Southwestern United States
&
Four Corners Area
(New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and
Utah)
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The Bering land bridge was exposed
intermittently between 23,000 and 8,000
B.C., and groups of people may have
migrated into North America in several
different waves.
We know that people had reached the
Southwest by about twelve thousand years
ago, as evidenced by the Clovis finds.
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There is no single Indian tribe called the
Pueblo.
Pueblo is a Spanish term for the word
“village.”
In the Southwestern United States, the term
Pueblo refers to communities of Native
Americans, both in the present and in ancient
times.
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The first Spanish explorers of the Southwest
used this term to describe the communities
housed in apartment structures built of
stone, adobe mud, and other local material.
These structures were usually multi-storied
buildings surrounding an open plaza.
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Today, the village-dwelling Pueblo people
occupy a major place in prehistory that
extends to modern times: the Hopi, Zuni,
Acoma, and the Rio Grande communities in
New Mexico have been in this area for
thousands of years.
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This vast population of Pueblo people today
speak half a dozen different languages and
live in more than twenty modern reservations.
Some of these villages have been in
continuous occupation for over a thousand
years.
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The Four Corners area of New Mexico,
Colorado, Utah, and Arizona play an
important role in what we now describe as
Southwestern pre-history.
It is here that a large population of ancient
peoples once called the “Anasazi,” or as the
Navajo called them, “the ancient ones,” have
lived for thousands of years.”
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Other similar cultures known as the
Hohokam, the Mogollon, and the
Mimbres also populated areas
throughout Arizona and New Mexico.
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Some of those populations had trade
networks and influences from
Mesoamerica (the highly organized
advanced civilizations of the Maya,
Toltecs, Aztecs, and others in and
around Mexico and Central America).
The early Puebloans occupied four main
regions in the Four Corners area:
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Northern San Juan: this area included
portions of southwestern Colorado,
southeastern Utah, and far Northwestern New
Mexico north of the San Juan River.
These occupations include such cultural
and historical sites as Mesa Verde,
Aztec Ruins, Hovenweep, and
Montezuma Valley sites.
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the Chaco Canyon ruins lie in the center of
the Chaco Basin of Northwestern New
Mexico.
Chaco Canyon remains one of the most
important archaeologically important sites
in the area.
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this region includes the territory west
of the Chuska Mountains, and most of
the Hopi Mesas, Betatakin, Keet Seel,
and Canyon de Chelly, as well as
Monument Valley and other important
ancient Pueblo sites.
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this region includes the Zuni River
east of Zuni, New Mexico, to Winslow,
Arizona, Black Mesa and the Hopi
Mesas, as well as Wupatki, and
Hawikuh, where the Spanish first
contacted the Zuni.
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Anthropologists and Archaeologists, as well
as other social scientists have used cultural
divisions to further explain and categorize
the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest.
These three divisions are the Hohokam, The
Mogollon, and the Anasazi.
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inhabited the desert areas of southern
Arizona and extreme northern Mexico,
with settlements extending northward
toward Flagstaff between 300 and
1500 AD.
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The distinguishing features of Hohokam
settlements were ballcourts and platform
mounds, both of which have been associated
with activities that carried ritual significance.
Ballcourts provided the arena for a spirited
game played with a small rubber ball, and
may have had some Mesoamerican influence.
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Hohokam groups living along major
drainages such as the Gila, Salt, and Verde
Rivers were pioneers in the use of extensive
canal networks that they dug to irrigate their
fields.
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The artifacts, architecture, and
inferred spiritual practices of the
Hohokam are in many ways much
more similar to adjacent areas to the
south in Mesoamerica.
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Mogollon people gained their
name from the area in eastcentral Arizona and west-central
New Mexico.
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The Mogollon inhabited a markedly
different landscape.
Their settlements were colder, wetter,
and more wooded mountainous parts
of east-central Arizona and westcentral New Mexico.
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Their lives, similar to the Hohokam,
centered on farming, with religious
ceremonies taking place in Kivas, or
underground chambers.
This culture flourished between 200 and
1500 AD.
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The Anasazi were close cousins of the
Mogollon, and lived in settlements
throughout the plateau country of the
Southwest, including much of northeastern
Arizona, northwestern New Mexico,
southeastern Utah, and southwestern
Colorado.
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These Pueblo people erected some of the
most remarkable villages such as Mesa Verde
and Chaco Canyon during the same period of
200 to 1500 AD.
 These
people remained hunters
and gatherers for thousands of
years.
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By 1000 B.C., the hunters and
gatherers of the Southwest began to
cultivate corn and squash, the first
crops to be traded from Mexico.
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Maize was first cultivated in Mexico at least
9,000 years ago in southwestern Mexico.
Between about A.D. 200 and 900, people
built a scatter of communities across a vast
frontier. People lived in these hamlets yearround or moved out seasonally to field or
hunting camps.
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First occupied Four corners area
around 1200 B.C.
