y 



152 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



canals represented on the Turney map, I venture the guess that less 

 than ten per cent are now traceable. And these only because the 

 tractor and the gang-plow have not yet reached them. 



In its Park of the Four Waters, the city of Phoenix has happily 

 preserved remnants of three old canals. Eleven miles to the east there 

 remains another magnificent section (fig. 162) ; vestiges of still others 

 may be seen, if they have not been leveled and plowed over since last 

 September, north of the Sierra Estrella, some 13 miles southwest of 

 Phoenix. Other sections survive here and there but chiefly on Indian 

 lands. The brush and stone dams that originally turned the river cur- 

 rent into these ditches were lost with each passing flood ; their very 

 sites have since been washed away as the river widened and deepened 

 its pebbled channel. In every instance. I am reasonably sure, the old 

 canals now open their thirsty mouths at least 10 feet above the present 

 water level (fig. 160). But this fact does not of itself necessarily indi- 

 cate an age of more than 10 or 12 centuries for the canals. 



The 50 major buildings and the uncounted lesser structures that 

 Gushing called Los Muertob in 1887 have gone to fill the several old 

 ditches he saw nearby. No trace remains today of this once populous 

 and important settlement. Where it formerly stood, contented cows 

 now munch in green meadows. And what is true here is generally 

 true elsewhere throughout the Salt River Valley. 



On the Pima Reservation, south of the Gila, 56,000 acres of virgin 

 land were being prepared in 1929 for Indian farmers. As I happened 

 by, giant tractors were pulling mesquite trees out by the roots ; were 

 raking, grading and smoothing the sandy soil at the rate of 20 acres a 

 day. Of the several prehistoric canals which crossed these new fields 

 a year ago, one dim meandering channel alone remained. It, too, was 

 doubtless wholly erased within a few days. Here the engineer is 

 justly proud of the efficiency with which his snorting machines per- 

 form ; of the speed and sureness with which a colossal undertaking is 

 being consumated. What is past, is past ! Lingering vestiges of a 

 prehistoric civilization from which the entire nation might learn are 

 wiped out, destroyed, with a wave of the hand. Like those of the Salt 

 River \^alley, the ancient canals bordering the Gila have mostly been 

 sacrificed to twentieth-century hopes. A generation hence, some vague 

 tradition may prevail among the Pima and Papago of vast ancestral 

 canals through which Arizona's formidable deserts were first tem- 

 porarily vanquished. 



Each succeeding civilization builds on the remains of its prede- 

 cessors ! 



