Reclamation and the Indian

RECLAMATION AND THE INDIAN

By Paul Jones

My part of the discussion this afternoon has to do with "Reclamation and the Indian." Now I do not mean the reclamation law and the Indian, but the reclamation of arid lands and the Indian people, because we started reclaiming arid lands in this country thousands of years before there was a reclamation law and even many, many years before the Mormon settlers at Salt Lake City or the Spanish settlers in New Mexico started to build irrigation works in North America. Relics of irrigation works are to be found in many places in the Southwest. Some of the irrigation ditches of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico have been in continuous use since before the coming of the whites. In the Salt River Valley close to Phoenix, I am told, some of the old canals of the ancient people can still be seen from an airplane. Along the San Juan River in our own Navajo Reservation there are still some irrigation works in use that were constructed by our Navajo people themselves in ancient times.

Undoubtedly the oldest as well as the most extensive of the prehistoric Indian agriculture in North America took place within the basin of the Colorado River. Many ruins of prehistoric civilization based upon irrigated farming are found in the San Juan Basin, which is now within the Navajo Indian Reservation. These ancient ruins were built by Pueblo Indians, who have since moved out of the country, but our ancestors moved to the area in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century and made use of some of the same irrigation works. Within the lifetime of some aged Navajos, our people cultivated lands on both sides of the San Juan River, using irrigation of course, as far upstream as the mouth of the Navajo River in New Mexico and well into the state of Utah downstream.

The modern era of Indian irrigation appears to have started in 1867 when Congress appropriated fifty thousand dollars for constructing an irrigation canal on the Colorado Indian Reservation near Parker, Arizona. It appears that this first attempt ended in failure because of lack of proper operation and maintenance.

As you probably know, the Navajo people were rounded up by the army in 1863 and taken to a reservation on the Pecos River in New Mexico, known as Bosque Redondo, near a place known as Fort Sumner. It is my impression that the government intended to make irrigation farmers out of, us Navajos on the Bosque Redondo Reservation; but looking over the old appropriation act for subsistence of Navajo Indians on the reservation, which we considered a concentration camp, I can find no mention of irrigation, but only of providing agricultural implements, seeds, and other articles necessary for breaking the ground. Apparently the government intended the Navajos to construct their own irrigation works. As you know, the Bosque Redondo experiment was a failure. Crop failures on the part of most of the Navajo captives required the government to support the Navajo people on issues of rations; and at the time the experiment was abandoned in 1868, over a million dollars had been expended by the government, and the Navajos were no closer to being self-sufficient as irrigation farmers than they were in 1863.

A somewhat similar experiment was started in 1945, under which the government planned to resettle Navajo and Hopi Indians on the Colorado River Reservation. One hundred forty-nine Navajo and Hopi families were removed to the Colorado River Reservation, voluntarily of course, since the government has abandoned its former harsh policies of forced removal of Indians. Of that number only sixty-seven families, fourteen of them Hopis, remained on the Colorado Indian Reservation as of the end of 1957. Most of the Navajo colonists on the Colorado River Reservation failed because they were taken there by the government without any training in irrigated farming and put down on a forty- or eighty-acre plot which had already been sowed to alfalfa. The first year good cutting came up, the second year a poor cutting, the third year a poorer cutting, and the fourth year nothing came up at all. At the end of this time the Navajos did not know what to do except go back to their own country. Some of the Navajos left simply because they could not stand the climate. On the Colorado River Indian Reservation the summer temperature sometimes goes up to 127 degrees, and we just are not used to that kind of heat. Political differences between the Colorado River Indian tribes and the Navajo Tribe have also contributed to the failure of the resettlement program.

The Fort Sumner experiment and the Colorado River Indian Reservation experiment, I think, show fairly conclusively that largescale resettlement of the Navajo people as farmers outside of their own country will not work. In a few minutes I shall discuss why a largescale irrigation project in our own country will work, and the steps we are taking to see that it does.

During the period between the Fort Sumner and Colorado River experiments, the government subjugated about 26,000 acres of land on the Navajo Reservation itself. All of this was not new land, however, because in some cases, along the San Juan River particularly, the government's work consisted in rebuilding or replacing primitive irrigation systems built by my own people themselves many years ago. Since 1950 under the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act, an additional 4,334 acres have been subjugated.

