The Sinagua were a

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

culture that occupied a large area in central

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

from the

Little Colorado River The Little Colorado River () is a tributary of the Colorado River in the U.S. state of Arizona, providing the principal drainage from the Painted Desert region. Together with its major tributary, the Puerco River, it drains an area of about in ...

, near Flagstaff, to the

Verde River The Verde River ( Yavapai: Haka'he:la) is a major tributary of the Salt River in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is about long and carries a mean flow of at its mouth. It is one of the largest perennial streams in Arizona. Description The ri ...

, near

Sedona Sedona ( ) is a city that straddles the county line between Coconino and Yavapai counties in the northern Verde Valley region of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2010 census, its population was 10,031. The city is within the Coconino Nati ...

, including the

Verde Valley The Verde Valley (; ) is a valley in central Arizona in the United States. The Verde River runs through it. The Verde River is one of Arizona's last free-flowing river systems. It provides crucial habitat for fish and wildlife, fresh water fo ...

, area around

San Francisco Mountain The San Francisco Peaks (Navajo: , , Hopi: ''Nuva'tukya'ovi'', Western Apache: ''Dził Tso'', Keres: ''Tsii Bina'', Southern Paiute: ''Nuvaxatuh'', Havasupai-Hualapai: ''Hvehasahpatch''/''Huassapatch''/''Wik'hanbaja'', Yavapai: ''Wi:mun Kwa'', Z ...

, and significant portions of the

Mogollon Rim The Mogollon Rim ( or or ) is a topography, topographical and geological feature cutting across Northern Arizona, the northern half of the U.S. state of Arizona. It extends approximately , starting in northern Yavapai County, Arizona, Yavapa ...

country, between approximately . Since fully developed Sinagua sites emerged in central Arizona around 650 CE, it is believed they migrated from east-central Arizona, possibly emerging from the

Mogollon culture The Mogollon culture ( ) is a pre-historic archaeological culture of Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico and Arizona, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua, and Western Texas. The northern part of this region is Oasisamerica, while the sou ...

Name

The name ''Sinagua'' was coined in 1939 by

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

Harold S. Colton,Gibbon 770 founder of the

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist Dr. Harol ...

, from the Spanish words ''sin'' meaning "without" and ''agua'' meaning "water", referring to the name originally given by Spanish explorers to the

San Francisco Peaks The San Francisco Peaks (Navajo: , , Hopi: ''Nuva'tukya'ovi'', Western Apache: ''Dził Tso'', Keres: ''Tsii Bina'', Southern Paiute: ''Nuvaxatuh'', Havasupai-Hualapai: ''Hvehasahpatch''/''Huassapatch''/''Wik'hanbaja'', Yavapai: ''Wi:mun Kwa'', ...

near Flagstaff, the "Sierra Sin Agua". The name reflects the surprise the Spanish felt that such large mountains did not have perennial rivers flowing from them, as is common in Spain.

Cultural phases

Colton also distinguished between two different Sinagua cultures. The Northern Sinagua were loosely centered in the highlands around Flagstaff, with

Walnut Canyon National Monument Walnut Canyon National Monument (Hopi language, Hopi: Wupatupqa) is a United States National Monument located about southeast of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona, near Interstate 40. The canyon rim elevation is ; the canyon's floor is lower. A lo ...

Wupatki National Monument The Wupatki National Monument is a United States National Monument located in north-central Arizona, near Flagstaff. Rich in Native American archaeological sites, the monument is administered by the National Park Service in close conjunction ...

, and

Elden Pueblo Elden Pueblo (Hopi language, Hopi: Pasiwvi) was a prehistoric Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native American village at the foot of Mount Elden near Flagstaff, Arizona. The pueblo is considered part of a major trading system.

the best-known publicly accessible sites. The Southern Sinagua inhabited lower elevations across the Verde Valley of central Arizona;

Montezuma Castle National Monument Montezuma Castle National Monument protects a set of well-preserved dwellings located in Camp Verde, Arizona, which were built and used by the Sinagua people, a pre-Columbian culture closely related to the Hohokam and other Prehistoric Southwest ...

Montezuma Well Montezuma Well (), a detached unit of Montezuma Castle National Monument, is a natural limestone sinkhole near the town of Rimrock, Arizona, through which some of water emerge each day from an spring (hydrology), underground spring. It is l ...

Tuzigoot National Monument Tuzigoot National Monument (, Western Apache: ''Tú Digiz'') preserves a 2- to 3-story pueblo ruin on the summit of a limestone and sandstone ridge just east of Clarkdale, Arizona, above the Verde River floodplain. The Tuzigoot Site is an elong ...

Palatki The Palatki Heritage Site is an archaeological site and park located in the Coconino National Forest, near Sedona, in Arizona, United States at approximately 34°54′56″N 111°54′08″W. In the Hopi language ''Palatki'' means 'red house'. ...

and

Honanki The Honanki Heritage Site is a cliff dwelling and rock art site located in the Coconino National Forest, about west of Sedona, Arizona. The Sinagua people of the Ancestral Puebloans, and ancestors of the Hopi people, lived here from about . The ...

Archaeological Sites, and the

V Bar V Heritage Site The Crane Petroglyph Heritage Site is the largest known petroglyph site in the Verde Valley of central Arizona, and one of the best-preserved. The rock art site consists of 1,032 petroglyphs in 13 panels. Acquired by the Coconino National Fore ...

are notable localities open to the public.

Subsistence

The Sinagua economy was based on a combination of

hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...

foraging and

subsistence agriculture Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops on smallholdings to meet the needs of themselves and their families. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occu ...

