The Sinagua were a
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
culture that occupied a large area in central
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
from the
Little Colorado River, 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. It is within the Coconino National Fo ...
, including the
Verde Valley
The Verde Valley ( yuf-x-yav, Matkʼamvaha; es, Valle Verde) 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 habita ...
, area around
San Francisco Mountain
The San Francisco Peaks (Navajo language, Navajo: , es, Sierra de San Francisco, Hopi language, Hopi: ''Nuva'tukya'ovi'', Western Apache: ''Dził Tso'', Keres language, Keres: ''Tsii Bina'', Colorado River Numic language, Southern Paiute: ''Nuvax ...
, and significant portions of the
Mogollon Rim
The Mogollon Rim ( or or ) is a topographical and geological feature cutting across the northern half of the U.S. state of Arizona. It extends approximately , starting in northern Yavapai County and running eastward, ending near the border ...
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
Mogollon culture () is an 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 southern span of the M ...
.
[
]
Name
The name ''Sinagua'' was coined in 1939 by archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
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, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau.
The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...
, 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 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: 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 350 ft lower. A long loo ...
, 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 w ...
, and Elden Pueblo
Elden Pueblo ( Hopi: Pasiwvi) was a prehistoric Native American village located at the foot of Mount Elden near Flagstaff, Arizona. The pueblo is thought to have been part of a major trading system.[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 indigenous peoples o ...]
, Montezuma Well
Montezuma Well ( yuf-x-yav, ʼHakthkyayva), a detached unit of Montezuma Castle National Monument, is a natural limestone sinkhole near the town of Lake Montezuma, Arizona, through which some of water emerge each day from an underground s ...
, Tuzigoot National Monument
Tuzigoot National Monument ( yuf-x-yav, ʼHaktlakva, 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, 120 feet (36 m) above the Verde River fl ...
, Palatki
The Palatki Heritage Site is an archaeological site and park located in the Coconino National Forest, near Sedona, in Arizona, United States. In the Hopi language ''Palatki'' means 'red house'.
History
;Cliff dwellings
The Palatki site has a ...
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 . Th ...
Archaeological Sites, and the V Bar V Heritage Site
The V Bar V 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 traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
foraging and subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...
. They hunted a variety of game from antelope, bear, rabbit, to turtles and ducks.[
They used ]amaranth
''Amaranthus'' is a cosmopolitan genus of annual or short-lived perennial plants collectively known as amaranths. Some amaranth species are cultivated as leaf vegetables, pseudocereals, and ornamental plants. Catkin-like cymes of densely pack ...
, ricegrass
''Oryzopsis'' is a genus of Chinese and North American plants in the grass family. Species from this genus are commonly called ricegrass.[beeweed
''Cleome serrulata'' (syn. ''Peritoma serrulata''), commonly known as Rocky Mountain beeplant/beeweed, stinking-clover, bee spider-flower, skunk weed, Navajo spinach, and guaco, is a species of annual plant in the genus '' Cleome''. Many species ...]
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 bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in A ...
s for flour. Sunflowers, hackberry fruit, yucca, wild grapes, walnuts, pine nuts
Pine nuts, also called piñón (), pinoli (), pignoli or chilgoza (), 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 trade ...
, and acorns were also important sources of food.[
Sinagua farmers cultivated ]maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
beginning in the eighth century. They learned irrigation techniques from their southern Hohokam
Hohokam () was a culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 AD, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BC. Archaeologists disagree about ...
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 field ...
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 ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja Ca ...
and Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
. They traded their baskets and woven cotton cloth for copper, macaw
Macaws are a group of New World parrots that are long-tailed and often colorful. They are popular in aviculture or as companion parrots, although there are conservation concerns about several species in the wild.
Biology
Of the many differe ...
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, these structures may also be used to store food (just like a pantry, a larder ...
s, similar to the ones built by the Hohokam
Hohokam () was a culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 AD, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BC. Archaeologists disagree about ...
people of southern Arizona, and wooden buildings.[ Later structures more closely resemble the ]Pueblo architecture
Pueblo architecture refers to the traditional architecture of the Puebloans, 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 Mexic ...
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 region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Ne ...
.
Besides ceremonial kiva
A kiva 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 circular and underground, ...
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 Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 AD, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BC. Archaeologists disagree about ...
.[
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 is the consumption of a resource faster than it can be replenished. Natural resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources (see also mineral resource classification). Use of either ...
, drought, and clashes with the newly arrived Yavapai people
The Yavapai are a Native American tribe in Arizona. Historically, the Yavapai – literally “people of the sun” (from ''Enyaava'' “sun” + ''Paay'' “people”) – were divided into four geographical bands who identified as separate, i ...
have been suggested.[
]
Descendants
Several contemporary Hopi
The Hopi are a Native American ethnic group who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 census, there are 19,338 Hopi in the country. The Hopi Tribe is a sovereign nation within the Unite ...
clans trace their ancestry to immigrants from the Sinagua culture, who they believe left the Verde Valley for religious reasons. Pima
Pima or PIMA may refer to:
People
* Pima people, the Akimel O'odham, Indigenous peoples in Arizona (U.S.) and Sonora (Mexico)
Places
* Pima, Arizona, a town in Graham County
* Pima County, Arizona
* Pima Canyon, in the Santa Catalina Mountains ...
, Tohono O'odham, Yavapai
The Yavapai are a Native American tribe in Arizona. Historically, the Yavapai – literally “people of the sun” (from ''Enyaava'' “sun” + ''Paay'' “people”) – were divided into four geographical bands who identified as separate, i ...
, 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 requires federal agencies and institutions that ...
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
*
See also
* Desert farming
Desert farming is the practice of developing agriculture in deserts. As agriculture depends upon irrigation and water supply, farming in arid regions where water is scarce is a challenge. However, desert farming has been practiced by humans for ...
, present-day applications of non-irrigated farming by Native Americans of the southwestern United States
* Ancient Pueblo peoples
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, an ...
* Hohokam
Hohokam () was a culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. It existed between 300 and 1500 AD, with cultural precursors possibly as early as 300 BC. Archaeologists disagree about ...
* Mogollon
* Oasisamerica
Oasisamerica is a term that was coined by Paul Kirchhoff (who also coined "Mesoamerica") and published in a 1954 article, and is used by some scholars, primarily Mexican anthropologists, for the broad cultural area defining pre-Columbian so ...
External links
Logan Museum – Ancient Cultures of the Southwest
Montezuma Castle National Monument
Palatki Archaeological Site
* 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
Puebloan peoples
Pre-Columbian cultures