AGRICULTURAL DEVELOP- 

 MENT OF THE PACIFIC 

 COAST 



BY E. J. WICKSON 



Professor of Horticulture, University of California 



ALTHOUGH the region of the United States west 

 of the Rocky Mountains is rather new in the 

 eyes of the present generation, there are sev- 

 eral grounds upon which its agriculture may be 

 claimed to be old — possibly older than what we now 

 regard as "American agriculture," which proceeded 

 westward from settlements by Europeans upon the 

 Atlantic Coast. 



The Prehistoric Period. — The Pacific Slope has, 

 in its southern parts, vestiges of prehistoric agri- 

 culture in irrigation canals and connections which 

 indicate the existence of irrigation systems of un- 

 determined origin and antiquity.* But such vestiges 

 did not alone remain. Professor George F. Freeman 

 of the University of Arizona makes this statement: 

 "Among the native economic plants of this region 

 may be found varieties of agricultural plants which 

 have been grown within the confines of Arizona for 

 hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years — 

 years when the ruins that now crumble in tne des- 

 ert sands were populated with a happy and pros- 

 perous race: years when canal systems which still 

 can be distinctly traced, ran on higher levels and 

 covered more lands than those which at the present 

 time distribute the waters of the Gila and Salt rivers. 

 Here, among the Pima and Papago Indians, descend- 

 ants of or successors to these former builders, may 

 be found varieties of corn, beans, pumpkins and 

 squashes which have survived the race under whose 

 husbandry they originated.! 



Professor Freeman has isolated forty-seven tjj^pes 

 of such prehistoric beans among the Papago Indians 

 — ^the very name of their tribe signifying "bean- 

 men" from remote antiquity; therefore to call the 

 Bostonese of the Atlantic side "bean-eaters" is 

 merely recrudescent. Perhaps the original use of 

 the term provoked resentment as keen as that of the 

 present day. 



One gets a broader view of the antiquity of Pacific 

 Coast agriculture from Professor Mead's study of the 



• Irrigation Institutions, by Elwood Mead (Macmillan & 

 Co., 1903). p. 41. 



t "Southwestern Beans and Teparies." Bulletin 68 Univ. 

 of Ariz. Exp. Station. 



214 



