Primitive Irrigation in South-Western U.S.A

Abstract

THE south-western regions of the United States of late years have won a prominent place in archæological news as a source of evidence of earliest man, the hunter, on the American continent. It had been known for some considerable time, however, that the arid lands of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico were the seat of the so-called Pueblo civilization, which had produced not only the remarkable cliff dwellings found in the Pueblo villages, but also that these villages are among the oldest known agricultural settlements in the United States. There sedentary farmers practised a specialized form of agriculture with maize as its main crop. Notwithstanding the varied topography of these arid regions, the farmers had a common interest and preoccupation—the problem of irrigation. So successful were their methods that, in 1540, when Coronado reached Hawikuh, the most southerly of the “Seven Cities of Cibolu”, the villages were able to supply him with sufficient corn to support his three hundred and twenty men and theii native carriers for a period of two years.