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For centuries, the Akimel O odham the River People lived on the banks of the Gila River. The bountiful river attracted birds of all kinds, and its waters irrigated the Akimel s crops corn, beans and squash and, eventually, white winter wheat. The river provided them with food to eat and wares to sell; by the 19th century they were the most dominant venders of white wheat in Territorial Arizona, as anthropologist Tom Sheridan writes in the book
Paths of Light. But by the 1860s, white settlers arrived in droves and began cultivating their own crops along the Gila, diverting the water to their fields east of the Akimels land. The laws of the day failed to protect the Akimel, and by 1887 a major canal dug outside Florence permanently displaced the waters of the River People. Without water, they could no longer grow their own food and they were left parched and in dire poverty.