Eric V. Meeks

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Eric V. Meeks | The Tohono O'odham, Wage Labor, and Resistant Adaptation, 1900–1930 | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.4 | The History Cooperative

THE TOHONO O'ODHAM, WAGE LABOR, AND RESISTANT ADAPTATION, 1900–1930

Between 1900 and 1930, federal reclamation, industrialization, and recruitment by the Bureau of Indian Affairs drove thousands of Tohono O'odham to take up wage work. The Tohono O'odham, however, challenged the blueprint drawn up by federal agencies for their "assimilation" by actively shaping their integration into the regional political economy.

IN THE FALL OF 1925, BONAVENTURE OBLASSER, a Catholic missionary working among the Tohono O'odham of southern Arizona, noted that most of the residents of Anegam, Cababi, and Santa Rosa villages left their homes to work in the cotton fields every winter. "So great is the demand for their labor and so poor the quality of their lands," he wrote, "that they are forced to leave their habitat annually during November, December, and January." Oblasser went on to observe that during the remainder of the year, while certain family members returned to the villages, many Tohono O'odham men took up wage work in nearby mines and on the railroads. Moreover, hundreds of men and women worked as day laborers or as domestics in towns such as Tucson. ¹ Even those who lived and worked in Tucson, however, participated in the yearly cotton harvests of the Salt River and Casa Grande Valleys. In October of 1926, field matron Janette Woodruff noted that out of about one hundred families living in Tucson, only a few of them remained: "... seven families, twenty-three people in all. The other homes were closed, the people were working in the cotton fields." ²

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