Walnut Canyon

Walnut Canyon frGPO: 1992-312-244/60005 Reprml 1978 THESINAGUA Sometime before AD 600 groups of people from HOURS OF OPERATION Walnut southeastern Arizona set out for the area east of The monument is open year-round except Thanks the San Francisco Peaks. There they established giving and Christmas Day. The hours are 8 a.m. to Canyon permanent settlements and made their living 5 p.m. every day of the week. by hunting and gathering and farming. These were the people now called the Sinagua—Spanish for ADMINISTRATION "without water"—named for the high desert region Walnut Canyon National Monument, containing they inhabited. As time went on, scattered families 2,249 acres, was established on November 30, united into villages. Walnut Canyon became an 1915. It is administered by the National Park important community between about 1125 and Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. For more 1250. The homes we see today beneath the can information contact: Superintendent, Walnut Can yon's limestone overhangs were built during this yon National Monument. Walnut Canyon Road, period, when Sinagua culture flourished. Flagstaff, AZ 86004. Archeologists once thought that debris from the eruption of nearby Sunset Crater in 1064-65 made As the Nation's principal conservation agency, the the land more fertile and drew remote farming Department of the Interior has responsibility for peoples to the San Francisco volcanic field in a most of our nationally owned public lands and nat prehistoric "land rush." Theoretically, this popula ural resources. This includes fostering the wisest tion surge accounted for changes in Sinagua life. use of our land and water resources, protecting Recent findings suggest that the volcanic eruption our fish and wildlife, preserving the environmental probably did not cause a great migration after all, and cultural values of our national parks and his and that the Sinagua were more likely influenced torical places, and providing for the enjoyment of by increased rainfall, new water-conserving farm life through outdoor recreation. The Department ing practices, trade with other peoples, and a assesses our energy and mineral resources and general population increase in the Southwest. If works to assure that their development is in the the reasons for the development of Sinagua culture best interests of all our people. The Department are debatable, their departure is downright mysti also has a major responsibility for American Indian fying. By about 1250 they had moved southeast, reservation communities and for people who live leaving the empty cliff homes as evidence that in Island Territories under U.S. administration. they once thrived in Walnut Canyon. National Park Service U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR This cave provided protection for a family home. WALNUT CANYON IN SINAGUA TIMES tor center is the best example of this community It is difficult for us to know how the Sinagua lived. pattern in the park. The cliff dwellings along the They left no written history when they abandoned Island Trail are part of this cluster, which is cen the pueblos and cliff dwellings of the Flagstaff tered around several rooms enclosed by a rock region sometime before 1400. To reconstruct what wall, along with a large community room, on top life must have been like for these ancient farmers, of the island. Such a pattern was by no means archeologists and anthropologists rely on whatever unique to this park. material has survived through the centuries: pueblo The scattered cliff dwellings and rim-top sites ruins, ceramic fragments, weapons, farm tools, were linked by a system of trails, most of which and jewelry. By examining these objects, estab are now obscured by vegetation. Trails have been lishing their ages, and comparing them with the found where natural cracks in the cliff faces pro belongings of groups elsewhere in the Southwest, vide access to ledges, the canyon bottom, and the scientists have constructed a picture which, though rim. Such access routes, structured by topogra incomplete, tells us a good bit about life in this phy, probably formed boundaries for the individ part of the Southwest before European settlement. ual communities within the canyon. Projectile points and split-twig animal figurines The canyon rims, relatively flat with deep soil, thousands of years old indicate that the Sinagua were the main farmlands. Even in the semi-arid were not the first to inhabit Walnut Canyon. The climate, water was available most of the time, Sinagua arrived from the southeast and settled in though Walnut Creek probably did not flow year- the region before AD 700. Like the earlier inhabit round. To conserve water runoff and to collect ants, they were probably attracted by the can soil, the Sinagua built check dams and terraces. yon's abundance of plants and animals. While the They grew corn, beans, and several varieties of Sinagua depended to a large extent on the same squash. Recent evidence shows