l62 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



Indian farmers tended those fertile fields for untold generations 

 before Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his hand of resolute ad- 

 venturers marched gayly northward out of Mexico in 1540 to dig- 

 mythical gold from the Seven Cities of Cibola. When Padre Kino 

 came plodding his patient way toward salvation of the Pima and 

 Papago tribes late in the seventeenth century, those funny Indian gar- 

 dens fed his men and mules. And they supported, too, the westward- 

 bound gold-seekers of '49; the animals and personnel both of the 

 Pony Express and the later stagecoach companies; the U. S. Army 

 units stationed in Arizona before and after the Civil War. Except for 

 those gardens and the Pima and Papago scouts who served so faith- 

 fully throughout the protracted Apache campaign, Victorio and 

 Geronimo doubtless would have continued their murderous depreda- 

 tions for still another decade. The peaceful Indian tribes of the Gila 

 valley have well merited, and with interest, the Government-aided 

 irrigation system which once more makes possible the successful cul- 

 tivation of their Lilliputian farms. 



In the Salt River valley, prehistoric peoples also converted cacti- 

 covered wastes into gardens of maize, beans, and squashes. They 

 built, nearby, thick-walled, flat-roofed homes of mud, pressed and 

 patted into layer upon layer. Here, as along the Gila, industrious 

 generations dwelt in peace and plenty, tending their growing plants, 

 digging new ditches, hunting deer among thorny mesquite, until some 

 great, irresistible force came finally to claim possession. What that 

 force really was no one knows today. It may have been a slight diminu- 

 tion in annual rainfall ; more likely, it was increasing pressure from 

 nomadic tribes. But, in either case, after a period which none may 

 yet measure, the Indian farmers of the Rio Salado vacated their 

 cultivated fields, abandoned their compact settlements and moved on 

 to other, perhaps less favored localities. Substantial dwellings 

 crumbled into low, spreading mounds ; irrigation systems slowly filled 

 with wind-driven sand ; the desert crept back to claim its own. 



Not until the middle nineteenth century did Salt River valley re- 

 awaken to such industry as it had known in prehistoric times. Not 

 until 1865, or thereabouts, did hardy pioneers follow in on the dim 

 trails of the beaver trappers and the gold-seekers to select the thorny 

 plains of the Rio Salado as a likely place in which to build their 

 humble homes. 



Among these pioneers was one Jack Swilling, somewhat more 

 imaginative than his neighbors, who appears to have been the first to 

 recognize the possibility of local irrigation. Obviously influenced by 

 the nearby prehistoric canals, Swilling started to clear out one of 



