Ancient Peoples in Tucson

Rich in history, Tucson, Arizona is perhaps one of the oldest continually inhabited areas in the country. Archeological evidence suggests humans habitation 12,000 years ago. Adobe huts, pit houses, pottery shards, and irrigation systems of the Hohokam tribe date back nearly 2000 years, circa 700 AD. It is thought they inhabited the area as early as 300 BC, abandoning their villages in the 15^th century for unknown reasons. Indeed, the history of the Tucson Basin area stretches back to prehistoric times.

During the Ice Age, people migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, then a land bridge, following herds of big game into North America. Around 9500 BC, bands of hunters wandered into southern Arizona, which had much more water until the climate shift ended the Ice Age.

Paleo-Indian Clovis hunters stalked mammoths, horses, camels, and bison amid lurking predators such as dire wolves, saber toothed tigers, and a type of ground sloth that grew to twelve feet tall. These large animals were often trapped by Clovis hunters along streams and lakes, and then killed with spears. These Paleo-Indians also collected and ate plant foods, thus classifying them as hunter/gatherers.

At the end of the Ice Age, as the climate warmed, mammoths and other large animals began to disappear from North America. The change was gradual for the Indians. With fewer mammoths each year, they supplemented their diet with various plant foods and smaller animals. They discovered the nutritive value of weed and grass seeds ground into flour on flat rocks and make into gruel and breads. Thus, the Clovis culture gave way to sparse populations of Archaic hunter/gatherer peoples.

People of the Cochise Culture, Archaic peoples of southern and central Arizona, hunted smaller animals and gathered wild plants. Circa AD 200, maybe as early as AD 1, people began manufacturing pottery containers. From area to area, even group to group, major differences in architecture, lifestyles, and ceramics appeared. The use of grinding slabs mark the Desert Archaic Tradition, which lasted from 7000 BC to about AD 300 in the Tucson area. Living primarily in the open, small groups moved around the Basin gathering plants and more than likely built temporary shelters.

During summers in the foothills, they collected foods such as cactus fruits and mesquite beans. In the higher mountains, they found acorns, pine nuts, and other foods. They hunted year round as meat was critical in winter and spring with plant foods scarce. They established camps at each collection point, returning every year. When corn was introduced from Mexico late in the Archaic period, they planted it near camps with permanent water sources. After planting, the group moved on, returning only to harvest the crop. Though it was cultivated, they regarded it as another plant to gather.

About 300 BC, Indians migrated from Mexico into southern Arizona, building villages along the Salt and Gila Rivers. By AD 200, a few family groups moved to the Tucson Basin and built homes along the Santa Cruz and Rillito Rives, bringing a new lifeway with them. Small scattered camps of Archaic people absorbed the new Hohokam "rancheria" lifestyle, occupying widely separated house-groups within a village. They made pottery and dug ditches to irrigate varieties of corn, beans, squash, and cotton. AS they adapted to this new life, they continued to trade seashells and used typical goods like carved stone bowls and clay human figurines, retaining in part the seasonal hunting/gathering of their Archaic ancestors, half their food cultivated and the rest collected by villagers maintaining seasonal camps in the mountains and foothills.

With influence dwindling from heartland Hohokams, those still inhabiting the Salt and Gila Rivers, by AD 1100, cultural ties strengthened with Mogollon peoples migrating from the north and east, creating a blend of cultures in the Tucson Basin. By AD 1250, they built adobe-walled houses and potters created new designs, a style wildly imitated by groups around the basin. Around AD 1350, some moved into communities composed of aboveground, apartment-like dwellings, the population as a whole declined. The reasons aren't clear, possibly due to environmental deterioration such as droughts, or changes in social organization brought on by the collapse of major cultures in MesoAmerica.

The Tucson Basin Indians had returned to the scattered Hohokam-like "rancherias" by AD 1500. Thus the remnants are known today as the Pimas and Papagos, the tribes encountered in the 1600's by the Spanish and the Hohokam vanished. Archeological excavation of their culture continues to this day.