Stealing the Gila: The Pima Agricultural Economy and Water Deprivation, 1848-1921 (review)

David H. DeJong's new book is a much-needed addition to not only O'odham studies but also the history of the American Southwest, which frequently focuses on the Colorado Plateau tribes of northern Arizona and New Mexico only to overlook the indigenous nations of the Sonoran Desert. Perhaps because the O'odham, be they Akimel O'odham along the Gila River or Tohono O'odham in the Santa Cruz Valley, never waged even a skirmish, let alone a war, against the United States, they do not stand prominently in the minds of most historians. While there is no denying that the Navajo, Apache, and Puebloan groups played significant roles in the history of the region, the O'odham—more specifically, the Pima—were no less important when it came to the settling of the Gila and Salt river valleys, which eventually became the Phoenix metropolitan area. However, despite working as allies with American settlers, the Pima only saw a short-lived era in which they benefited from a mutually fulfilling relation with the United States based on trade and military alliances. Stealing the Gila is, among other things, a story of how the Pima paid a severe toll for their "friendship" with the "milighans."

The primary focus of DeJong's narrative is the rise and fall of Pima agricultural society during the period that began with the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe and ended with the Florence-Casa Grande Project of the 1920s. Of utmost concern here is the "time of famine," during which all of the villages inhabiting the Gila River Indian Community southeast of Phoenix endured an excruciating period of drought, starvation, and social strife as well as indifference and racism from the encroaching white community. At the same time, while there is undeniable hardship and injustice at the heart of the Pima's story, DeJong's overall project is much more than a diatribe against American colonialism:

This story chronicles the dynamic inter-relationship between Pima farmers, the national economy, and liberal land and resource policies and concludes that had the Pima farmers not been deprived of their access to the waters of the Gila River and its tributaries, they may well have continued their highly successful adaptation to a market economy and might have gained parity with local farmers and remained part of the national economy.

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As such, DeJong's analysis of Pima-American relations is part of a growing body of historical monographs demonstrating the complicated relationship that indigenous peoples maintained with the settler communities moving into their homelands, such as Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War by John W. Hall (2009) and Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution by Joseph T. Glatthaar and James Kirby Martin (2006).

In many ways the Pima story of settlement, accommodation, and betrayal vis-à-vis the United States is a common one for any reader acquainted with the history of American perfidy with respect to its Indian allies. Indeed, insofar as DeJong is a product of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Arizona, it is likely that Edward H. Spicer's 1967 classic Cycles of Conquest was influential in developing the discourse under review. Not only is Spicer's tome required reading in the U of A's AIS curriculum—I read it for one of Tom Holm's seminars—but also it is an important early contribution to the small but vibrant group of works that take time to focus on O'odham history.

With the latter in mind, Stealing the Gila can be regarded as complementing three very important works on Pima history and society. First, the scope of DeJong's narrative is a perfect sequel to The Short Swift Time of Gods on Earth: The Hohokam Chronicles by Donald M. Bahr (1994), which analyzed the traditional legends regarding the O'odham's ancient predecessors (contemporaries of the Anasazi...