Prehistoric Sedona, Arizona
Archaeologists have long debated just how long humans have been living on the North American Continent. While some estimate that human life on this continent dates back forty thousand years, evidenced by recent archaeological findings, most theorize that the first to wander across the Bering Straight were the Clovis hunters, twelve thousand years ago, when the ice-age was coming to a close. With warmer temperatures associated with the end of the ice age, the mammoth animals began to die out, and smaller animals began to dominate. These were deer and antelope, and were now sought by human hunters for food. Groups of humans traveled across the lands, following the small game, going when the seasons changed, to better hunting grounds, moving with the animals as they roamed according to the season. The animals were following the different plants in varying areas, which thrived according to what season it was. Plants follow the seasons, animals followed plants, and humans followed the animals.
The men and women, when they were in the Sedona Arizona area, stayed in the canyon caves, which provided excellent shelter from the elements and from predators. They left very little for archaeologists to discover, but at Red Cliffs they left markings on the walls, which tell us so much about their culture and their daily existence. The Red Cliffs are about a twenty minute drive northwest of the city, and show a Sedona history of ancient peoples in the area. There are markings from ancient hunter gatherers, petroglyphs from paleo-indians, and geometric markings from relatively more recent peoples, from the archaic period, which lasted until just about one thousand years ago.
Technological advances came with adaptation to the landscape, which mainly meant a switch from a hunter-gatherer society to a more stable, agricultural way of life. As people learned to plant crops and take care of them, they began to build more permanent structures, to create tools to help them with their farming, and tools to help them process their food, such as grinding stones for corn. This occurred in Sedona Arizona in the seventh century A.D. The agriculture people in this area are called Sinagua by today's archaeologists. They are called the Sinagua because they lived around the San Francisco Peaks, which the Spanish called Sierra sin Agua...Mountains without Water. The Sinagua built little clusters of pit houses at first, throughout Red Rock Country, and later on, beginning around A.C. 1100, built pueblos made of red stone to live in. Sometimes they'd build the pueblos into the red rock canyon walls. They grew mostly corn, squash, and beans. They made pottery from the red clay, and traded it for pots and jewelry with the Hohokam and Anasazi peoples, who lived nearby. The villages were typified by the villages of Honoanki and Palatki, where clans existed and left their marks on the red rock walls. They depicted humans and animals drawn in kaolin clay, which is found in the area.
Around A.D. 1300 the Sinagua moved from their pueblos and canyon alcoves to more riparian areas around Wet Beaver Creek, for example. These areas were on hilltops and the water flowed year round. Examples of these villages are Montezuma Castle and Tuzigoot. There were about five thousand Sinagua in the area at this time, in their hilltop period of existence. They traded with each other via the Palatkwapi trail, which ran north and south, and along which cotton was traded for items from as far away as Mexico. The hilltop villages lasted only about one hundred years, and then they were abruptly abandoned, and it's believed that the large clans migrated to Chavez Pass and the Hopi areas of Arizona, on the mesas. We really don't know why they left their riparian hilltop villages, and can only speculate about invasions, resource depletion, and drought, even though there is no evidence for any of these explanations. The Hopi people themselves say that their deity told them to move on, fulfilling the desire that they leave their footprints all over the earth. Migration was they were supposed to do in order to be good spiritual citizens.
There was another group of people living in the Sedona Arizona area around A.D. 1300, and they were the Yavapai people. They settled in the Verde Valley and were descendants of the Patayan culture which centered itself in the Colorado River valley. They may have lived side by side with the Sinagua at one time, since scientists have found camps from both cultures right next to each other. The Yavapai were hunter gatherers, but had territories on which they roamed. The subsection of Yavapai whose territory included Sedona were the Wipukapaya. This translates to people of the red rocks. They lived in light brushy structures and moved around to catch game. They also ate prickly pear fruit and green plants found growing in the springtime. Also gathered by the Yavapai people was agave, which some people call century plant. They roasted it over a fire for days and considered it a delicacy. Actually, they used almost every part of the plant, either for food, for medicine, for face paint, or for woven fibers for baskets and other light items for daily living. The large roasting pit was for more than just roasting agave, however. It was the center of life, around which the Yavapai people gathered at night to perform ceremonies, tell stories, to meet people and socialize.
One symbol used by the Yavapai people was a circle divided into four parts, which looked a bit like a cross in a circle. When the Spanish arrived in the late sixteenth century, they thought this symbol perhaps meant the Yavapai people had already found Jesus, so they did not try to convert them. They called them pueblo del cruzado, or people of the cross. All was relatively peaceful with the Yavapai until a few hundred years later, in the 1800s when the trappers, scouts and prospectors arrived. This latter bunch really did wreak some havoc and broke things up for the Yavapai people, because they discovered gold in the area, which attracted lots more people. Then they plowed and fenced in lots of the land, disrupting the migration patterns of animals and people alike. Conflict arose, which prompted establishment of a military fort in the area. Camp Lincoln was built in 1865, and later became Fort Verde. Eventually the Yavapai were run off the land and herded onto the Rio Verde Reservation. Some years later they did return to their land, but their way of life was completely altered, Sedona was a farming community, and Jerome was a booming mine town. Yavapai traditions had vanished and a new culture of people had arrived in Sedona, Arizona.
The Pioneer Era
Sedona Arizona Pioneers
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