CHAPTER XXVIII. IRRIGATION PROJECTS
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.
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?
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.”