The Indians of the Southwest in both ancient and modern times built
dams, dug irrigation canals and watered certain tracts more or less
extensive in area. The subject of agriculture as conducted in arid
regions by the Indians is an exceedingly interesting one and has been
treated briefly by Doctor Hodge in the Handbook of American Indians.
Many of the modern canals in Arizona, New Mexico and California follow
the old ditches dug by the Cliff Dwellers, Pueblos and other tribes.
Excepting the Apaches and Comanches, probably all southwestern Indians
understood and made use of irrigation in the raising of crops.
Some of the military and scientific expeditions to the Southwest in
early times found the Pima, Maricopa, Papago, Pueblo and other Indians
in possession of large, cultivated fields. With the influx of white
settlers in the later ’70’s and early ’80’s, not only was much of this
land appropriated by the Whites, but the water was diverted, thus
causing the Indians great privations. I have referred elsewhere in this
book to the case of the Pimas, and that of the Maricopas, Yumas and
Pueblos, and it has been commented upon in a score of reports. Briefly
summed up, we have well-nigh destroyed (or rather appropriated) the
entire irrigation zone formerly controlled by the Indians. Their fields
and ditches have passed to us.
A movement has been inaugurated to save what little remains. In this
humane work the Indian Rights Association and the Board of Indian
Commissioners, as well as the Indian Office, have all played prominent
parts. When Hon. F. H. Abbott became acting Commissioner he made a study
of this subject, and later, as Secretary of the Board of Indian
Commissioners, he prepared an exhaustive paper entitled, “Briefs on
Indian Irrigation and Indian Forests.” This was presented to the Senate
Committee on Indian Affairs, February 9th, 1914. It covers the entire
irrigation problem, and I insert most of it herewith.
“The proposed amendment relating to Indian irrigation, you will observe,
is sweeping in character. Its main and central purpose is to stop the
gratuitous use of tribal and Government funds in the construction and
maintenance of irrigation projects, to charge the costs thereof against
the lands benefited or against the pro rata shares in the tribal funds,
when distributed, of the individual Indians whose lands are benefited,
and to give the Indians a voice in the expenditure of their own funds
for irrigation purposes and make them share the responsibility of
maintaining and operating the completed projects. If this amendment is
enacted into law nearly $400,000 carried each year in the Indian
appropriation acts as gratuity items will become reimbursable. The facts
relating to existing irrigation law and practice and arguments in
support of the proposed amendment are fully elaborated in the brief
submitted herewith, to which I invite your careful attention.
“The proposed amendment relating to the care, protection, and sale of
Indian timber is also supported by a carefully prepared statement,
herewith submitted. This amendment, if enacted into law, will save the
Government in the neighborhood of $75,000 a year. * * * *
“The difficulties of the complex problems relating to the education and
civilization of the Indians of this country and to the handling of their
vast property resources are increasing in direct ratio with the increase
in the value of that property and the individualization thereof.
“The eyes cannot be closed to the constantly increasing administrative
burdens of the Indian Bureau. This increase can not be explained away on
the ground of alleged bad administration; it is due, in large part, to
the carrying out of laws enacted by Congress for the breaking up of the
vast tribal estates of the Indians and to the establishment of the
policy of individualization in connection therewith. Before the volume
of the business of the Indian Bureau will begin to grow less, it will
become very much greater; and the value of Indian property over which
the Indian Bureau is required by law to exercise supervision, now
estimated at nearly one billion dollars, will undoubtedly be very much
greater before it begins to grow less.
“How is the Government going to meet this growing problem? Will Congress
increase appropriations to meet the increased demands imposed by law and
changing economic conditions upon the Indian Bureau? Is there any other
way out?
“Those who answer by saying, ‘Give the Indians immediate citizenship and
full control of their property and thus keep down the appropriations for
Indian administration,’ offer a correct solution only for that class of
Indians who are sufficiently educated and advanced in civilization to
accept the full responsibility for handling their property. Accepting
this solution for that class of Indians—and it is undoubtedly the
correct solution for this class—it still remains true that the
increasing value of the lands and minerals and forests on Indian
reservations which are still closed to settlement, and of the property
of individual Indians who are still unprepared to protect it, and the
future individual allotment of lands to nearly 50 per cent of the
Indians of the country, will make the administration of Indian Affairs
for some years to come one of increasing difficulty and expense. * * * *
“The reclamation of arid lands on Indian reservations by irrigation, to
provide better homes for Indian families, and to bring to them the
benefits of civilized society through the agricultural development of
their lands, is one of the most beneficent policies the Government has
ever inaugurated in dealing with their affairs. Too much credit can not
be given to Senators and Congressmen and administrative officers of the
Government who have had to do with the enactment of laws and the
securing of appropriations to carry out this policy. The motives of
legislators have been benevolent and patriotic, and the work of the
Government engineers and other officials who have constructed the
projects has been honest and comparatively efficient and economical.
