| There was a heavy fall of snow that could be rolled into great balls as it was melting. |
Blackwater. There was no crop this year.[1] |
1899–1900
Gila Crossing. During the summer of 1899 a Catholic mission school was established at Gila Crossing. |
| A Papago was killed by lightning at Gila Crossing. |
Barbed wire was issued from the agency at Sacaton.[2] |
The Indian Department established a day school at Gila Crossing at this time. |
Victor Jackson was struck by lightning as he was returning to Sacaton on the stage road from Casa Grande.[3] |
Blackwater. A woman at Blackwater was fatally bitten by a rattlesnake.[4]
|
- ↑ The water of the Gila had been so far utilized by white settlers above the reservation, for the most part more than a hundred miles above, that there was none left for the Pimas. It is difficult to obtain accurate information at this time of the number who perished either directly or indirectly by starvation. During this and the following year five persons are known to have died from this cause, and it is probable that there were others. Most of the Pimas will not beg, however desperate their need may be, so that not all cases were reported.
In one case a wood chopper tried during the hot season to cut mesquite for sale, but he was too weak to withstand the heat and the exertion and was found dead in the chaparral. An old couple were found dead in their house with no food of any kind in their storehouse, and it is supposed that they preferred to starve rather than beg. A man riding to Salt River was too weak from hunger to keep his saddle and fell and perished.
- ↑ The agent wisely stipulated that if they received free wire they must leave a lane for a road through the fields. The width was not prescribed and they made the lane so narrow that two teams can scarcely pass each other in it, and it becomes churned into mud when the adjoining land is flooded for purposes of irrigation. The Pimas have not manifested any striking road-building instinct that would lead an enthusiastic admirer to relate them to the Aztecs or Incas. Year after year they plodded through the slough between the agency and the river without making an effort to put in a bridge or filling. When one of the Government employees was building a bridge for them several passing teamsters preferred risking their teams and wagons in the sea of mud to assisting for a few minutes to put the bridge in place.
The soil of the reservation is well adapted for road making, and a little care would make the thoroughfares as hard and smooth as those to be found anywhere. However, those upon the tillable lands of river silt readily cut into light dust that rises in clouds when disturbed. In a few places this condition has been remedied by resorting to the temporary and shiftless expedient of the white settlers, who cover the road with straw or corral refuse. The mesa roads, which include all those leading any distance from the Gila, pass alternately over loose soil containing coarse sand that gradually accumulates in the ruts and renders the road "heavy," and over "adobe" soil which is hard and firm in dry seasons, and which makes an ideal roadbed. Hill roads are unknown and there are very few traveling sand dunes to be crossed near the reservation.
- ↑ His horse was killed and its bones are certain to be pointed out to the stage traveler by the loquacious driver, John McCoy.
- ↑ It may be presumed that such occurrences are rare or they would not be deemed worthy of record. This women had gone far out on the desert to search for mesquite beans, as she was without food; indeed the whole community was starving because of the failure of the crops owing to the lack of water in the river for their ditches. Rattlesnakes sometimes make their way into the houses and bite the occupants. Repeated inquiries failed to elicit information that would indicate that any remedies were used for snake bites. A common weed (golondrina?) is called snakeweed by a few whites, and is supposed to be used as a remedy by the Pimas, but I have not yet found a native who ever heard of its being so used.
26 ETH—08——7
