Archive All Issues June 1933

Prehistoric Arizona Agriculture and Irrigation

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Featured in the June 1933 Issue of Arizona Highways

Aerial photograph showing prehistoric canal system, two modern canals and Pueblo Grande Ruins in the Park of the Four Waters, four miles east of Phoenix. In the upper right corner may be seen four lines of ancient Indian canals near the point where the water was diverted from the Salt River. The black diagonal line near the center is an abandoned canal of the present irrigation system and the canal now in use is shown nearer the lower left corner, where also may be seen the Pueblo Grande Ruins, pictured before excavation was begun.
Aerial photograph showing prehistoric canal system, two modern canals and Pueblo Grande Ruins in the Park of the Four Waters, four miles east of Phoenix. In the upper right corner may be seen four lines of ancient Indian canals near the point where the water was diverted from the Salt River. The black diagonal line near the center is an abandoned canal of the present irrigation system and the canal now in use is shown nearer the lower left corner, where also may be seen the Pueblo Grande Ruins, pictured before excavation was begun.
BY: CLARA LEE FRAPS

IN THE STATE of Arizona there existed, in past times, a civilization which merits acknowledgement in the eyes of our modern, highly developed scientific thought. The people who lived here adapted their culture to an environment which we of today have found anything but simple. Years of toil, years filled with failures as well as success, have taken toll with the white men who inherited the lands of the darker peoples who first lived here. As the years slip by we follow ever more and more in the paths of those who spent centuries in developing what we know as the prehistoric civilization. Starting from the very bottom rung of

Ancient Canal Systems Tell of Extensive Early Civilization in Valleys of Gila and Salt

the culture ladder those men climbed step by step, aiming at beauty as well as convenience, the esthetic as well as the utilitarian, in their upward path. In art, in architecture, in social, religious and political organization, the Indian made for himself a perfect niche in the wall of civilization. He became a square peg in a square hole.

Dependent on Agriculture

All life in the prehistoric Southwest was entirely dependent on agriculture. No great caravan routes were developed in those early days which would allow for the bringing in of foreign products to alleviate the dearth of natural products. There were no near neigh-bors; the Indian had to become self-sufficient; had to supply his own food. In the cave period, the earliest phase of the sedentary state of existence in Arizona, the Indian first depended on such natural products as grasses, berries, nuts, and the inevitable wild game, which was, no doubt, more plentiful than it is today. As populations increase, natural food products of the immediate environment decrease proportionately; hence the situation in northern Arizona soon became acute. The second half of the cave period is characterized by the cultivation of a few food plants, which supported the ever growing numbers.

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