This article discusses the water problems faced by the people of the Pima tribe. On June 17, 1902, after more than a decade of political debate and maneuvering, the National Reclamation Act became law. This legislation provided direct federal subsidies for the development of irrigation projects across the arid West. The Reclamation Act generated challenges across much of Indian Country in the West as non-Indians began appropriating the remaining flow of many western streams, including the Gila River. There are several reasons why the Indian Service ignored the rights of its Indian charges. First, westerners were opposed to federal involvement in Indian resource development because they perceived such potential projects as giving Indians leverage over them since they were categorically excluded in such legislation. Second, and equally important, neither Congress nor the courts ever sanctioned a principle of Indian water rights outside of state prior appropriation laws. When Congress enacted into law the National Reclamation Act in 1902, it assumed the first federal reclamation project would be for the benefit and relief of the Pima on the Gila River Indian reservation. Yet no sooner had the bill become law than political maneuvering in the Salt River Valley and Washington, DC, persuaded the newly formed Reclamation Service to support what became known as the Salt River Project. The loss of water resulted in the Pima's becoming completely displaced from their traditional economy and economically dependent. There was little immediate hope they could join the growing economy of central Arizona without protection of their water, a modern irrigation system to replace the one they had abandoned because of water loss, and financial assistance to compensate for the years of starvation. Without such support the Pima would remain marginalized from the local economy. (Contains 1 table and 105 notes.)