Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-09
PREHISTORIC PEOPLES
TRACED BY Archaeology
Improved Methods Employed in Com
pairing Early Achievements With
Modern Developments.
BY NEIL Nj. JUDD,

~ which has to do with the
IA achievements of prehistoric
/ \ peoples becomes very modern
in its methods. A Douglass
O2-H observation plane, equipped with
the all-seeing eye of Fairchild camera,
replaces the Flooding burro as a means
of TRANSPORTATION across desert wastes
where aboriginal tribes built their earth
walled towns and tended their COM
munal gardens. The "mule-Skinner,
proverbially profane but eftlcient, gives
way to such highly trained alrmen as
Lieut.. Edwin Bobzien and Sergt. r. A
Stockwell of the United States Army as
companions OF the field archeologist.
Out of the valleys of Central Arizona,
where cotton fields, orange groves and
date palms stretch away mile after mile,
prehistoric farmers once irrigated hum
F.. dredS of arid acres through systems OF
canals that have aroused the admiration
of modern engineers. Nowhere else in
the world, unless it be in Egypt and
Mesopotamia, did primitive man COM
plete irrigation projects Of comparable
magnitude; nowhere else in the world
did he so successfully bring the rivers
under his control and use them to de-
velop a civilization based wholly upon
agriculture.
Displaced by Modern Industry.
But all this is rapidly being destroyed
by modern industry. Prosperous cities
and the farms that feed them are
spreading out to engulf whatever re-
mains from the past That some per-
manent record of this ancient civiliza-
ton and the irrigation canals which
made it possible might be preserved for
poSterity the War Department and the
Smithsonian Institution. at the instance
of United States Senator Carl Hayden
have recently joined hands in an aerial
survey of Arizona'S Salt and ella River
Valleys, where approximately 400 miles
of prehistoric mainline canals and
laterals were visible but few years ago.
AS representative of the Smithsonian
institution, have just returned to
Washington from this the first real
undertaken in the Americas. Lieut.
Bobzien and his photographer, Sergt
Stockwen, have returned to their base
at CrisSy Field, San Francisco, to de-
velop some 900 photographs and arrange
them in mosaic maps of the two valleys.
From these maps the prehistoric irrtga-
ton systems will be traced on topo-
graphic sheets.
AirplaneS in MesOpOtamia.
OF course, airplanes have been used
IN archaeological exploration before.
The British, for example, have long en-
ployed them in Mesoptamia and else
Even in England cameras of the Royal
Air Service have disclosed the presence
of previously unknown Roman ruins be-
meath fields on which harveStS have
been gathered annually for perhaps a
full thousand years.
Last Summer Col. Charles A. Lind
bargh few back and forth across the
rugged mesas of New Mexico and North
eastern Arizona photographing the dust
covered walls of cliff dwellings and
other old Pueblo villages. And later in
the season, accompanied by archeolo-
gists of the Carnegie Institution Of
Washington. the intrepid colonel Of the
air searched Yucatan jungles for traces
of Maya temples previously unvisited by
white explorers.
But the recent Smithsonian-war
Department expedition is the first In
which a plane has been employed in
preparing an actual map of consider
able area where American Indians left
the remains of a once hourishing pre-
historic civilization-an agricultural
civilization wholly dependent upon irri-
cation.
Salt River Valley an Example.
Within the past go years Arizona's
Salt River Valley has recovered some
thing of its ancient prestige as the
leading agricultural district between
enviable reputation, now as formerly,
is literally handmade. For successful
agriculture in Central Arizona is pos
sible only where water is available for
irrigation, and irrigation bitches must
be dug.
Flying high above the Rio Salado
one sees a vari-colored patchwork of
fields and orchards and a succession
of modern canals that reach out in
wide-spreading curves, to water more
than 100000 acres of fertile desert land.
One sees, too, occasional remnants
Of prehistoric canals that watered these
same acres centuries before Columbus
was born-canals that had long been
abandoned, perhaps even forgotten by
the native population when Coronado
and his fellow adventures trooped
hopefully out of Mexico in 1910 to seek
Tabled stores of gold and precious stones
from the seven cities of Cibola. These
cuirassed scions of SPANS nobility soon
returned empty-handed and diSap-
pointed, but they began the conquest
of our arid Southwest conquest that
has continued these 400 years.
Driving Back the Desert.
But this marked change has lately
come about: In Central Arizona today
the struggle is not so much man against
man as man against a still inhospitable
environment. 1t is the desert that must
be conquered and driven back, and
water is the chief weapon in the Of
fensive
Life has always been brutal through
out the wastelands Only the fittest
survived. We cushion dwellers of the
present are too prone to sneer at the
crudities of our predecessors, to laugh
at their simple requirements, to discount
or ignore the sacrifices they endured
for home and family.
Where vast acres Of alfalfa, lettuce
and cantaloupes are harvested today,
mesquite, catclaw and cactus bloomed
a generation ago. Where cotton fields
and citrus groves now nestle under dis
tant blue mountains, Apache warriors
drew bloody trails within memory of
men still living.
And long before the Apache became
a menace to pioneer communities, long
before the desert crept slowly back to
claim its own, primitive agriculturtSts
titled these very acres and watered them
by means of huge canals whose open
mouths drank greedily from the Rio
Salado.
1t was these ancient canals that took
me TO Arizona in mid-January. AS a
student OF prehistory was sent to
guide the Army aviators in mapping
those irrigation systems utilized in Salt
River Valley, and the ella River Valley
as well beforeswritten history began in
the Southwest with the military con-
quests of Coronado and the more per-
suaslve methods pursued by Fray Eu-
sebio Kino.
Preparing for the Work.
But consider for a moment the ma
ture of our task Within the past 60
years more than 400, 900 acres border
ing the Salt River alone have been