An Editorial

Every people adopts environmental strategies permitting its life as a distinct entity; when these strategies fail the individuals may survive, but their society is condemned. Sometimes even the individuals may die: this is the case of the "political" suicides in Mato Grosso, Brazil, where destitute Kaiowa Guaranis, plagued by suicides, have threatened to commit mass suicide if the Brazilian government does not respect the agreements on their land.

Survival strategies offered to the indigenous peoples are two: the "minimax option", where the exploitation of the resources guarantees the minimal needs of the population. This strategy, adopted by most of Pierre Clastre's "societies without State", has a very soft impact on the environment, but the population must use an enourmous territory for the rotating exploitation of the resources. This strategy is being seriously threatened all over the world by Western civilization.

The second strategy, typical of modern societies, tries to develop all the resources and maximize the production of food. This produces a surplus for meager years and its efficacy depends on the environmental impact, that can be very distructive. We have been shown the political revitalization of societies considered "backward". How much vital are these revitalized societies? Is Subartic hunting still maningful if it is based on aircrafts and snowmobiles? Is it meaningful refusing agrobusiness in Ecuador and Chiapas and proposing the continuation or restitution of the old way of life, while using politically computers and info highways? We have no answer to these questions, but they are worth giving due consideration.

Working the Land, Sailing and Trading in Mesoamerica

by Mario Sartor

Mesoamerican peoples interacted with thir territory in a way similar to that of other Neolithical populations, but it is surprising to see how water resources, an obstacle to overcome as well as wealth to exploit, become ways for transport and trade. On the highlands the Aztec organized an amphibian city, whose remains are the canals of Xochimilco; the great "lagoon" of Tenochtitlan was exploited rationally with floating fields called "chinampas" and the canals, regularly cleaned, permitted an easy transport of people and goods. Even if the Aztecs could control water well, sometimes the city was flooded so the history of the city is also the story of the building of dams and barrages. The Spaniards admired the vanquished Tenochtitlan and compared it to Venice, but failed to understand its amphibian nature and let its canals be obstructed, with devastating consequences for the city during the centuries.

The Aztecs were only the last major pre-columbian civilization; the Olmecs knew how to exploit their waterways for transport and were perhaps the first to regulate streams and artificial canals. The Lowland Mayas exploited rationally, if not scientifically, their water resources, sailing along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and up the rivers and streams, developing a wonderful trade and communication network. This waternet favored also agriculture and fishing, especially in the lagoon areas of Belize. There NASA satellite recognitions revealed a network of canals even wider and more complex than that we actually can experience by boat. The relationships between the Mayan peoples and water can be also perceived as a conscious education of nature, a passage from chaos to cosmos. Symbols of this relationship are the cults of the rain god Chac and the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue. The need to shape the land totally can be observed in the mounds for healthier houses and the emerging of the temples from the forest, houses for the gods that emphasized what men were doing for themselves. Water regulation gave safety to Mayan housing and economy; it was also a powerful tool of communication, especially when the organization of the forced labor, favored by the prestige of the political and religious elite, moved great masses of population.

Hohokam

by Flavia Busatta

The Hohokam culture flourished in today's Phoenix and Tucson basins and in the so-called Papagueria. The desert in Southwestern USA and Northern Mexico comprises various ecological systems of which the Sonora Desert is the richest for its variety of animals and plants. The Hohokam culture developed in the northeastern part of this desert, where there are two different botanical habitats: the lower Colorado region and the western part of the state of Arizona.

The hilly areas of Arizona offer a differentiated and somewhat luxuriant landscape. In the desert there are many species of animals, while rivers and streams have fish and waterfowl. A characteristic of the perennial drainage basins of southern Arizona Basin Range is that they can "disappear" for a reach, where they simply run under the ground. This is caused by the permeability of the superficial layers of ground: the stream disappears when it meets the permeable layers, while it is forced to run on the surface when its bed meets or is made of impermeable rocky layers called reefs. These reefs, that guarantee water even in periods of drought and the formation of marshes or cienegas, determined Hohokam settlements and water management. In the mountainous areas of central Arizona the streams cut the bank walls and run for a long distance on relatively impermeable rocky beds until they sink in the porous plains ground. Another area rich of water is found at the confluences of the tributaries of the Gila river.