that edible wild wild food sources as their predecessors, they plants were just as important to their diet as were also farmers. Caring for crops required peo cultivated crops. More that 20 species of plants ple to remain in one place, at least for the duration that could have been used for food and medicine of the growing season. The Sinagua built one- still grow in the canyon. Among these are wild room pit houses and became the canyon's first grape, serviceberry, elderberry, yucca, and Ari permanent inhabitants. zona black walnut. On the rims, edible wild plants The cliff dwellings were built during the main were fewer but no less sought-after. The Sinagua occupation of the canyon, between 1125 and also hunted dear, bighorn sheep and other smaller 1250, when populations throughout the South animals. west were growing and seeking out new environ Surplus food may have been among the things the mental niches. These were the years of the Sinagua Sinagua exchanged for items not available locally. culture's greatest geographical extent. Settlements Archeological findings tell us that the canyon's reached from the eastern slopes of the San Fran inhabitants were active traders. Pottery made by cisco Peaks northeast to the Little Colorado River the Anasazi people to the north was particularly and south to the Verde Valley. Walnut Canyon's abundant in the canyon ruins, but the Anasazi villages are good examples of dwellings from this were not the only ones with whom the Sinagua era. Other significant communities of the time traded. Researchers have unearthed obsidian from include Elden Pueblo and the structures of Wupatki 20 miles northwest of Flagstaff, textiles and cot National Monument, both northeast of Flagstaff. ton from Sinagua relatives in the Verde Valley to Walnut Canyon homes were generally situated on the south, argillite, malachite, and azurite from the cliffsides facing south and east to take advantage Verde Valley, turquoise from the Santa Fe area, of warmth and sunlight. Some sites, fewer in seashell ornaments from the Gulf of Mexico and number, face north and west. These may have been the Gulf of California, and macaw feathers from occupied during the warmer months. Although Mexico. These goods may have been acquired by the cliff dwellings are the most spectacular ruins the Sinagua while serving as middlemen facilitat ing trade between various prehistoric groups. Ar in the park, other archeological sites dot the tifacts such as these make it clear that the Sinagua canyon rims. Study of the rim and canyon sites did not develop in isolation. They were members reveals much about settlement patterns. of an extensive Southwestern cultural system in Sites are clustered, suggesting communities of which knowledge and skills must have been trans related family groups. A typical cluster consisted ported from place to place along with goods. of a pueblo or pit-house village, surrounded by smaller, one-room, farming structures called field The Sinagua lived in Walnut Canyon intermittently houses. These clusters were often associated with for almost 150 years, then abandoned their homes pueblos found atop isolated prominences or con for no apparent reason. Perhaps it was drought, centrated at the ends of ridges that extend into worn-out soil, warfare, or disease that caused the canyon. Such pueblos have been labeled "forts" them to leave the canyon. Anthropologists believe by those who assumed that the structures were that their descendants live today among the Hopi built for defense. Archeologists now propose that Indians of northeastern Arizona, whose villages the "forts" were gathering places for ceremony date from AD 1300. and trade. The settlement cluster around the visi Sinagua families built these homes more than 800 years ago. VISITING THE RUINS Accommodations are not available within the WALNUT CANYON NOW For 600 years, the cliff dwellings here apparently monument. Meals and lodging may be obtained at More than half a millennium has passed since the stood deserted, undisturbed, and unknown, until nearby towns and along the major highways. No voices and laughter of the Sinagua were heard in the earliest report of them in 1883. From then un campgrounds are available. the canyon. And yet a trace of the mood that these til the area was placed under the protection of the people created is still discernible. National Park Service in 1933, vandals removed A REMINDER You can still transport yourself back in time to the much of the cultural material that had been left Federal laws prohibit the removal or defacement days when the Sinagua lived in this canyon. Their by the Sinagua, even damaging and defacing the of any object of antiquity, the removal or damag homes are here, and you can walk among them. dwellings themselves. Present understanding is ing of any plant or other natural feature, and the The plants that they used so well for food, fiber, largely derived from investigations at other sites.

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