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Show migration which overran the Hohokam territory. The main reason for the earlier southward drift is the fact that the Anasazi, accustomed to a plateau environment, could keep to the same physical surroundings almost as far south as the Gila River. One of the best examples of this is the Natanes Plateau south of Black River where there was a great concentration of Anasazi. The largest individual settlements on the Mogol- lon Plateau and in the coutry south of the Mogollon Rim on the upper reaches of the Salt River date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a period which also marks the time of the highest cultural achievements. Many of these are found in the environs of the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, one of the most densely populated areas of late prehistoric time. This coincides more or less with the shrinking of the northern frontiers of the tribal range and, as already mentioned, may be linked with either a period of climatic instability, the arrival of unfriendly nomadic peoples, or a combination of both. This late upsurge of population, with consequent introduction of new ideas, is shown by the construction of very large pueblos Figure 48.- Montezuma Castle in Montezuma Castle National Monument, Ariz. and the development of new pottery types, particularly polychrome wares. Glaze paint was developed late in the thirteenth century and was widely utilized. Black- on- white and corrugated types of pottery gradually disappeared during this period. The Anasazi ( Pueblo) occupation of the White Mountain region ceased about 1400, a century or more later than was the case for the San Juan Basin and about the same time that we noted the withdrawal of the Saladoans from the Hohokam country. This was indeed a period of unbalance over much of the Southwest, the reasons for which are not yet clear. But in the White Mountain area there are more indications that the newly arrived Apache Indians may have had something to do with the upheaval. At all events, the frontiers of the Pueblos continued to shrink during the following century, with a gradual withdrawal into the drainage of the Little Colorado River. Here for the first time we encounter the modern inhabited pueblos of the Hopi and Zuni Indians, the Hopi living on three mesas a short distance north of the Little Colorado, the Zuni on the upper reaches of the Zuni River in western New Mexico. In this general area we also find abandoned towns of these same people of the early historic period and numerous prehistoric settlements through which the ancestral lines of these tribes may be traced. In 1540, when the first Spanish conquerors arrived in the Southwest, they found the descendants of these prehistoric Indians concentrated in about 13 pueblos in the Hopi and Zuni areas in the Colorado River Basin, and about 60 in the Rio Grande drainage to the east. It is in the drainage of the Little Colorado that the setting is at its best for achieving the aims of archeology, for following the history of the Pueblo Indians, determining how they adjusted themselves to their environment, with whom they were in contact, how they spread, and what they accomplished. It is in the ruins of this region that nearly two thousand years of continuous Pueblo history may be read. It is here, too, that the agricultural practices of the Hopi and Zuni, little changed from those of a thousand years ago, may be studied to gain a clearer insight of how man, without our present vaunted knowledge of plant culture and without domesticated beasts of burden, was able to achieve a measure of security. 95 |