The Hohokam culture probably came from Mexico to Arizona, where it fused itself with the Cochise culture between 300 B.C. and 1 A.D. It brought to the new country high yield maize, many types of beans and squashes, irrigation techniques, pit houses, developed pottery and an elaborate art of stone goods and shell ornaments. As sedentary orticulturalists settled in the desert, the Hohokam had to cope with the fact that the beginning of the agricultural season coincided with the dry phase of the rivers. Therefore they created a network of canals that, in the late Formative (500 - 1100 A.D.) spread along more than 1500 kilometers of main irrigation canals. The Hohokam built this network demonstrating a great knowledge of their territory and their capacity of labor to modify their environment. They exploited the natural hydraulic gradient offered by the reefs along the Salt and Gila rivers and constructed the topography of their valleys choosing the sites of fields and villages. Hohokam irrigation system first appeared in 600 - 700 A.D. and reached its most complex phase in the valley of the Salt river, near Pheonix, where three types of irrigation can be found: principal, distribution and lateral canals. In spite of their canal network the Hohokam never built complex hydraulic structures such as permanent dams or weirs nor used artificial lining material to delay water infiltration extensively. Consistently, there was a series of villages with multiple platform mounds situated along the canals at five miles' distance, beginning with the first village five miles downstream from the derivation of the principal canal. The distance between the village clusters varied, but the larger village was usually situated at the end of the system of canals irrigating the area, generally on the upper bank of the river. There were clusters of villages also in the Tucson Basin, but in this much drier area they were much closer to water.

Hohokam settlements had four types of structures: first, the village permanently settled for centuries, with a population of more than 100 individuals, sometimes flourishing to more than 1000 inhabitants. These villages had platforms and ball courts. The second type of settlement was made of hamlets inhabited by less than 100 people, even if they lasted for many decades. Then there were the farms, often inhabited by a single social unit and occupied seasonally for many years; finally, there were individual shelters occupied only during the sowing and harvest seasons.

In the very arid Papagueria two other agricultural techniques were practised: flooding and the so called Ak-chin (stream mouth). The Ak-chin technique is still used by the Papagos and utilizes the flooding caused by heavy tropical rains for irrigation. This technique appeared in 900 A.D. and favored the colonization of the slopes of the bajadas, far from the canals and the perennial and semi-perennial streams, but rich of flood conoids that could be transformed into fields. This type of cultivation requires a lot of labor; therefore it is similar to the dry farming techniques, also practised in Hohokam area, but it is different for the instability of field location and the higher flow of silt.

Pimas and Papagos' Challenge to the Desert

For several centuries the Pimas and the Papagos living in the Sonora Desert have been continuously occupying a precarious environment characterized by extreme fluctuations between bounty and scarcity. Their survival key-mechanism has been diversification, that meant during the centuries the use of all major strategies: hunting and gathering, agriculture and cattle breeding. The Papagos, or Desert People, got 75% of their food supply from hunting and gathering and 25% from orticulture (maize, beans and squashes) in pre-columbian times, while the Pimas, or River People, relied for 60% of their food on agriculture .These two Piman peoples had also a mechanism of exchange: the Papagos traded wild fruits and, in the arid years, worked in the fields of the Pimas and other One Village neighbors. The adoption of wheat brought by the Spaniards in the 17th century offered a welcome winter crop. The Pimas and Papagos relied on a minimax strategy, that is minimal gains for maximum safety in prehistoric times; the Papagos continued to apply this strategy up to the 20th century, succeeding in keeping their village organization in spite of bad climate and non-Indian trespassing. The Pimas, on the contrary, tried to maximize their production and modernize their institutions, but a hostile environment has undermined the results of change. Since 1900 both tribes have received considerable funds from the government in order to develop Papago stock raising and Pima agriculture. Other funds from B.I.A. health and education programs caused a massive technological intervention and an explosive demographic growth. Unfortunately all these development plans have not taken into account the variable climate of the Southwest: four decades of the driest weather since 1200 A.D.

