Who were these Ancestral Sonoran Desert People?

Michael Chiago artwork, part of the wayside image

Commissioned art with restricted use

No one alive now knows what name the people who built the Casa Grande called themselves centuries ago.

Archeologists today use the term HOHOKAM to label the culture that flourished here from 1,500 years ago to 550 years ago. At archeological sites, like Casa Grande Ruins, you can see similar platform mounds, ball courts, irrigation networks, and homes placed around plazas inside walled compounds. These ancient sites also share a distinctive red-on-buff pottery and carved shell jewelry.

Six tribes in today's Southwest still have histories that link themselves to the people who once lived here. For these tribes, Casa Grande Ruins is a sacred place.

Back - Next

 

A PDF of the wayside (12,126 KB) is available HERE.

 

• Community Ties

  
  

  Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma. Director at the Hopi Tribes Cultural Preservation Office, and Angela Garcia-Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community discuss some of the Native American ties to the Casa Grande.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS, movie outtakes, thanks to volunteer editor Jenise Cook

  Date created:

  10/14/2020

  Audio Transcript

  My name is Leigh J. Kuwansiwma, I'm currently the director for the Hopi Tribes Cultural Preservation Office. Casa Grande Ruins in Hopi migration and traditional knowledge is called in Hopi language-Naas a-vee. And the word Naas a-vee means the village in the middle of the valley. The Hopi people have a general cultural interest into the greater Southwest. And into areas like Casa Grande currently is-is at. And because that is told in our migration stories so here in Naas a-vee the Bow Clan were the ruling clan here, the Greasewood Clan as well as the Bamboo Clan were among the clans that in our tradition lived here. So subsequently the place named (Naas a-vee) is carried into Hopi. And today is still used in ceremony to reflect and remember this village that this uh place is special to.

  My name is Angela Garcia-Lewis. I am a member of the Gila River Indian Community. But I also have relatives at Salt River and the Tohono O'odham Nation. We are the O'odham. We have 4 different federally recognized tribes that make up our entire nation. And that’s the Gila River Indian Community, The Salt River-Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the Ak-chin Indian Community and the Tohono O'odham Nation. A lot of the popular literature the prehistoric cultures here says that people that lived here were the Hohokam. And they were here from about 300 A. D. to about 1500. And about that time period they just up and disappeared like dust in the wind. It was, it’s a very odd concept to us here within the community because those are our ancestors. We’ve always lived here.