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Show of miles of ditches and to equitably distribute the water among a number of settlements on a single canal. The archeologist has no records to support the claim that the Hohokam were the originators of the " Water Users Association" idea, but prescribed rules and obligations must have been in effect. To come down to specific examples, in the heyday of the Hohokam Culture, from about 1000 to 1400 A. D., the individual canals were both wider and longer than they were before or after this time, meaning that more land was under cultivation to provide adequately for an increasing population. Urban centers came into existence, sometimes far from the streams to which people were formerly bound, because now water for both irrigation and domestic use could be directed to distant locations when the terrain permitted. Solely by hand labor, for beasts of burden and mechanical aids had not yet appeared on the scene, the Hohokam constructed several hundred miles of canals in the Gila and Salt River Valleys alone, and it is fair to assume that these brought tens of thousands of acres under cultivation where the plants known to the Hohokam- corn, beans, squash, and cotton- could be grown. These canals in places were 10 feet deep, and the main arteries Figure 35.- Hohokam pottery effigy from Casa Grande National Monument, Ariz. Figure 36.- Hohokam carved shell. were from 30 to 50 feet wide, rivaling in size those of our modern systems. One cannot see the remnants of the Hohokam canals or look at a map of the systems without being duly impressed by the prodigious expenditure of human labor that went into their construction. These systems represent possibly the greatest investment in labor put into any strictly utilitarian enterprise by the pre- Columbian Indians north of Mexico. White farmers, when they first set to reclaiming the land along the Salt River east of Phoenix, were saved many weeks of back- breaking work when they were able to recondition old canal sections and incorporate them in the new developments. We marvel today at what irrigation has done, thinking little of those trail- blazing Hohokam who more than ten centuries ago made an agricultural paradise out of the desert. The Hohokam civilization, like all others, did not achieve its rich development in short order. Archeologists have been able to show that centuries of time were involved in the process. From the formative stage, at about the time of Christ, the culture slowly expanded its ability to extract a livelihood from the soil, and grew materially, socially, and politically. By 1000 A. D. the pinnacle of progress had been reached. This was enjoyed for perhaps four centuries, until about 1400, when the record of their society becomes dim and eventually almost lost. The causes for the decline and what happened to the Hohokam are fields for interesting speculation. As yet, we cannot supply any satisfying answers. The dissolution does not appear to have been 8£ |