However, a careful examination of Indian irrigation laws and conditions
prevailing in connection with their administration reveals defects which
need remedy. It is no reflection upon the high motives of those
responsible for present law and present conditions that these defects
exist. It was a new legislative and administrative field. Irrigation
laws were not uniform in the several States. Conditions varied on
different Indian reservations. The legislation was necessarily
experimental. Nevertheless, the defects are serious, they should be
faced frankly, and the remedies needed should be applied promptly to
preserve the good in the existing order of things and eliminate the bad
before greater harm results.
“Lack of uniformity in Indian irrigation laws, lack of utilization by
Indians of their irrigated lands, lack of a voice on the part of the
Indians in the expenditure of their funds for the construction and
maintenance of their irrigation projects, and failure to individualize
the reclamation costs by charging them against the lands benefited are
the most serious fundamental defects of the present situation.
“Approximately nine million dollars have been expended for the
irrigation of Indian lands. About seven millions of this amount have
been charged to tribal funds and the balance expended from gratuity
appropriations made by Congress. About 600,000 acres of irrigable Indian
lands have been brought under ditch. Of this area less than 100,000
acres are being irrigated by Indians, while a large part of the area
thus irrigated is not farmed, but is used to produce hay crops. And,
notwithstanding the fact that either tribal or Government funds have
been used to irrigate these lands, on all except three reservations,
when patents in fee are issued to Indian allottees, and in every case
where their lands are sold under the supervision of the Government,
either the individual Indian who sells the land or the purchaser thereof
puts in his pocket the value of the water right for which the tribe or
the Government has paid; and not only are the members of the tribe not
consulted with respect to the expenditure of their money, which
ultimately passes in this manner either to the individual allottee or to
the white purchaser of his land, but the individual whose land is
benefited is given no opportunity to assume any responsibility in
connection therewith or to appreciate the value of the benefit
conferred, while the free-water right thus secured by the individual
Indian offers a constant inducement to him to part with his land.
[Illustration:
NAVAHO HOME, NEW MEXICO
]
“Some striking illustrations of the lack of utilization of irrigable
Indian lands may be found on the following reservations: On the Crow
Reservation, where irrigation ditches have been completed for more than
ten years and where the total area under constructed ditches is
estimated at 68,756 acres, only 11,376 acres are irrigated by Indians,
and most of this is irrigated for hay crops; on the Flathead Reservation
the present irrigable area is estimated at 38,000 acres, but only 1,088
acres are irrigated by Indians; on the Fort Belknap Reservation, out of
22,000 acres under ditch, 7,670 acres are irrigated by Indians; on Fort
Hall Reservation Indians irrigate only 3,300 acres out of present
irrigable area of 35,000 acres; on the Wind River Reservation the
Indians are irrigating approximately 5,000 acres out of a total
irrigable area of 35,000 acres, and most of this area is irrigated for
hay crops; on the Uintah Reservation, out of a total irrigable area of
87,880 acres the Indians are irrigating approximately 6,000 acres; on
the Yakima Reservation, where the present irrigable area is 54,000
acres, the Indians are irrigating 5,350 acres; and at Yuma the Indians
are irrigating approximately 200 acres out of an irrigable area of 4,000
acres. In the reservations of the Southwest the showing of utilization
of irrigable lands is very much better.
“The lack of utilization noted in the foregoing paragraph is serious
enough from an industrial standpoint, but it is fraught with peculiar
dangers in the case of the reservations where the water rights are
subject to the operation of State law. On the Fort Hall Reservation
(Idaho) beneficial use must be made of the water for the irrigable lands
prior to the year 1916, in order to prevent the appropriation of the
water by other water users; on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming
beneficial use must likewise be made before 1916; and on the Uintah
Reservation (Utah) beneficial use must be made before 1919. The total
investment in the construction of irrigation ditches and the purchase of
water rights on these three reservations amounts to approximately
$2,000,000, and in the case of the Wind River and Uintah Reservations
the expenditure has been made from Indian funds.
“Lack of proper utilization can not be charged to the indolence of the
Indian. The present system is doubtless responsible for an undue lack of
interest and indifference on his part. He has not been consulted in
advance of the expenditure; the cost of the construction and the expense
of maintenance on the basis of each acre irrigated have not been
explained and brought home to him; the money being taken out of a tribal
fund which has never become a part of his individual possession, he has
not understood his intimate individual interest in its expenditure, nor
has he realized the value, in dollars and cents, of the benefit.
