Native American Culture of the Southwest
A regional overview of the Southwest from Khan Academy. This version leaves out the article’s last paragraph, about the Spanish. The article uses the name “Anasazi” for the people this website calls Ancestral Pueblo people. This version uses “Ancestral Pueblo” except where the article lists the three main groups.
This page is a simplified version of the original text (leveled toward 800L). Photos, maps, and other images are not on this page — use the original link above to see them.
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Place and Time: The Pueblo Desert
The Southwest region includes present-day Arizona and New Mexico. It also reaches into Colorado, Texas, Utah, and Mexico. Before colonization, many different Native groups with different cultural practices lived there. Several of these groups are known together as the Pueblo. The Spanish first gave them this name. It means “town” or “village.” They lived in towns or villages of permanent stone-and-mud buildings with thatched roofs. The three main groups of the Pueblo people were the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi.
The Anasazi are sometimes called the Ancestral Pueblos. They lived in the Four Corners region. This is where the states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona meet today. The Mogollon lived mostly in southwestern New Mexico. The Hohokam were the main group in the desert of southern Arizona.
Historians estimate that these three groups ruled over the region from about 200 to 1500 CE. They either dissolved or evolved into the Pueblos. The Spanish met these Pueblos during colonization. The Pueblos still live in what is now New Mexico. The groups also became the Zuni and Hopi tribes. The Apache and Navajo tribes came to the Pueblo region around 1200 CE from the Pacific Northwest. They remained separate from the Pueblo people living there.
Food: The Start of Farming
Historians credit the Anasazi, Mogollon, and Hohokam as the first farmers in America. Corn was the first crop the Ancestral Pueblos grew. It appears in many creation stories of the Pueblo people. The Ancestral Pueblos saw the corn harvest as more than food they needed. They saw it as a spiritual gift. Farming seemed to show that a society was advancing. But the Ancestral Pueblos had a much healthier diet when they hunted and gathered. A diet mostly of corn had much less variety.
The Southwest has a dry climate. The Ancestral Pueblos developed complex irrigation systems. These kept crops growing even in the hot sun. By 800 CE, the Hohokam had built one of the largest irrigation systems so far. It stretched across most of what is now Arizona. This new system let the Pueblos begin planting beans and squash as well as corn.
These systems helped farming to flourish. This allowed new kinds of production and new developments in society. Women began to make ceramic pots to hold the surplus of corn, squash, and beans. They also made large vessels for grinding corn. They wove baskets to collect the harvest.
Farming grew fast in the region. But the Navajos and Apaches came from the Pacific Northwest in about 1200 CE. They kept the main food practice of their home region, which was hunting and gathering.
How People Lived: Villages and Pueblos
Farming decided how the Ancestral Pueblo people lived. They had extra food and a steady life. So they settled in one place. They lived in stone and adobe houses. These buildings were like huge apartment complexes today. They had many stories, and each story had many rooms. The Ancestral Pueblos were seen as highly developed for their time. They tended to live in larger towns with thousands of people and detailed homes.
Chaco Canyon was a center for the Ancestral Pueblo people. It was a trade hub and home to over twelve thousand people. The Chacoans were a branch of the Ancestral Pueblo people who lived in the canyon. They built over four hundred miles of roads. The roads connected the town to other villages in the region. The Chacoans mostly traded away turquoise. They traveled west for seashells from California. They traveled south for exotic birds from Central America. They traveled north for minerals and ores from the Rocky Mountains.
The Navajos and Apaches were more nomadic. They kept hunting and gathering. They were always on the move, so their homes were much less permanent than pueblos. For example, the Navajos made their well-known round houses, called hogans, out of materials like mud and bark. The hogans faced east.
Beliefs and Social Order: The Spirit of the Crop
These southwestern peoples believed that farming was a more reliable way to feed their society than hunting and gathering. But natural disasters proved this idea false. A lasting drought from about 1130 to 1180 CE destroyed the crops of the Ancestral Pueblos. A major flood in 1358 destroyed the Hohokam irrigation system.
These disasters led the Ancestral Pueblos to hold spiritual ceremonies. They prayed to their gods for a large harvest and good weather. They also prayed to natural things, like plants and animals, for success in farming, hunting, and personal life. These religious ceremonies brought many people together. They created religious communities that were larger than social units like the family.
The extended family lived and worked together. Both women and men took part in farming. The Pueblos did less hunting, so men helped with the farming. Women also raised children and did household tasks. The male heads of households took part in an informal council to make decisions for the community, or band.