150
PACIFIC
HISTORICAL
REVIEW
The problem, now as then,lies in determiningwho was who. Perhaps
thereis no wayofknowing.
GEORGE T. MORGAN,JR.
University
ofHouston
Turn This WaterIntoGold: The StoryoftheNewlandsProject.ByJOHN M.
TOWNLEY. (Reno, Nevada HistoricalSociety,1977. 160 pp. $12.50)
This book is a historyof the nation's firstfederal reclamation
project,as well as an economic and social historyof ChurchillCounty,
Nevada, home of that project. It makes a valuable contributionto the
historyof Nevada, and provides a "ground level" view of how the
United States Bureau of Reclamationplanned and directeditsearliest
experiment in desert agriculture.
Exactly three years afterthe passage of the Newlands Reclamation
Act in June 1902, the ReclamationBureau-then called the Reclamation Service-opened the Newlands Projectin the Carson Sink desert
sixtymiles east of Reno. Withina decade, the bureau had launched
over twenty-fiveprojects, but only a few lived up to the high
expectations of the settlersor governmentofficials.In Nevada, as
elsewhere in the arid West,the bureau made manymistakes.It failed
to conduct thoroughsoil tests,overestimatedwesternNevada's water
supply, neglected to provide adequate drainage for alkali-choked
lands, and largelyignored the need to secure marketsforthe project's
crops. Much of John M. Townley's storyconcernsthe largelyunsuccessful effortsof the governmentand farmersthemselvesto rectify
these mistakes.The search foradditionalwater,experimentationwith
new crops-ranging from sugar beets to cantaloupe melons-and
struggleto resolve water rightsdisputes have dominated the project's
history.Yet today, as seventyyears ago, the project's main crop is
alfalfa,and many farmersmustfindoutside workto supplementtheir
income from the land. To make mattersworse, increasingcompetition for western Nevada's limited water supply-led by urban and
industrial development as well as the Interior Department's"rediscovery" of long neglected Indian water rights-threatensto sharply
reduce the amount of water available for irrigation.
Townley tellshis storywell,withan eye forapt detailsrangingfrom
a description of Churchill County's firstschool busing programwhich used hay wagons graftedonto Model T bodies-to an account
of the Civilian Conservation Corps' activitiesduring the depression.
Although not a formalacademic history-forexample, the book lacks
footnotes-this study is based on solid research in project records,
local newspapers, and a wide varietyof published governmentdocu-
Reviews of Books
151
ments. Moreover, the text is accompanied by a fascinatingseries of
photographs which portray nearly every aspect of the Newlands
Project's troubled history.
DONALD
J.PISANI
Texas A&M University
John Collier'sCrusadefor Indian Reform,1920-1954. By KENNETHR.
PHILP. (Tucson, Universityof Arizona Press, 1977. xvi + 304 pp.
$12.50 cloth, $6.50 paper)
Indian
John Collier exercised an influenceover twentieth-century
policy matched by no other individual. Because of Collier's importance, Kenneth Philp has writtenmore than a biographyof the leader
of the Indian New Deal; he has provided thefirstbook-lengthstudyof
Indian policy from 1920 to 1945.
Philp traces Collier's philosophyto his desire to rebuild a sense of
communityin an increasinglyindividual,impersonal society,and to
reinvigorate a spiritual sense in a mechanical, materialisticworld.
After working with immigrantsin New York City as a sort of
prototypicalsocial justice progressive,Collier discovered among the
Indians of the Southwestthe traitsof group identityand spirituality
that he believed white societyneeded. Workingwithvarious reform
groups from 1920 to 1933, he became the mostprominentcriticof the
Indian bureau. He distinguishedhimselfin battlesto staveoffthreats
to Pueblo lands in the Bursum Bill and Hagerman negotiations,to
preserve religious freedom,and to protectnativeAmericans'mineral
resources.
Appointed commissionerin 1933, Collier hoped to create a Red
Atlantis.He had to settlefor much less in the Indian Reorganization
Act of 1934, but it nonethelessreversedthedisastrousallotmentpolicy
and encouraged Indian self-government.
While sympatheticto Collier's cultural pluralism, Philp highlightsthe Indian New Deal's
considerable administrative problems, which included governing
structures of questionable appropriateness for native societies and
administrative procedures that were sometimes as arbitraryand
coercive as those Collier had fought before 1933. Thrown on the
defensive by the rising conservativeopposition among Indians and
whites in the late 1930s and during World War II, Collier turned
increasinglyto internationalactivities,such as pan-Indianismin the
in the United States'newly
Western hemisphereand self-government
acquired Pacificterritories.He resignedas commissionerin 1945 and
returned to the role of criticas the Harry S. Truman and DwightD.