The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1913-03-27
BY Robert F. Wilson.

0y nOoeFt r. sNttSCn
Washington. March 26.-In it's recent
attack on the reclamation service the
house committee on expenditures in
, the interior department touched upon
| the story of the Pima Indian tribe of
ArizonaI4he most tragic story on the
mans inhumanity to his red brother of
the southwest.
But now the friends of the reclama-
ton service are rushing forward to de-
clare that of all the government bu-
Teaus the one under the direction Of
Frederick II. Newell is the only one in
which this sfamefully treated tribe has
found friend. All others have been
deaf to the Pimas' passionate cry for
justice.
The story Of the Pimas is similar to
the one told in Ramona, which made
thousands of Americans weep when
that novel was at the height of it's
popularity twenty years ago-the story
of peaceful people dwelling in a vale
OF contentment for centuries: then the
coming of the white man; the pathetic
advances of the red men to be friends;
but brutal disregard of the Indians
right to life by the whites; finally the
fertile valley turned into desert; and
the once happy tribe, dispersed and
broken up, wandering as nomads and
beggars through the towns and cities
of the southwest.
Pimas Best Indian Tribe.
When white men discovered this
continent the Pimas We're probably the
most highly civilized of all the Indian
tribes They lived on tract of sew
eral thousand acres of level valley land
through which ran the ella river.
When the Spaniard Babeza de Vaca
discovered them in 1886 they had been
irrigating this land from the ella for
centuries. They were the Only Ameri-
can Indian tribe economically indie
pendent. Being farmers pure and sim
pie, they never went hungry. The
other Indians, hunters, were subject
continually to the bitter famine de-
scribed- in Longfellow,s Hiawatha.
When the Spanish missionaries visi-
ted the Pimas they became devout
Christians. They also added sheep
raising to their farming. And they con-
tinued to thrive for three centuries
more-until 1890. when the first white
farmers came into the country smell
ing out fertile lands and stopping |
where they saw the garden of the Pr
mas made possible in that dry coun- |
try by the precious water of the ella.
Then began the destruction OF Sa-
eaton, the Pima reservation. The
whites went into the narrow valley
above the Indians and tapped the
river wherever they settled-first the
Mormons at Solomonsville, then Gen |
tiles at Florence and at other points. 4
BY 1905 Indian agents began warning
the government what was going to
happen, as colony after colony of
whites constructed their fimsy wing" !
dams and extended their irrigation
canals.
Then Came Trouble.
The blow fell year or so later-the
first of seven years of drought. The
river failed the Pimas almost entirely;
what water there was in the ella was
diverted to the farms of the whites
farther up stream For seven years
the Indians planted their crops each
spring after the freshet. only to see
them burn up by summer. A bitter
poverty fell upon them and they were
driven ont TO beg for work. many of
them to become drunkards and vaga-
bonds.
It is the boast Of the Pimas that
their hands have never been stained
by the blood of white men. They are
probably the only tribe which never
fought against the whites. On the
contrary. they gave shelter and protec-
ton to white refugees during the