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TEN TRIBES PARTNERSHIP Ten tribes occupy Indian reservations with claimed or vested water rights to the Colorado River. Typically, those tribes have the senior water rights on the river. The tribes comprising the Ten Tribes Partnership are: the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe; the Cocopah Indian Community; The Colorado River Indian Tribes; the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe; the Jicarilla Apache Tribe; the Navajo Nation; the Northern Ute Tribe; the Quechan Indian Tribe of the Fort Yuma Reservation; the Southern Ute Indian Tribe; and the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe. The tribes were excluded from the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allocated water between the upper and lower basins, so in recognition of that exclusion, the states involved and the U.S. Congress expressly provided that nothing in the 1922 compact would affect the United States' obligation to the tribes. According to Hoover Dam documents, then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, on behalf of the United States, commented that the provision relating to the obligation of the United States was inserted in the compact as "merely a declaration that the states, in entering into the agreement, disclaim any intention of affecting the performance of any obligations owing by the United States to Indians. It is presumed that the states have no power to disturb these relations, and it was thought wise to declare that no such result was intended." The Hoover Dam documents also reveal that Utah's position was that the 1922 compact was designed so that the "rights of Indian Tribes are protected" and Wyoming read the 1922 compact provision relating to Indian Tribes as "advisable by reason of the fact that the United States has heretofore entered into certain treaties with the different Indian Tribes that must be respected and can in no manner be affected by any later agreement." The use of Colorado River water by Indian tribes and tribal members began well before the 1922 compact. Since time immemorial, tribal members have made use of the river's floods to irrigate bottom lands. Congress recognized the importance of irrigated agriculture to the tribes of the Colorado River when it authorized the expenditure of $50,000 in 1867 to construct an irrigation canal on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, making this the first federally funded irrigation project in the United States. Legislation also was enacted in 1904 authorizing the United States to utilize new reclamation policies to expand irrigation on the Fort Yuma and Colorado River Indian reservations. In the years since the 1922 compact, both the United States and the Ten Tribes have continued to increase their presence with regard to the Colorado River. Congress authorized Parker Dam and Reservoir, built in the mid-1930s, to provide water to Southern California via the Colorado River Aqueduct and also to provide water for expanded irrigation of the Colorado River reservations, as well as to control floods, improve navigation, regulate river flows, provide storage, generate electricity and other beneficial uses. Congress authorized the taking of as much of the "tribal and allotted lands of the ... Chemehuevi Reservation in California" as was necessary for the constriction of Parker Dam. All of the fertile bottom lands of the Chemehuevi Reservation were condemned and all of the Indian residents of the reservation were dispossessed of their land and relocated off the reservation in order to construct the dam and create Lake Havasu. In the 1940s, Congress also authorized the Headgate Dam, again for river THIS NAVAJO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS INDUSTRY SPRINKLER SYSTEM MAKES ONCE-BARREN LAND HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE IN THE HIGH NORTHERN TERRAIN OF THE NEW MEXICO DESERT. 35