How Indigenous Labor Was Diverted in the Making of L.A. Aqueduct and Owens Valley
Water is one of the most contested elements in the history of Los Angeles: from the now-infamous story of William Mulholland initiating the construction of the L.A. Aqueduct in 1908 to the water wars between Owens Valley farmers and the city of L.A. in the 1920s. More recently, attention has been given to the Owens Valley Paiute (Nüümü), who irrigated, cultivated and nurtured the "Land of Flowing Water" (Payahuunadü) for centuries before colonists arrived. What threads these narratives together is the exploitation of Indigenous lands and labor. The transformation of the Owens Valley can be traced to the government's creation of Indian boarding schools, where Indigenous peoples were relocated and taught trades like domestic science, carpentry and construction in support of suburban expansion. In so doing, the government was able to convert tribal lands into property for capitalist gain and to divert Indigenous labor for the building of such. Therefore, the history of the L.A. Aqueduct unfolds from the history of Indigenous treatment in the United States.
Following the Gold Rush, the Paiute were forcibly removed by the military to Fort Tejon. While some returned and found work in farming and agriculture in the 19th century, many were funneled into reservations by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The Dawes Act of 1887 spearheaded the Allotment Era, wherein reservation lands were converted into private property, much of which was sold to non-Indigenous people. With the 1939 Lands Exchange Act, 2,913.5 acres of reservation land were taken from the Owens Valley Paiute in exchange for 1,391.48 acres of highly taxed, allotted city land, without commensurate water rights. Following a series of land revocations backed by the U.S. Government, the City of L.A. owned over 85% of Owens Valley by the 1930s. Today, ground waters under remaining reservation lands in Owens Valley have depleted, posing continued threats to the Paiute. If we are to understand the history of the L.A. Aqueduct, and thus, sustained damages to the Owens Valley ecosystem and to the Paiute, we must consider the historical role of the BIA in the relocation and conversion of Indigenous people and land.
While federal policies during the Reservation Era encouraged Indigenous people to work in agriculture while living on reservations, during the Allotment Era (1887-1934), the BIA focused instead on assimilation. Indian Boarding Schools were designed to prepare Indigenous youth to enter white society as wage laborers and to acquire and maintain a home in alignment with patriarchal, single-family expectations. The last school to be established through the BIA was the Sherman Institute, relocated to Riverside from Perris, California and reopened in 1903 under the direction of Frank Miller. The construction of the school was backed financially by Henry Huntington, who was involved with Miller in the development of subdivisions at the base of Riverside's Mount Rubidoux. Not surprisingly, Huntington was also involved with Mulholland in the development of the L.A. Aqueduct and San Fernando Valley suburbs. Through their Suburban Homes Company, a new Mission Revival style depot in Van Nuys and the extension of the Pacific Electric Railway and L.A. Aqueduct, Los Angeles' boundaries were prepared to stretch westward.
As with much of Southern California's tourist attractions built during this time, the Sherman Institute was designed in the Mission Revival style. The style harkened back to the Spanish colonization of California. Under the Franciscan teachings of Father Junipero Serra, Indigenous people were enslaved and forced to build the California Missions as carpenters and masons. In writings about the influence of the Mission Revival style on the modern development of Southern California, acclaimed architecture critics including George Wharton James commemorated this history. According to James' article for The Craftsman in 1904, the Mission style emerged from the absence of skilled laborers, brick-makers or layers in the Spanish colonization of California. Less ornate than the Baroque churches of Spanish Colonial Mexico, the Mission Revival style with its simple forms and plaster walls could be applied to schools, dormitories, hospitals, libraries, courthouses or simple homes with unskilled labor. In its application at the Sherman Institute, the Mission Revival style supported the BIA's agenda; Indigenous people could be taught to assimilate to white society, religion, capitalist production and domesticity through education in a setting that harkened back to the founding of the California missions and discourses of racial uplift.