Began making baskets and growing
food
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In this first major period they are called the
Basketmaker Anasazi because of their highly
refined basket making.
They used yucca, bark and other plant fiber
to make things like sandals and baskets to
store food.
 The
baskets were light and
portable and suited their lifestyle.
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also began to weave and
make cord, then clothing, from
cotton imported from Mexico
(Mesoamerica).
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Anasazi culture reflected that of the Sinagua
Pueblo near Flagstaff, Arizona in Walnut
Canyon.
Here, the Pueblo’s lived on the side of a
canyon and lived off the natural environment
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The Pueblo peoples in this area represent
what is known as the Hohokam
They developed a lifestyle similar to the
Mesoamericans in Mexico.
Adopted the ball courts associated with the
Toltecs, and other people in Mexico
Traded corn, squash, and cotton with Mexico
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During this period they also began to
make pottery, often forming coils of
clay inside a basket for structure, then
scraping and smoothing the surface
with a stone.
Pottery was clearly superior to baskets
for holding liquids and cooking food.
 In
the second major Anasazi
cultural period, beginning around
A.D. 750, they are called the
Pueblo Anasazi.
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began to settle down, rely
even more on agriculture, and
stay in one place much longer.
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gathered together in larger
and larger communities.
 Before
and during this phase
there were many developments —
mostly gradual or evolutionary —
that dramatically changed their
culture.
 They
began using the bow and
arrow, which was much more
accurate and effective than the
spear and atlatl they’d used
previously.
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To their domestic crops they added beans
— including common, kidney and navy
beans (traded from Mexico).
During their nomadic wanderings they
needed baskets for their lightness and
mobility.
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As they settled down, they used more
pottery for food storage and cooking.
Their pottery making developed into
what we consider an art form.
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Their pit houses, which had become deeper
and more permanent, began to give way to a
new kind of construction, above-ground
structures.
They started building with stone. Eventually,
more families came together as clans, and
clans formed tribes.
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Hamlets grew to villages, then towns.
Larger numbers of people participated in
religious and spiritual ceremonies.
The round or keyhole-shaped underground
kiva grew in size, importance and
permanence. Usually, it was built in a central
plaza.
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Lived in pit houses (holes in the ground with
stones and sticks for a roof)
began building adobe and stone houses and
buildings around 700 A.D.
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Centered around growing corn
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Making magnificent pottery
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Very religious and ceremonial
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Played games and gambled
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Emphasis on running events and foot races
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The prehistoric Southwest culminated most
spectacularly at Chaco Canyon, in presentday New Mexico, where during the 1100’s the
Anasazi built five-story pueblos with
hundreds of rooms.
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Occupied 700 A.D.
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Major Ceremonial Center
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Major Trading Post: copper bells made by the
Toltecs, and quetzl feathers (from Parrots
found in Mexico) have been found in storage
rooms at Chaco Canyon
Remains of chocolate found in containers
(from Mexico)
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Pueblo homes and buildings: made from
stones and adobe
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Two, three, and four story structures
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Kivas and Ceremonial Centers
 The
kiva would have been covered
with logs, which served as a roof
 Large
numbers of people would
have been inside during festivals
or times of worship
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It is an Anasazi belief that our current world
is the fourth Earth to be in existence.
The previous three were supposedly
destroyed by the Creator.
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The Anasazi, modern and ancient, believe
that if humans don't live up to their
commitments to honor Earth, Mother Nature
will punish us by bringing the world to a
violent end.
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They believed that they emerged
through an underground opening
called a sipapu.
their kivas (which formed from the
original pithouses) represent this
emergence into the present day world
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A kiva is a special purpose ceremonial
building where communities gathered
to perform rituals and ceremonies.
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The Anasazi used rock art and symbols as a
form of language
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Rock art was a form of storytelling
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Left messages on rocks for each other
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Marked their migrations
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Other major areas can be seen at Mesa Verde,
an area built by the ancient Pueblos known as
the “Cliff Dwellers,” as they built enormous
villages high up in the cliffs outside of
present-day Cortez, Colorado.
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Mountains of Colorado
Pueblo style homes
Cliff dwellings
More structured kivas
Elaborate pottery
Farmed on top of the cliffs
Hunted and farmed
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Modern Pueblo people of today are the
ancestors of a long traditions of prehistoric life in the Southwest.
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there is no break between their prehistoric
past and their present. They have the same
view of life now as they have had over
thousands of years.
Today, all nineteen Pueblos are located in
New Mexico after a wave of migrations due to
agricultural problems, droughts, and religious
movements toward the Rio Grande area.
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Modern Pueblos are: Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta,
Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Picuris, Pojoaque,
Sandia, San Felipe, San Ildefonso, San Juan,
Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, Taos,
Tesuque, Zia, and Zuni.
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Taos and Acoma Pueblos have been
continuously occupied since around 1000
A.D., and in Arizona, the Hopi have been
living in Arizona on three mesas for over a
thousand years.
Old Oraibi may have been occupied
continuously since 900.