The Indian's Silent Partner

THE INDIAN'S

There just isn't any such thing as an Indian problem in Arizona! For sure, though, there is a drought and erosion problem, and since the Indian reservations are just about the sorriest country in the world, in that respect, there is a land problem in connection with Indians. Of course, there are high-powered thinkers around who say what the Indians need is better roads. Good roads would make it possible for Indians to get around their big country. Well, there's no question about reservation roads being something less than a tourist's dream, but when you stop to think of it, just gadding about the reservation isn't going to be very much help to hungry Indians. And there are folks who say what the Indians need are more schools and more hospitals. That certainly could be true, too. On the other hand, the fellow whose stomach is perpetually ually wanting just one good meal isn't going to be able to concentrate for long on the three Rs; and it's quite likely that if he always had enough to eat he wouldn't need to go to a hospital so often; for health, nourishment comes first. Yes, sir, it's plain as a picture on the wall that Arizona Indians, being farmers, need most of all a respectable farm that will grow them the food they need. And farmers, no matter what the color of their skin, are the kind of people who don't like to clutter their minds with a lot of confusing details, so it's only natural that the people who are doing most to help Indians get better farms are the farmers of Arizona.

To explain how that comes about, we'll have to go back a few years to a time when, along about 1938, there were some ambitious young fellows working in a poor-relation division of the U.S. Indian Service called the Soil and Moisture Conservation Branch. smoco, the boys call their outfit, and they got fidgety just talking about all the wonderful things they could do to improve the Indians' farms if they just had some money to use.

One or two of those SMOCO fellows got the brilliant notion that since Indians are farmers, they ought to be able to cash in on some of that money the government pays out

SILENT PARTNER

to farmers, through the Production and Marketing Administrationistration, for doing things that help make their farms produce more.

They high-tailed it down to Phoenix for a talk with the committee of Arizona farmers that runs the PMA show in the State. Those farmers liked the idea, and after a spell of arguing, they got the idea across to some Washington bigwigs that they were going to split Arizona's share of conservation payment funds with the Indians.

It works this way: The PMA decides what kind of conservation work is most necessary, and how much of the cost of doing such work on individual farms it will allow the local committee of farmers to pay for. It sets up a certain amount of cash each year for use by the committee of farmers, and that State committee in turn allots a certain amount of its money to each county. Those county committees of farmers see that the work is done, and payments are made in accordance with the rules.

Groups of farmers may agree to pool their conservation payments in order to do a community-type piece of work that none of them could do alone, such as building dikes to protect farms from floods.

Right away quick, PMA committees in the seven Arizona counties in which Indian reservations are located began accepting applications from Indians who wanted to help themselves by improving their little farms.

Well, maybe not right away so quick as all that, but anyhow just as soon as those socio conservationists could get the word spread around among the more progressive Indians. The Indian Service technicians really went to work, too, holding meetings, chasing down Navajos and Hopis, Apaches and Papagos and all the rest, who could see that at last their white brothers realized that what the Indians need is a better farm.

It was the first money the smoco boys had smelled that wasn't just enough to pay for the pencils and typewriters they needed for planning the work they knew ought to be done. As a matter of fact, that money the PMA Committees of farmers pay out is still just about the only real help the smoco engineers get for doing any practical

"The Bountiful Crop"

covers about 12,000 acres and it's nothing but blown sand, or was anyhow until, under the leadership of one Skizzie Yazzie, a Navajo leader, the Indians formed two pooling agreements to use PMA payments along with smoco technical help to build dirt dikes and dams.

Those dams stop the water that comes raging down Oraibi Wash in the spring, and usually again in August, and the dikes spread the water out over some 2,000 acres of land. It sinks into the ground to provide moisture for crops on 138 small farms.

In 1950 those farms grew an average of around 20 bushels of corn to the acre. That may not sound like Iowa corn production, but it's a heap better than the nothing that grew on this land before the dams and dikes were built. That same year produced practically a complete corn crop failure everywhere else in the district because of a severe drought.

Now let's move back 500 years northeast to one of the most unbelievable spots in the United States-the Hopi villages. The Hopis have been farmers for much longer than their white brothers have been in this part of the world, but they've had to do it the hard way, and starvation has dogged their lives for centuries. Today, however, they know the meaning of helpful co-operation with white farmers.

For a good look at what PMA conservation payment pooling agreements have done for the Hopis, take the long, steep trail up to the top of First Mesa, through Hano, Sichomovi and on out to the very end of the Mesa where Walpi village clings to the rock now as it has for more than 500 years. Stop thinking those romantic tourist notions and try to remember that these people are farmers whose lives are intimately tied to the soil of their forefathers, even as the lives of our forefathers were not so many centuries ago in Europe.

To the west is a fertile but very dry valley through which winds the equally dry-most of the time-Wepo Wash. Until 1943, when some 33 Hopi families got the PMA message from smoco engineers, that little valley produced crops only in the best of years, when there was enough moisture to keep the corn alive.

In 1943 the Navajo County PMA committee of farmers gave the go sign on a project to build three earth dams and a levee system on the Wepo Wash. The levees have what the engineers call weeps in them to let the water run out slowly over about 600 acres of land. That water sinks in and makes it possible to grow crops with almost assured success every year.

Turn now to the east. Here is another valley and the inevitable wash. The name of this one is Polacca. Most of the time it is just as dry as the Wepo, but in the spring it too runs with silt-thick water from the higher country. In 1944 a series of dams and levees was begun on this wash, similar to those on the Wepo. The water is spread over about 4,500 acres of potential grassland, to grow forage for cattle and sheep. In 1950, when drought killed kill every blade of grass everywhere else in the area, this little valley fed some 2,500 sheep and 600 cattle. It was the only thing that saved the Hopi herds from destruction.

No wonder that District conservationists in the SMOCO division of the Indian Service have high praise for the co-operation they have from white farmers who share their PMA money with the Indians.

But we have talked so far only about Navajo and Hopi Indians. They aren't the only tribes to benefit from the arrangement. In Gila County, for instance, where the Apaches have their reservation, the co-operation is so well established that for several years an Apache has been elected to serve as a member of the three-man PMA committee. This year Otis Barkley and J. Harry Brown are proud to serve with Oliver Talgo, an Apache from Bylas. He meets with them to help determine local PMA disbursements and to approve of all work that is done. When he can't make a meeting, his alternate, Jesse Stevens, a San Carlos Apache, takes his place as substitute.

Since the Apaches are mostly cattlemen, with problems similar to those of all cattlemen in Gila County, the work done on their ranges with the help of PMA payments has been along the lines of stock water development, fencing and juniper control.

On the Papago Reservation, in Pinal County, Indian PMA pooling agreements have built a very large detention and spreader dam across the Santa Rosa Wash. For years that wash has been a source of floods raging down into rich farm lands owned by both white and Indian farmers. To a large extent the earth spreader dam has slowed the floods, permitting much of the water to sink into the ground and grow grass for Indian cattle.

Oh, it's a long story and a heart-warming story, this tale of the helping hand extended by farmers to farmers without regard for race and color. In terms of dollars and cents, the State PMA Committee, headed by O. M. Lassen, a Maricopa County farmer, paid out $185,000 of its Federally allotted funds in 1951 to various Indian farmers or groups of Indian farmers in Arizona. "It's one of the most satisfying things we, as State and County committees, do," says Ó. M. Lassen. "After all, the Indians were here long before we were, and we didn't give them the best of things when we established the reservations. The only thing we can do now is to help them improve the land they have. They are farmers, and we are farmers. We understand each other pretty well."