Central to this story is labor, and the vocational training taught at government-run Indian Boarding Schools during the first half of the 20th century. Indigenous boys enrolled in carpentry training programs were taught to read blueprints, lay out property lines and build houses. Student labor saved ill-funded boarding schools money in constructing, expanding and maintaining the school, while providing hands-on practice for students. The vocational training at the Sherman Institute echoed the work being done to preserve the California missions and reinvigorate their centrality to California's historical narrative. The Landmarks Club was formed in 1895 by Charles Lummis, an associate of Miller, Huntington and Mulholland and admirer of Spanish colonial history. The Landmarks Club was devoted to the preservation of the Spanish Missions and associated narratives, of which Helen Hunt Jackson's "Ramona" was the most famous. The Mission Play told the story of Ramona, an orphan of Scottish-Indigenous descent who under the tutelage of Señora Gonzaga Moreno, ultimately assimilates to domestic married life on the Rancho Camulos. When a new theater was planned to house the Mission Play in San Gabriel, it was stated that "today in 1921 as in 1771, the Indians are again making adobe bricks at San Gabriel – bricks that will be used in the construction of the new Mission Playhouse which will be dedicated to the memory of the past, and the glory of the missions." Indian Boarding School students were trained in brick making and laying and sent to work for contracting companies with ties to the school in the latter years of their education. One of the dormitories at the Sherman Institute was fittingly named "Ramona" in line with romanticized stories of Indigenous uplift. Besides forming a labor pool for the renovation of the boarding school or the preservation of the missions, Indigenous students were prepared as carpenters and masons to replicate Mission-style buildings (as much as social structures) of the past.
Having hands-on training in excavation, irrigation and construction, Indian Boarding School students were similarly suited to help the government transform Indigenous lands into private property or public infrastructure. A Phoenix Boarding School graduate moved to Los Angeles to attend automotive school after graduation, but after a few months contracted tuberculosis and returned to their reservation at Fort McDowell. Here, they worked for the City of Phoenix on the portion of a new municipal water line that passed through the reservation. As Thad M. Van Bueren's research on the class relations at an L.A. Aqueduct construction camp demonstrates, Indigenous people were relegated to low-wage, unskilled positions and inferior accommodations while working to build the L.A. Aqueduct.
Having observed a lack of societal integration and wealth generation among the Indigenous populace, the BIA took a critical stance against allotment in the 1930s. A new era of BIA policy began with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, often referred to as the "Indian New Deal." With New Deal funding, the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC-ID) was established to improve reservation lands for subsistence farming, ranching and forestry. Boarding school graduates were employed in construction and maintenance of roadways and irrigation on reservations being subdivided into farm plots. The extraction of resources from reservation lands and translation into products for the capitalist market would continue to support regional growth.
Indigenous labor has underpinned the development of Southern California throughout history, and yet, Indigenous land and people are disproportionately affected by ongoing water wars. Despite the government's shifting policies from the Reservation to the New Deal Era, the Paiute continue to face challenges due to the destruction of the lush valleys their ancestors cultivated for centuries. Unraveling from the history of the L.A. Aqueduct are threads between: Owens Valley, Los Angeles and Riverside; Huntington, Miller, Lummis and Mulholland; and Mission Revival-style architecture and Indigenous labor. Though geographically distanced, the Pauite are as tied to the history of water in Los Angeles, then, as Mulholland's famous camping trip in Owens Valley.
Sources
Bueren, Thad M. Van. "Struggling with Class Relations at a Los Angeles Aqueduct Construction Camp," Historical Archaeology 36 (2002): 28-43.
James, George Wharton. "The Influence of the "Mission Style" Upon the Civic and Domestic Architecture," The Craftsman 5 (Feb, 1904): 458.
Mcgroarty, John Stevens. "New and Larger Theater for the Mission Play," Los Angeles Times (Feb 20, 1921): V1.
Owens Valley Indian Water Commission. "A History of Water Rights and Land Struggles," http://www.oviwc.org/water-crusade/
Record Group 75, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Archives, Riverside, Ca.
Rosenthal, Nicolas G. Reimagining Indian Country: Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
