Jennifer Bess - Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O’odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin

Jennifer Bess

U NIVERSITY P RESS OF C OLORADO

Louisville

2021 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado

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The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University.

ISBN: 978-1-64642-082-7 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-64642-105-3 (ebook)

https://doi.org/10.5876/9781646421053

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bess, Jennifer, author.

Title: Where the red-winged blackbirds sing : the Akimel Oodham and cycles of agricultural transformation in the Phoenix Basin / Jennifer Bess.

Description: Louisville : University Press of Colorado, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021001175 (print) | LCCN 2021001176 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646420827 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781646421053 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Pima IndiansAgricultureGila River (N.M. and Ariz.) | Pima IndiansGila River (N.M. and Ariz.)Economic conditions. | Gila River Indian Reservation (Ariz.)Agriculture. | Gila River (N.M. and Ariz.)History.

Classification: LCC E99.P6 B47 2021 (print) | LCC E99.P6 (ebook) | DDC 979.1004/9745529dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001175

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001176

Portions of were previously published as Jennifer Bess, The Right to More Than a Cabbage Patch: Akimel Oodham Sacred Stories and the Form and Content of Petitions to the Federal Government, 18991912, Ethnohistory63, no. 1 (2016): 119142. Reprinted with permission.

Portions of were published as Self-Fashioning for Survivance: Akimel Oodham Story and History in the Hispanic and Early American Periods, The Journal of the Southwest61, no. 4 (2019): 725764. Reprinted with permission.

The epigraphs for and the conclusion are exerpts from Nathan Allen, Excerpts from: Keeper of the House. Wicazo Sa Review9, no. 2 (1993): 5061. Reprinted with permission.

were adapted from Jennifer Bess, The Price of Pima Cotton: The Cooperative Testing and Demonstration Farm at Sacaton, Arizona, and the Decline of the Pima Agricultural Economy, 19071920, Western Historical Quarterly46, no. 2 (2015): 171189. Reprinted with permission.

Portions of were previously published as Jennifer Bess, The New Egypt, Pima Cotton and the Role of Native Wage Labor on the Cooperative Testing and Demonstration Farm, Sacaton, Arizona, 19071917, Agricultural History88, no. 4 (2014): 491516. Reprinted with permission.

To my mom, Lindsay, and my husband, David

PIMA LAND, by Uretta Thomas

Khivina, Tramping Out Wheat, by George Webb

Map of Hohokam Culture area

Kml tkk (Thin Leather), 1902

Superstition Mountains

Map of the northern Pimera Alta, 16911767

Threshing wheat

Winnowing wheat

Map of the Territory of New Mexico, 1853

Detail of Parkes map

Akimel Oodham and camp, 1848