FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



231 



ing, independent, and equal to the de- 

 mands of the new life. 



It must be remembered that the nu- 

 merous tribes of Indians, scattered from 

 the Atlantic seaboard westward to the 

 Pacific Ocean and from Mexico to the 

 Canadian line, speak different lan- 

 guages, hold and are governed by re- 

 ligious, civic, political, and social laws 

 and customs that differ as widely as do 

 their languages, excepting possibly the 

 law of hospitality. Thus it will be un- 

 derstood how a comparison of the tribes, 

 one with another, would be about as 



reservations within the arid and semi- 

 arid region of the country where most of 

 them are. 



Irrigation is no new matter with those 

 Indians in the southwest where crops 

 were raised by irrigation long before 

 the advent of the Spaniard. The relics 

 of reservoirs and canals, large and small, 

 built and used by the people of the cliffs, 

 the pueblos, and plains houses, are still 

 largely in evidence as to one source of 

 their subsistence. Some of these old 

 works are still in successful use, and 

 others of more recent construction by 









AN APACHE DWELLING OF A TYPE NOW FAST DISAPPEARING, FORT APACHE RESERVATION,. 

 ARIZONA. THESE INDIANS ARE BEING BENEFITED BY GOVERNMENT IRRIGATION. 



futile as an effort to measure with the 

 same yard stick an African, a Chiua- 

 man, and an Eskimo. And also it can 

 be seen how impossible it would be to 

 devise a policy that would be applicable 

 to all. 



There has long been evidenced a de- 

 sire to induce the Indians to give up the 

 old nomadic camp-life of forest and 

 plain and turn to agricultural pursuits 

 that would entail permanent dwellings 

 and tend to self-support. Therefore ir- 

 rigation has been considered as a means 

 of affording farms for those Indians on 



the Indians of the past and present gen- 

 erations are also large factors in the life 

 of these people. It was but a matter 

 of course, then, that the government 

 should as long ago as the sixties, if not 

 before, consider a policy already form- 

 ulated and in force. 



Just so soon as the conditions were 

 favorable and the demand for farms or 

 small cultivable areas has been made by 

 the Indian with apparent good faith, 

 the government has endeavored to ex- 

 tend aid in the building of the necessary 

 ditches. Sometimes no pecuniary as- 