“In many cases irrigation on Indian reservations has been provided for
in response to a perfectly natural and normal demand of white settlers,
either for the opening to settlement of irrigable lands on Indian
reservations or for obtaining water from streams flowing through Indian
reservations for the irrigation of their lands on the outside. As a
result, the construction of irrigation projects on Indian reservations
has often preceded the proper preparation of the Indians for such
construction and often has preceded the development of transportation
facilities necessary to market the products of the land irrigated, and
in the case of the large reservations in the Northwest irrigation has
been brought to Indians unskilled in the art of irrigation, strangers to
the art of agriculture, trained for generations to the exciting life of
the chase, having no knowledge of any of the pursuits of modern
civilized life except a somewhat general knowledge of the raising of
cattle and horses. Generally, however, this premature development of
irrigation has had sufficient justification in the necessity of such
development to preserve the rights of the Indians to the water.
“One of the chief reasons for the failure of the Indians on the
reservations mentioned to utilize their irrigable lands has been the
failure to provide appropriations necessary to enable them to buy teams
and tools and other equipment, without which the utilization of their
lands is impossible. The main thought apparently has been to build the
ditches, and with rare exceptions no provision has been made to use
tribal funds for any other purpose than that of reimbursing the
Government for the cost of construction of the project. At the same time
the Indian has lacked the credit which is available to the white settler
living under similar conditions necessary to help himself. Through the
policy of reimbursable appropriations established during the last few
years Congress has begun to prepare a remedy for these conditions. But
on a majority of the reservations mentioned above, Indians are still in
a position where they have to sit idly by and witness the expenditure of
their own funds in the construction and maintenance of irrigation
ditches which, under present conditions, they cannot use and in which
expenditures they have no voice—helpless, though they have more than
ample resources in their undeveloped lands to secure money advances
necessary to make productive use thereof.
“Another reason for the lack of adequate utilization of Indian lands may
be found in the failure to adjust the size of the allotment of irrigable
land to the conditions of soil and climate and the industrial habits and
needs of the Indians. While in the Southwest, on the Colorado River and
Yuma Reservations and several others, allotments have been made in
10–acre tracts, and in some cases smaller, suitable to the methods of
intensive agriculture practiced in that section of country, this policy
has been lacking almost universally in the reservations of the
Northwest, where in most cases allotment has been made under the general
allotment act, which did not take into consideration the question of
possible irrigation. The allotment of 80 acres to each man, woman, and
child is found under the irrigation projects on the Yakima, Uintah,
Crow, Wind River, Flathead, and Southern Ute (diminished) Reservations
while on Blackfeet and Fort Peck the size of the allotment is 40 acres,
and on Fort Hall 40 acres to each head of a family and 20 acres to each
other member of the tribe. Take the Uintah and Wind River Reservations,
for example, where beneficial use is required by State law in order to
protect the water rights. The average family of five members would have
400 acres of irrigable land. The average white family in the same
section of the country can not utilize satisfactorily over 80, or at the
most 160, acres of the same land. How can an Indian family unassisted,
and especially without money or credit to buy tools and equipment, be
expected to reclaim 400 acres of land?
[Illustration:
RINCON RESERVATION, MISSION INDIANS, CALIFORNIA
Grandfather blind (trachoma). Both children infected.
]
“In striking contrast with the lack of agricultural development on
irrigated Indian reservations, under the present system, is the marked
development of agriculture during the last few years on a number of
reservations in the regions of normal rainfall where Indians have had
control of their own funds and the responsibility of expending them in
the improvement and development of their lands, under the guidance of
practical Indian Service farmers.
“The remedies needed will be suggested briefly, as follows:
“1. General legislation that will charge the individual land benefited
with the cost of construction and maintenance, payment to be made out of
the share in the tribal funds of the individual whose land in benefited
or from the proceeds of the sale of the land when it passes from Indian
ownership where the share of the individual in the tribal fund is
insufficient.
“2. The general legislation suggested in the above paragraph should
provide that the tribe whose funds it is proposed to use for the
construction of irrigation projects shall be first consulted.
“3. The proposed general legislation should also provide for charging of
costs of maintenance and operation against the lands under the project
and should give the Indians whose lands are benefited a voice in said
maintenance and operation.
“4. In order not to overburden irrigated Indian lands by the legislation
suggested, especially since the Indians have not heretofore been
consulted, the costs of supervisory engineering and of experimental
construction and cost of investigations and preliminary surveys should
be excluded from the charges made against the lands and paid from
gratuity appropriations.
“5. Reimbursable appropriations from tribal funds should be made
immediately for all Indian reservations where the utilization of
irrigable lands has not kept pace with the construction of irrigation
projects through lack of funds in the hands of individual Indians to
make such utilization possible.
“6. Skilled irrigation farmers should be provided out of gratuity
appropriations to give advice and assistance to Indians having irrigable
lands.”