Shane Anton stood at the mouth of a hand-hewn irrigation canal that dates back centuries before the arrival of the first European explorers. The ancient waterway, 10 feet wide and about 5 feet deep, sits in a small desert park surrounded by tract homes in Lehi, a neighborhood in north Mesa. Our belief is we ve been here since time immemorial, said Anton, an Onk Akimel O odham and a member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and the need to farm was always there.
The 4,500-foot-long-canal at Mesa s Park of the Canals is a tiny fragment of a system that once spanned more than 700 miles along the Salt and Gila rivers, bringing life-giving water to Anton s ancestors, the Hohokam, or as the contemporary O odham peoples call them, the Huhugam.