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Thousands of years ago, a band of Cahuilla Indians migrated south into the Coachella Valley, calling the area Séc-he, meaning boiling water. The Mexicans translated this as agua caliente (hot water), which is the name still used today. As the United States extended its territory into California, the Agua Caliente were forced onto a reservation, and then, as the Southern Pacific Railroad was granted land in the region, the reservation was carved up into a checkerboard pattern. It took decades of legal fights and government intervention, but today Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians continues its work to retain its cultural heritage and stewards more than 34,000 acres of ancestral land. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Michael Albertus, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and author of Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Dramatic Nostalgic Sad Piano and Cello” by Yevhen Onoychenko from Pixabay; it is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is the Agua Caliente Reservation; this media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 298622.
Additional Sources
Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He studies how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences this has for society, why some countries are democratic and others aren't, and why some societies fall into civil conflict.
His newest book in press, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies (Basic Books, 2025), examines how land became power, how it shapes power, and how who holds that power determines the fundamental social problems that societies grapple with. He is also the author of Property without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap, Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy, Coercive Distribution, and Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform. Autocracy and Redistribution and Property Without Rights both won several book awards.
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