SIMON GEORGE REBUILDING WORTHLESS FLUME PLACED
BY INDIAN SERVICE ACROSS WAPATO CANAL
Showing the Embankments of the Canal Which Completely
Bars the Escape of Simon Goudy's Waste Water
Approximately four acres of Goudy's land was taken by the canal right of way, soil being appropriated even beyond the fenced limits, leaving the surface so lowered as to swamp and become worthless. For this right of way, Goudy received not one dollar for either ground or damages sustained.
Running midway from west to east through Goudy's allotment is the dry bed of a small creek, which carries water contingent only on the heaviest snows of winter. The Wapato Canal completely blocks this water way, but a gap has been left in the west, or near embankment for the purpose of permitting any possible flow of the creek to enter the canal. This of course allows the canal to empty into the dry bed, filling it to within a few hundred feet of Goudy's west line. This former dry depression, which Goudy always kept free from waste water, is thus converted into a veritable lagoon, unfordable and which in time will develop into a mosquito-breeding, willow-grown swamp.
Mr. Goudy irrigates his south forty acres from the Paiute Ditch, which was constructed by Indians under the supervision of James H. Wilbur, Agent, for the Paiute prisoners of war brought to the Yakima Reservation at the close of the Bannock uprising in 1878. The Paiutes running away, the ditch was turned over to the Yakimas by Agent Wilbur, and has been used by them unmolested during the intervening forty one years. Mr. Goudy built his own lateral more than a quarter of a century ago. This year, during the vital irrigating season of May, three several "ditch tenders" called upon him, ordering him not to use such a volume of water, although water was running waste down the main creek bed. The Indian refused to obey the injunction. It appeared to him that it was not enough that he had been despoiled of water for half of his ranch by a seemingly upheld thief, but the Government was now bent on ruining, or confiscating his remaining water supply. The danger point had been reached and the "ditch tenders" were afterwards conspicuous by their absence on the Goudy lateral. Perhaps the "tenders" had a vision of an outraged Indian with a Winchester near that same spot on a former occasion, when the foreman of the railroad construction gang suddenly realized that his health was in jeopardy should he insist too strenuously on entering Goudy's field before settlement of right of way damages.
SIMON GOUDY, Allottee
Robbed of His Medicine Valley Ditch Eleven Years Ago, 40 Acres of His Ranch, Where Once He Harvested 892 Sacks of Fine Wheat, Is Now, Thanks to Indian Bureau Efficiency, a Desert Waste of Drifting Sands and Useless Sage.
As stated, Mr. Goudy has no outlet for his waste drainage, and about four acres of growing wheat and alfalfa became flooded in consequence. This he saved by cutting the canal bank, the overflow escaping through the vent. Earlier in the season and before irrigation, I had, at the instance of Mr. Goudy, called the attention of the Indian Service Engineer, Mr. L. M. Holt, to the fact that Mr. Goudy had not been provided with an outlet for his waste flow; and the reply was: "We do not expect him to have any waste water." It was not known at that time that an attempt would be made to curtail his Paiute source of water.