"Abandoned Little by Little:" The 1914 Pima Adjudication Survey, Water Deprivation, and Farming on the Pima Reservation

Abstract

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the United States Indian Irrigation Service attempted to quantify the amount of land currently and previously irrigated on the Pima Reservation. Using triangulation surveys, engineer Charles Southworth produced a series of maps that abetted the enactment of the Florence-Casa Grande Project of 1916. Using a combination of Pima voices and modern GIS analysis substantiates that the Pima were versatile in responding to severe water deprivation a century ago and adapted by scaling back the amount of land they cultivated, eliminating the least productive lands from cultivation, and relocating or abandoning villages. More critically, the Pima shifted their agrarian practices from waterintensive crops to less intensive crops, such as small grains. Letting Pima voices speak for themselves gives credence to an indigenous perspective of these traumatic events. Thus, combining a Pima voice and modern technology illustrates the depth of hardship facing the Pima a century ago. FOR THE PIMA, AGRICULTURE HAS always been more than a means of earning a living. It has been a way of life that has defined their very essence as Akimel O'otham, or People. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, events beyond their control disrupted the Pima DAVID H. DEJONG is a political historian, former high school teacher, and adjunct faculty in Indian law and policy at the University of Arizona. He earned a bachelor's degree in American History from Arizona State University, a master's degree in American Indian Policy Studies from the University of Arizona, where he is now completing his doctorate specializing in the history of Indian water rights. He is currently the acting project manager of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project within the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.