The Papagos reacted as they have always had, appliyng their minimax strategy, while the Pimas have tried to find a technological solution to demographic growth and scarcity of water. While the Papagos have retained their decentralized organization of authority, consistent with their economy, technological change has forced the Pimas to adopt western democratic forms of government. This choice has favored them in the 19th century, with the boom of wheat crops, but changes in the sorrounding economy undermined their wealth, while the technological control of their harsh desert environment has proved very hard to get. Both the Pimas and Papagos lack indigenous social structures able to cope with their present situation. Concluding, while they have been independent agriculturalists for most of their history, in the Nineties none of them is still such. (from R.A. Hackenberg)

Healing Land

by Franco Meli

The main contrast between Indians and non Indians has been determined historically by the different meaning and role the land has in the two cultural worlds. While the land is a resource to exploit for the Euroamericans, one that can be sold,rented and owned, for the native Americans it is a mother to respect and cannot be owned privately, since it is the main source of communal spiritual and material wealth. Indian relationship with the land is more a moral link than a mystic one, because sharing the land implies responsibilities.Interaction between native peoples' culture and land is not a static one; it is a dynamic, vital relationship enabling Indian nations to survive as social and cultural entities. The belief to belong to the American land from time immemorial gives clarity and widens Indian voice. This voice has begun to assert itself since the first half of the 20th century, freeing itself from cumbersome interpreters. Indian artistic and literary development is such that many critics call it "Indian Renaissance" in the mid-60s and Indian identity asserts itself deliberately,telling their side of the story, not ours.

S. Momaday's House Made of Dawn, set in the wonderful background of Jemez Pueblo, is the highest point in contemporary Indian literature. The main character, Abel, is the victim par excellence; he comes back home from the 2nd World War alienated by horrors Momaday builds up throughout the novel using a complicated pattern of flashbacks, flashforwards and oneiric suggestions, deeply entrenched in the most profound layers of his Indian heirloom, unveiling the cause of Abel's disease.The main story is Abel's, but others intersecate it: his grandfather Francisco's and fragments of Fray Nicholas' s story, occurred about a century before and timeless songs and storytelling. Events are not told chronologically, but in a circular manner, suggesting that no story is more important than the others.

Abel experiments an extraniating linguistic paralysis in Los Angeles, where he has been relocated; Los Angeles is described as a place of noises that alienate and frighten Abel. Momaday compares these meaningless noises to the sounds of Indian land; in Los Angeles a character, Benally, helps Abel showing him the quest for the "center", that is the place everyone and everything has in a meaningful, precise cultural and personal setting. The songs and poetical lines inserted in the monologue contribute to create the atmosphere of the storytelling, the epiphany of oral tradition. The song "house Made of Dawn" belongs to a Navajo health chant, whose purpose is to attract the Good and ward off the Evil, restoring universal harmony. This song refers also to a precise cultural and geographical place, Tsйgihi, the White House. Abel's disease is the consequence of a separation from a space of vital importance for his personal and tribal identity. Violence, alcoholism, degradation and racism can be found in Momaday's novel, but a stream of strength opposed to annihilation runs through it: Indian life keeps going on, there are some possibilities of survival. This is represented by the main theme of Native American literature: "going back home", a symbol of escape from a hostile and alienating reality in metropolitan slums and outside the reservations.The reservation is the only place associated to collective and tribal memory, necessary to the well being ad growth of the Indian person. So Abel comes home and the memories of dying Francisco link two lives, beginning this way a healing process in Abel's mind. It is not a happy end, only cluing the possibility of survival.