ARIZONA'S PIONEER IRRIGATORS

WHEREVER water is artifi-cially applied to the soil for the purpose of producing crops, the symbol of the irri gator is the long-handled shovel with which he builds tapoons and otherwise directs the water where he wishes it to flow. But in Ari zona, a scant half century ago, the most necessary tool of the irrigator was a rifle with which to stand off savage Apaches bent on scalping himself and his family, running off his livestock, steal ing his crops, and burning his home.

In Arizona irrigation has reached its highest perfection as an occupation and as an art. Here the wedding of soil and water brings forth a lush abundance un believable to dwellers in less favored climes. Yet it is an art born amid strife with ferocious enemies, with flood, with drought, and between rival claimants to the limited water supply without which the fertile soil was worthless except as stock range. Perhaps we should not say born, but reborn. Irrigation has been carried on in Arizona for countless centuries, pos sibly since the coming of the first abor igine who wandered into the American Southwest. Here, however, we are re ferring to the Anglo-Saxon period which began in the 60's. So far back that we can only guess how many millenniums have elapsed, thousands of acres in Salt River Valley, Casa Grande Valley and elsewhere were under cultivation by a race which developed a civilization com Perhaps we should not say born, but reborn. Irrigation has been carried on in Arizona for countless centuries, pos sibly since the coming of the first abor igine who wandered into the American Southwest. Here, however, we are re ferring to the Anglo-Saxon period which began in the 60's. So far back that we can only guess how many millenniums have elapsed, thousands of acres in Salt River Valley, Casa Grande Valley and elsewhere were under cultivation by a race which developed a civilization com parable to that of ancient Egypt. There was a long hiatus between the passing of the Ho-ho-kam-"those who vanished" -and the arrival of the restless Yankees who dimly perceived possibilities for the agricultural development of which we boast so proudly today. When we gaze upon Arizona's date gardens and citrus groves, cotton and alfalfa fields, lettuce and melon "patches" nearly as large as many an eastern coun PREHISTORIC men began the science of irrigation in this state. After the civil war irrigation began again. The pi oneer irrigators had their prob lems in the days of the ma rauding Indians and before the era of reclamation.

Truly; when we hear that this land, the most productive on earth, sells for $200, $500, $1,000 an acre, we are likely to envy those pioneers who found such land here for the taking. Few of us, even those of us old enough to have seen a part of that pioneer era, realize the price the old-timers paid in toil, hunger, anx iety, death, disappointment. Of them, Arizona's first state historian, Thomas Edwin Farish, has written: "Never in the history of the world did men have to contend against so formidable a foe as did the pioneer set tlers of Arizona. Harassed on all sides by the relentless Apaches, cut off from civilization by the desert plains of New Mexico and California, they lived a life of warfare and privations, a few determ ined men against hordes of savage foes. Many of these hardy settlers fell victims to the Indian cunning, and the finding of a few bleached bones in after years was all the record left of their untimely departure."

The first Yankees came seeking furs, gold and silver. Few had any idea of remaining more than a few months or years. But many were inevitably disap pointed in their search for quick wealth to be carried "back home." Among them, of course, were some with farm exper ience whose eyes could not be blind to the opportunities lying all about. Besides, they had before them the example of scattered and tiny Mexicon colonies, and of the Pima Indians on the Gila River at Sacaton. The Mexicans and Indians practiced "subsistence farming," with no thought of raising more than enough for their own needs; yet they grew boun tiful crops of corn, barley, pumpkins, melons and beans with a minimum of effort. It was apparent that with white skill and industry, results would be in comparably greater.

Troops were sent to protect the mining camps from raiding Apaches and the cavalry horses required food, especially grain. Fantastic prices paid for barley freighted from California probably inspired the earliest attempts at farming. Some of those first farmers were discharged soldiers who elected to remain.

SALT RIVER.

Pioneer irrigators used brush dams to direct the flow of this temperamental river in the valley. Then the river would "act up" and wash everything away.

So it can be said that the Apaches, who did so much to retard development of agriculture in Arizona, were primarily responsible for creating its first markets, the military posts.

Typical of what all pioneer irrigators endured was the experience of the first colonists on the Verde River Across from the present Camp Verde, this settlement was founded in 1865 by a group of "hot-headed boys," so called by Prescott people unable to dissuade them from their foolhardy enterprise. They bought crude mold-board plows at "exorbitant prices," laid in a supply of seed barley at $50 a hundred pounds and of corn at $22, traveled fifty miles by ox wagon into what was then the very heart of the Indian country.

First they had to build stone cabins and a stockade for defense. These were completed with all possible speed, since it was necessary to get at their agricultural labors. All had their entire assets tied up in the venture, and unless they produced a crop that year they were ruined.

No surveyor was in the party, but a member who had "carried a chain" in Illinois undertook to lay out a ditch with a plumb bob. Two or three men were always left at the stockade to watch for Indians and guard the oxen. The others worked from sunrise until it was too dark to see at night, pausing only for scanty meals of coffee, bacon, beans and bread.

Weeks later, several new members joined the colony and one of these declared that the ditch was laid out wrong. A hot argument was finally settled by throwing a dam across Clear Fork and turning in the water. It ran about 100 feet, then stopped.

"The atmosphere grew blue and sulfurous for awhile," records Dr. J. M. Swetnam, historian of the party. "Many days of hard labor had been lost by the blunder, but they were not the kind of men to repine. The upper end of the ditch was lowered, the survey made on a little lower level, and the work progressed without interruption until the ditch was completed."

Indians frequently appeared, and in May a large band ran off three oxen.

The settlers pursued for twenty-five miles, killed no Apaches, but recovered the animals, stuck full of arrows like so many pincushions. One died and two recovered, only to be stolen later.

On one raid the Indians got away with nineteen head of cattle worth $3,000. They cut the ditch. They set fire to the ripening grain. At night they stole what green corn they were able to carry off, destroyed as much more as they could.

"In August the first load of barley was taken to Prescott," Dr. Swetnam wrote. "It was not choice but was the fruit of hard and dangerous labor. In gathering the grain up, which was done by hand, the boys were often stung by scorpions and sometimes a rattlesnake would roll out of the bunch and go wriggling away, but it was the Apache that was the bane of life."

That load of barley brought $17 a hundred pounds. By fall the government had stationed a detachment of soldiers on the Verde, took over all the barley and corn the settlers could spare at $13.. Dr. Swetnam admits that this was some compensation, but adds: "... when it is remembered that during the season the Indians had destroyed or