjusting to Anglo agriculture or Anglo society.

The Pima experience is yet another example of how Anglo Americans treated indigenous groups as lesser peoples that had to be moved aside if the land was to be exploited properly. And when the white settlers decided it was time to reclaim the land, they asked federal help, but neither the settlers nor the government gave serious consideration to bringing water to the Pima.

The story is almost a cliché. It happened to the Pequots, to the Cherokee, to the Menominee. It’s yet another example of how Native Americans and Anglo-Americans have clashed through their shared history. The Indians have something that the Anglos want, and the Anglos have the superior force to take it. Where it differs is in its relative lack of violence. This story is not the standard Indian-white confrontation with wagons circled and blankets laden with smallpox. Rather than a clash of civilizations, it’s an example of the sadder instance of deception, superior manipulation of a tilted system, the taking of the Indian’s way of life despite Indian efforts to be what the whites would have them be.

Even when the Indians make every reasonable effort to adapt their culture to that of the whites, still the whites reject the Indians. The only good Indian, it seems, is one unlike the one currently existing. But the times change, mostly for reasons having little to do with the Indians or their well being. Slowly, incredibly slowly, the American government comes to realize that the process has been illegal as well as immoral, and the changing perception of the Native American – as well as pressure from those demanding justice and equity for Native Americans – slowly restore some semblance of the pre-existing conditions. In this case, a century and a half after beginning to steal the Gila, the United States is finally beginning to give some of it back.

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Map location of Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community

But it’s a slow process returning water to over 100,000 acres, and the Pima have not been sitting passively waiting for the water to flow again. Both the project and reservation have websites. The Pima-Maricopa site is http://www.gilariver.org/ while the 2007 site describing the water project is http://www.gilariver.com/main.htm.

David DeJong has a Ph.D. in American Indian policy from the University of Arizona. He is project manager for the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, a federal project to irrigate the Gila River Indian Reservation with water from the Central Arizona Project and the Gila River. He is also an expert on American Indian policy, having published two books and many articles on the subject. He is more than qualified to write about this subject.

The re-irrigation of the Pima lands is a slow process, still incomplete forty years after litigation won Pima treaty rights to water taken a century before. The narrative is clear and easy enough to follow if not necessarily a pleasure due to the subject matter. DeJong includes pertinent illustrations and abundant maps of the evolving Pima lands and irrigated areas. This work is a highly readable, well researched study that deserves examination by all who are interested in social and political aspects of Native American history, the settlement of the West, and the competition for scarce resources.

Reviewed by John H. Barnhill; Independent Scholar

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