Irrigation on the Navajo Reservation to date has not been a failure, but it has not been a success either. The so-called farm units range in size from one acre up to ten acres. In some cases several members of a family have acquired units and have combined them into a single farm. Thus Yellowman, a member of our Tribal Council, has managed to get together a forty-acre farm upstream from Shiprock, New Mexico. He has been chosen the best farmer in San Juan County, although he has never been to school and does not speak English. He frankly admits, however, that he cannot make a living from his farm. He supplements his income by his fee as a member of the Tribal Council. I know there is no need to labor the point before this audience that two and one-half, five, ten, or even forty acres is inadequate to make an economic farm unit. The government in times past tried to crowd the maximum number of Indians on each Indian irrigation project, with almost uniformly unsuccessful results.

Both the Navajo Tribe and the government have realized the futility of this policy. A bill is now pending before Congress to authorize the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project in New Mexico to include a gross area of 115,000 acres. This will be the largest Indian irrigation project ever undertaken. It is, of course, a participating project of the Upper Colorado River Storage Project.

The plans for the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project call for farm units of ninety acres; however, the Advisory Committee of the Navajo Tribal Council has requested that this figure be revised to 120 acres. We know that this will mean fewer Navajos will get farms on the project, but we feel it will mean that the Navajos who do get farms will succeed and will have a fair chance.

To make sure that the Navajo people are ready for the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, the Navajo Tribe at its own expense has set up a farm training school on twelve thousand acres of newly subjugated land. We hired an outstanding farm manager, Clifford Hansen, as manager of our farm school. We put up all the necessary buildings and bought all the necessary equipment for this farm. We also erected sixteen houses for married trainees, consisting of two bedrooms, livingroom, kitchen, and bathroom. We have a dormitory for unmarried trainees.

Our training started off with twelve men in a two-year course. We now have twenty-four men in training. The first six will graduate in February of 1959 and will be assigned to 120-acre farms recently developed under the Hogback Project below Fruitland, New Mexico. We hope to have farms for every graduate of this school immediately upon his graduation. Existing projects will take care of the first few graduates, and after that the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project should be available.

The course of training at our school takes two years. The cost is about five thousand dollars per student, all of which is paid by the Navajo Tribe without government assistance. However, we believe eventually our training farm will be self-sustaining from the value of crops sold from it.

At our farm training school we not only teach the men to be farmers, but we have adult education to teach English to the farmers and their wives who do not speak the language. These classes are also open to persons who are not regular students at the training farm.

We also have a home economist on our payroll at the farm training school to teach the farmers' wives housekeeping, sanitation, child care, gardening, canning, nursing, first aid, and budgeting. We believe this training of Navajo women in modern housekeeping is just as important if the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project is to be a success as training the men in modern irrigated farming methods.

We expect to have about two hundred persons graduate from our training farm in ten years. According to the projected construction schedule of the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, the first farms will be available about four years after the commencement of actual construction of the project. Additional farms will open up over a period of eight years. We estimate the project will be complete about thirteen years from now, and at that time we will have nearly enough trained farmers to take over all the farm units.

In spite of the fact that the present farm units on the Navajo Reservation are not of economic size, on one project — the Fruitland — last year 93% per cent of the land was in use and 6 1 / 2 per cent was idle. This compares with the usual experience on Bureau of Reclamation projects of 10 per cent idle land. On the Hogback Project a little over 20 per cent of the land was idle. The projects are in our own Navajo country where we can stand the climate and where the crops are those with which we are familiar. Of course the farmers on the Fruitland and Hogback projects must supplement their farm incomes in order to make a living. Nevertheless they have a remarkable record of attachment to the land and intensive effort to get the most they can out of inadequate acreage.

On the basis of the spirit of our people and our intensive farm training program, we believe the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project will not only be the most extensive Indian irrigation program ever constructed in this country but will be by far the most successful. Approximately eighteen thousand Navajo Indians will gain a living at the American standard from the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project. Under present conditions the lands proposed for inclusion in the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project support 5,116 sheep units the year long. The same land under irrigation will support about 436,000 sheep units.

I think you can see why we consider the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project a life and death matter.

When the modern water storage projects in their land are completed the Navajos of today will not find it necessary to replenish their water supply in the manner depicted in the painting, "The Water Hole',' by Paul Salisbury.

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