The Pima Lateral: Historic-era Native American Irrigation Agriculture on the Lehi Terrace

This is a presentation from the 2021 Arizona Archaeological Council (AAC) Fall symposium on "The Archaeology of Canals in the Arizona Desert". Recent data recovery operations conducted on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community by North Wind Resource Consulting (North Wind) resulted in two subsurface exposures of the Pima Lateral, an historic irrigation canal that served as the principal irrigation work for the early northside community prior to the creation of the Salt River Indian Reservation in 1879. These efforts provided for a geomorphological analysis of the Pima Lateral and surrounding Lehi Terrace landform, as well as an examination of archival documents and maps in preparing an historic context to better understand the canal’s significance. This context not only informed on the on the developmental history of the Pima Lateral and the broader, northside irrigation system that emerged in the ensuing decades, but also on the social, political, economic, and environmental factors that affected the trajectory of federal modernization efforts on the early Salt River community during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.