. They hunted a variety of game from antelope, bear, rabbit, to turtles and ducks. They used

amaranth ''Amaranthus'' is a cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan group of more than 50 species which make up the genus of annual plant, annual or short-lived perennial plants collectively known as amaranths. Some names include "prostrate pigweed" an ...

ricegrass ''Oryzopsis'' is a genus of Chinese and North American plants in the grass family. Species from this genus are commonly called ricegrass.beeweed flowers, and

cattail ''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrushStreeter D, Hart-Davies C, Hardcastle A, Cole F, Harper L. 2009. ...

s for flour. Sunflowers, hackberry fruit, yucca, wild grapes, walnuts,

pine nuts Pine nuts, also called piñón (), pinoli (), or pignoli, are the edible seeds of pines (family Pinaceae, genus ''Pinus''). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, only 29 species provide edible nuts, while 20 are traded locall ...

, and acorns were also important sources of food. Sinagua farmers cultivated

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

beginning in the eighth century. They learned irrigation techniques from their southern

Hohokam Hohokam was a culture in the Indigenous peoples of the North American Southwest, North American Southwest in what is now part of south-central Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 CE, with cultural p ...

neighbors and added beans and squash to their crops. The 1064 and 1066 eruptions of

Sunset Crater Sunset Crater is a cinder cone located north of Flagstaff in the U.S. state of Arizona. The crater is within the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. Sunset Crater is the youngest in a string of volcanoes (the San Francisco volcanic fie ...

covered the area in ash, which greatly enriched the soil for farming.Gibbon 771 Around 700 CE, they became active in the region's long-distance trade which reached the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California (), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Vermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja California peninsula from ...

and

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

. They traded their baskets and woven cotton cloth for copper,

macaw Macaws are a group of Neotropical parrot, New World parrots that are long-tailed and often colorful, in the Tribe (biology), tribe Arini (tribe), Arini. They are popular in aviculture or as companion parrots, although there are conservation con ...

s, marine shells, salt, and rare pigments.

Settlements

Early Sinagua sites consist mostly of large

pit house A pit-house (or pit house, pithouse) is a house built in the ground and used for shelter. Besides providing shelter from the most extreme of weather conditions, this type of earth shelter may also be used to store food (just like a pantry, a la ...

s, similar to the ones built by the

people of southern Arizona, and wooden buildings. Later structures more closely resemble the

Pueblo architecture Pueblo architecture refers to the traditional architecture of the Pueblo people in what is now the Southwestern United States, especially New Mexico. Many of the same building techniques were later adapted by the Hispanos of New Mexico into the ...

practiced by other contemporaneous cultural groups occupying the

southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...

. Besides ceremonial

kiva A kiva (also ''estufa'') is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circula ...

s, their pueblos had large "community rooms" and some featured ballcourts and walled courtyards, similar to those of the

Hohokam culture Hohokam was a culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of south-central Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 CE, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BCE. Archae ...

. The last known evidence of Sinagua occupation for any site comes from Montezuma Castle, a limestone

cliff dwelling In archaeology, cliff dwellings are dwellings formed by using niches or caves in high cliffs, and sometimes with excavation or additions in the way of masonry. Two special types of cliff dwelling are distinguished by archaeologists: the cliff- ...

by Beaver Creek in Verde Valley. This 65-room structure was believed to be built by Sinagua women between 1100 and 1350 CE.

Art and material culture

Known as Alameda Brown Ware, their plain pottery was built using the paddle-and-anvil method. Their clay was grey or brown, tempered with crushed potsherds, and painted with buff, brown, and red slips. They carved with imported red argillate.

Migration and cultural shifts

Sinagua peoples left the Verde Valley by the early 15th century. Like other pre-Columbian cultures in the southwest, the Sinagua apparently abandoned their permanent settlements around this time, though the precise reasons for such a large-scale abandonment are not yet known;

resource depletion Resource depletion occurs when a natural resource is consumed faster than it can be replenished. The value of a resource depends on its availability in nature and the cost of extracting it. By the law of supply and demand, the Scarcity, scarcer ...

, drought, and clashes with the newly arrived

Yavapai people The Yavapai ( ) are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe in Arizona. Their Yavapai language belongs to the Upland Yuman languages, Yuman branch of the proposed Hokan languages, Hokan language family. Today Yavapai peop ...

have been suggested.

Descendants

Several contemporary

Hopi The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado ...

clans trace their ancestry to immigrants from the Sinagua culture, who they believe left the Verde Valley for religious reasons. Pima, Tohono O'odham,

Yavapai The Yavapai ( ) are a Native American tribe in Arizona. Their Yavapai language belongs to the Upland Yuman branch of the proposed Hokan language family. Today Yavapai people are enrolled in the following federally recognized tribes: * Fort ...

, and Zuni also potentially have cultural, linguistic, and historical connections to the Sinagua people. Melanie O'Brien, acting manager of the National

NAGPRA The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990. The Act includes three major sets of provisions. The "re ...

Program, writes of Montezuma Castle:

Evidence demonstrating continuity between the people of the Verde Valley during A.D. 1125–1425 and the Hopi Tribe includes archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, folkloric, and oral traditions. Ceramic vessels made only on the Hopi mesas are found at the sites and are similar to items made by historic and modern Hopi people. Additionally, plain woven and painted textiles, coiled basketry, and woven matting are similar to items made and used by modern Hopi people. Living Hopi clan members also have ancestral names and traditional stories about specific events and people at each site.

Cliff dwellings of the Sinaguas

Notes

References

External links

Logan Museum – Ancient Cultures of the Southwest

*

* ttp://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona/tuzigoot/national_monument.html Tuzigoot National Monument
Wupatki National Monument
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinagua Native American history of Arizona Native American tribes in Arizona Oasisamerica cultures Archaeology of the United States Pueblo peoples Pre-Columbian cultures