to the supplying canal, and are always fenced with some care (pl. XI, a). Before the Pimas obtained barbed wire from the Government the fences were of willow wattling or the tops of mesquite trees and various kinds of brush. When a tract was newly brought under irrigation a committee of six men was chosen to make allotments to those who had assisted in digging the ditches. They chose the best land for themselves, which seems to have been taken as a matter of course, in a measure compensating for their trouble. The plots were from 100 to 200 "steps" (see p. 93) in width, according to the number in the family to whom they were allotted. The brush was not difficult to remove even with the primitive implements at their command; the mesquite trees were not cut down, but their lower branches were trimmed so that they did not shade the ground to any considerable extent.
The canals were dug with the digging stick and shovel (fig. 10, a, b), the former being also used to prepare the easily pulverized ground and to plant the seed. In addition to the digging stick and shovel the primitive agriculturists also used a wooden implement which served the purpose of a hoe, though it resembled a weaver's batten in appearance (fig. 10, c). In comparatively recent times the wooden plow (fig. 11) was added to the list of implements. From the Mexicans they also obtained a hybrid implement (fig. 10, d) that combined the functions of spade and hoe. At the present time the tribe is supplied with modern agricultural implements by the Government. The crops, however, are stored in much the same way that was followed in prehistoric times, in circular bins of willow, arrow bush, and wheat straw, the last having been used since the introduction of wheat.
One of the Pima villages (pl. XI, b) situated southwest of the Maricopa wells was too far from the river to obtain water from it and depended, as do their kinsfolk and neighbors, the Kwahadkʼs, already referred to, on flood irrigation. To secure the benefit of this, they cleared fields on mesa slopes, over which water from the surrounding hills might be conducted whenever there were summer rains. Around the lower sides of the diminutive fields low dikes were raised to catch and retain the water. On the slopes of the Santan hills north of the present Pima village of Santan there are several hundred acres of stony mesa that have been cleared and cultivated (pl. IV a, b). The rocks have been gathered in rows that inclose rectangular areas of but a few square yards in extent. There are about six clumps of creosote bush inclosed in it.[1] This locality adjoins a large ancient canal and
- ↑ At various places in the Southwest the writer has seen extensive areas over which the loose bowlders that were originally thickly scattered on the surface had been gathered in rounded heaps or in rows that divided the ground into rectangles that average about 5 meters to the side. The largest of these "fields" personally inspected is north of the town of Pima, nearly 200 miles east of the Pima reservation. On a lava-strewn mesa that is too high to be irrigated and too far from the hills to be flooded
