232 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



FLOODWATER FARMING 



The fact remains, however, that the Bonitians lived a long while 

 in Chaco Canyon and that farming was their livelihood. Lacking a 

 living stream, they necessarily depended upon floodwaters for irriga- 

 tion. Bryan believed that the best agricultural lands available to them 

 were the alluvial fans at the mouths of the rincons. But scattered 

 areas in midvalley were also favorable — the sandy borders of dis- 

 continuous channels and places where water temporarily ponded. 

 Experience dictates the selection of such places. 



Inherited knowledge and understanding of soils and drainage are 

 prerequisites in the choice of areas suitable for floodwater farming. 

 Those overflowed by slow-moving floodwaters are everywhere pre- 

 ferred areas. The flow must wet the ground without uprooting plants 

 or smothering them under washed-in sand. It is the freshly deposited 

 film of sandy silt that renews these floodwater fields. Hence the 

 operator must know how to gage the amount of runoff and check 

 erosion; he must anticipate the muddy onrush and stay on the job 

 until it has passed, according to the most successful Navaho farmer 

 we visited in the Chaco area (Judd, 1954, p. 55). 



As a result of his study of local topography and following observa- 

 tions among the Pima, Papago, and other desert tribes, Bryan (1929, 

 1941, 1954) believed that Chaco Canyon in Bonitian times was emi- 

 nently suited for floodwater farming and that it would be equally 

 suitable today if annual precipitation were what it was formerly and 

 if there were no modern arroyo. 



This present-day arroyo, now 30 feet deep and 100 to 300 feet 

 wide, presumably began about 1850 and has proved more destructive 

 than either of its predecessors. If it follows a like cycle it, too, 

 eventually will fill with transplanted alluvium ; additional soil will 

 blanket the refill and a new ground cover will take root. Indeed, as I 

 write these lines, those very processes are being expedited by the 

 National Park Service in a studied program of erosion control that 

 includes introduction of check dams and the replanting of willows 

 and cottonwoods. Since stockmen have moved their herds elsewhere 

 and Navaho sheep and goats are restricted, it should be possible once 

 again to reestablish a green carpet lengthwise of Chaco Canyon, but 

 the pine forests that furnished timbers for Pueblo Bonito and its 

 neighbors cannot be reclaimed. 



