ORIGINAL IRRIGATORS OF THE 



WEST. 



BUT THEIR INDUSTRY HAS NOW DEPARTED. 

 CROWDED OUT BY THE WHITE MAN. 



From National Irrigation Association. 



Pour hundred years ago according to the narrativeof that intrepid 

 Spanish adventurer, Cabeza de Vaca, the portion of Southern Arizona 

 now occupied by the Gila Indian Reservation, grew luxuriant crops of 

 fruit and maize for the friendly Pima Indians. This explorer describes 

 them very much as they are to-day. They occupied the same lands as 

 at present and were industrious farmers and irrigators, as they con- 

 tinued to be for many years after the acquisition of Arizona by the 

 United States. They have raised corn, wheat, pumpkins, beans, sor- 

 ghum and vegetables in profusion; they have lived in small villages 

 and held their lands in severalty and they are expert weavers of fine 

 blankets and cotton fabrics. All this has been accomplished through 

 irrigation, practiced by them since before the discovery of the New 

 World. 



What is the situation in this reservation to-day? Those philan- 

 thropists who bewail the passing of the American Indian, may well 

 turn their attention to the destitute condition of the Pima Indians, 

 brought about by the push of the white settler and the criminal ne- 

 glect of the Government, whose wards the Indians are. 



The Pimas have always been friends of the whites and enemies of 

 the Apaches. They gave aid and succor to the early white pioneers 

 and their tepees were always open to peaceable whites or Indians when 

 hard pressed by the savage foe. It is to-day their boast that their 

 hands have never been stained by the white man's blood. It was under 

 these conditions that they were joined about a century ago by the Mar- 

 icopas who came as fugitives from the more powerful Yuma tribe. 

 When the belligerent Apaches broke out upon the warpath, the troops 

 of the United States often obtained substantial aid and subsistence 

 from the gentle Pimas. Their agriculture has been carried on entirely 

 by irrigation with water diverted from the Gila River. The tribes 

 have always supported themselves, but have shared their world's 



