418 ETHNOLOGY. 



has resided for two or three years on the reservation, but generally full- 

 grown Apache women become public prostitutes, and their owners 

 appropriate the money received by these women from degraded white 

 men. 



Pima industey and food. — The men do not labor except so far as 

 js necessary to enable them to raise a crop. Each village elects two or 

 three old men, who decide everything pertaining to the digging of 

 acequias and making of dams, and who also regulate the time during 

 which each land-owner may use the water of the acequia for irrigating 

 purposes. Each village has constructed years ago an acequia, (irrigating 

 canal.) In order to force the water of the Gila River into their acequias 

 the Pimas dam the river at convenient spots by means of poles tied 

 together with bark and raw-hide and stakes driven into the bed of the 

 river. Small crevices are filled with bundles of willow-branches, reeds, 

 and a weed called " gatuna." These frail structures rarely stand longer 

 than a year and are often entirely carried away when the river rises 

 suddenly, which occurs in the spring of the year, if, during the winter, 

 much snow has fallen upon the mountains whence the stream issues, 

 and also sometimes during the summer after heavy showers. Their 

 acequias are often ten feet deep at the dam, and average from four to 

 six feet in width, and are continued for miles, until finally the water 

 therein is brought on a level with the ground to be cultivated, when the 

 water is led off by means of smaller ditches all through their fields. 

 Having no instruments for surveying or striking of levels, they still 

 display considerable ingenuity in the selection of proper places for the 

 ''heads of ditches." 



The Pimas and Maricopas have a reservation containing one hundred 

 square miles and extending along the Gila Eiverfor a distance of nearly 

 twenty-five miles ; only a comparatively small part of this area, how- 

 ever, is available for agricultural purposes, for a portion of the soil on 

 the reservation is strongly impregnated with alkali; some spots are 

 marshy, and all the land beyond the immediate river bottom-land so high 

 above the level of the river that irrigation becomes impracticable, con- 

 sidering the limited means for making acequias at the disposal of the 

 Pimas. 



The Indians do not cultivate all the land that might be tilled, for their 

 fields do not average more than from ten to fifteen acres to the family ; 

 nevertheless they are dissatisfied with the size of their reservation, 

 asserting that their forefathers had always been in possession of a much 

 larger portion of the Gila Valley, and since the valley above the reser- 

 vation has been settled up by Americans and Mexicans, the Indians 

 have frequently encroached upon the fields of the latter, whom they con- 

 sider in the light of intruders, audit is appreheuded that sooner or later 

 serious diificulties will arise. 



The Pima men plow the land with oxen and a crooked stick, as is done 

 by the Mexicans ; they sow the seed and cut the grain 5 (the latter is done 



