SINAGUA INDIANS!

The Sinagua are Indians who used to live in Verde Valley. Verde Valley is a place in Arizona near Sedona. They lived in Verde Valley during around 500 AD and 1425 AD. We visited Verde Valley and saw Montezuma castle which was one of many castles that the Sinagua people lived. The castle was built strategically so that they could have shade in the summer and so that they wouldn’t get flooded by Beaver creek. They built the castle on a cliff side that used to be a river but then eroded a big hole and turned into a creek. They would farm and hunt deer next to Beaver creek, the kind of things they would farm were cotton, corn, yucca, and agave. They used yucca and agave to make sandals, rope, and rugs.

In their petroglyphs they made a lot of swirls that archaeologists think represent the sun. They also have a lot of shaman figures and animals. When there was a crack in the rock wall it would represent going to the afterlife. If the crack was really deep it would mean that there was bad spirits living there and there would sometimes have a swirl that represented a tornado and it would keep the bad spirits from coming out.

We don’t know why the Sinagua moved away from their home it could have been over population, or they used up almost all of their resources, or climate change. They could have migrated north to join other Indians or some went back to being hunter gatherers. The Hopi seem to be the only
descendents of the Sinagua people that we know of.