During Karen's stay with us, we traveled the Verde Valley to visit many nearby ruins, dwellings and petroglyphs. We have been to Tuzigoot, V Bar V Petroglyph Site, Montezuma Well, Montezuma Castle, and the Patlatki Ruin. We also stopped at Wupatki on our way to the Grand Canyon. So as not to bore you completely to tears, I will keep my history lesson brief. Firstly, the people archeologists refer to as the Sinagua (pronounced seen-aug-wah), came to the Verde Valley about A.D. 650. We saw the ruins of the pithouses from that time. About A.D. 1125 they started constructing cliff dwellings and the state of Arizona has done an amazing job of preserving the sites. The Yavapai and Apache also migrated into the Verde Valley about A.D. 1300 - A.D.1500 but they were hunters and gatherers living in small bands and there is not much archaeological material remaining from that time. End of lesson.
Sadly, the ruins have been pilfered and pillaged by the 'white man' in the late 1800's and early 1900's limiting the amount of archeological research that can be done. Visitiing the dwelling sites gives one pause to consider the simplicity of the Sinagua life style, the hard work it took to exist and 'our' arrogance to diminish it in anyway.
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