Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix before European Contact, Pre-1536

While scientists continue to debate the issue, the best available evidence suggests that the first human beings in North America arrived in Arizona sometime during the last Ice Age, which began about 30,000 years ago. Scientists refer to these small, autonomous bands as Paleo-Indians, and they eventually evolved into pottery-making societies during the first 200 years CE. These so-called archaic groups adapted to an environment that became increasingly dry as the Ice Age ended, and by 2000 BCE, those who lived in the Phoenix area confronted a climate similar to that experienced by modern-day residents.

Around 1 CE, a number of archaic groups began settling in the lowlands along the Salt and Gila Rivers. According to most archaeologists, these were the Hohokam, people who emphasized agricultural production over hunting and gathering—and the Phoenix area's first full-time residents. For the next 1,200 years, the Hohokam developed an increasingly complex and stable culture, scattering their dwellings near a central plaza and building pit houses in the same area one [Page 532]generation after another. Twenty-three such platform villages sprang up in the Salt River Valley alone. Although the Phoenix Basin—a roughly 4,000-square-mile area in south central Arizona—was the Hohokam heartland, groups extended up the Verde River Valley to the north and along the Santa Cruz and San Pedro valleys to the south.

The Hohokam are best known for their canals, which not only helped sustain their civilization but later influenced non-Indians who began irrigation in Phoenix and the Salt River Valley during the 1860s. Sometime after 1400 CE, Hohokam civilization began to crumble. Environmental factors, such as flooding, soil salinization, or drought may have led to their demise. These factors, in turn, may have made the Hohokam vulnerable to other pressures, such as internal warfare, cessation of trade, shifting power centers, and/or domination by outside groups. By the late 1600s, various Piman-speaking peoples raised corn, beans, and squash along the region's rivers, and while the evidence is unclear, perhaps these groups descended from the Hohokam.

...