Tuzigoot National Monument
May. 28th, 2022 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerSedona Travelog #3
Cottonwood, AZ - Sat, 28 May 2022, 11:30am
On our way to Sedona this morning we took a detour. As we were passing hrough the small town of Cottonwood we saw signs for Tuzigoot National Monument. Hawk quickly looked it up while I was driving and found it was 15 minutes off our route. As we didn't have strong feelings about what to do at the end of our route we decided the detour would be worth it— to a park we've never been to before!
The oddly named Tuzigoot is a small park where the ruins of an ancient Puebloan village were discovered 100 years ago. The ruins themselves date from circa 800 years ago. We actually don't know what the people who build this place called it. Tuzigoot is an Americanization of the Apache name Tü Zighoot , which means Crooked Water and refers to the prominent bend in the Verde River below the settlement.
The greenery around the river in the picture above is remarkable, BTW. As we drove up from Phoenix this morning we started in low desert— which frankly looks like a volcano, minus the cone peak. We then climbed into high desert... which looks like a volcano but with some scrub grass growing across it (because it gets a smidge more rain). The ruins of numerous villages have been found along this river valley. Together they paint a picture of a relatively prosperous people farming and trading across the area.
At its height there were 110 dwellings in this settlement. There is architectural evidence some dwellings were built to multiple storeys. But by c. 1400 CE the people who lived here started to leave. Around 1600 when European settlers arrived these rock dwellings were already abandoned, and the descendants of the Pueblo builders lived in tents and huts down on the plain.
Where did the people who built settlements like this go? The Hopi say that settlements like this were never meant to be permanent. Instead, it was a stop on a migration... but to where, and why, they don't/can't say. The Zuni say the able-bodied left; the sick and weak stayed behind. The Yavapai say their ancestors left behind these pueblos and the cultivated farming to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Cottonwood, AZ - Sat, 28 May 2022, 11:30am
On our way to Sedona this morning we took a detour. As we were passing hrough the small town of Cottonwood we saw signs for Tuzigoot National Monument. Hawk quickly looked it up while I was driving and found it was 15 minutes off our route. As we didn't have strong feelings about what to do at the end of our route we decided the detour would be worth it— to a park we've never been to before!
The oddly named Tuzigoot is a small park where the ruins of an ancient Puebloan village were discovered 100 years ago. The ruins themselves date from circa 800 years ago. We actually don't know what the people who build this place called it. Tuzigoot is an Americanization of the Apache name Tü Zighoot , which means Crooked Water and refers to the prominent bend in the Verde River below the settlement.
The greenery around the river in the picture above is remarkable, BTW. As we drove up from Phoenix this morning we started in low desert— which frankly looks like a volcano, minus the cone peak. We then climbed into high desert... which looks like a volcano but with some scrub grass growing across it (because it gets a smidge more rain). The ruins of numerous villages have been found along this river valley. Together they paint a picture of a relatively prosperous people farming and trading across the area.
At its height there were 110 dwellings in this settlement. There is architectural evidence some dwellings were built to multiple storeys. But by c. 1400 CE the people who lived here started to leave. Around 1600 when European settlers arrived these rock dwellings were already abandoned, and the descendants of the Pueblo builders lived in tents and huts down on the plain.
Where did the people who built settlements like this go? The Hopi say that settlements like this were never meant to be permanent. Instead, it was a stop on a migration... but to where, and why, they don't/can't say. The Zuni say the able-bodied left; the sick and weak stayed behind. The Yavapai say their ancestors left behind these pueblos and the cultivated farming to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
