ANTH 206 Native Peoples of the Southwest

The Central Mountains cut across the middle of Arizona and western New
Mexico and follow the Mogollon Rim, which was named after the prehistoric culture from this area. Also known as the Transition Zone and the Mogollon Highlands, this area is heavily dissected by high mountains and deep canyons bordered on the north by the Mogollon Rim. Forests of ponderosa and pinon pine thrive in this area of abundant precipitation and cool temperatures. Unrelated to the Mogollon, the Yavapai and the Western Apache now call this area home.

The Desert Basin and Range is the largest, hottest, and driest of the four zones and
lies south of the other areas, curving around them in a crescent. The Sonoran Desert was once the homeland of the Hohokam, a prehistoric culture that adapted to the extreme conditions of the desert and to the seasonal abundance of resources. Known as master farmers, Hohokam canal irrigation systems brought water to their crops. Hypothesized to be their descendants, the O'odham (Piman peoples) live in this region today, while the desert that surrounds the lower Colorado River is the homeland of the River Yuman tribes, who are believed to be the descendants of the prehistoric Patayan culture. The Mojave Desert is named after one of the River Yuman tribes.

Although environment does not determine all of culture, it does place constraints on what one can eat and where one can live. Food-obtaining activities are known as subsistence or economic adaptation. In the Southwest, three major types of economic adaptation were practiced: village farming, rancheria farming, and a mixture of foraging (hunting and gathering) and farming, also known as casual agriculture. The following chart summarizes the differences among these three types of subsistence:

Economic Adaptation in 1600:
Village Farming
intensive agriculture and compact villages
use of irrigation and dry farming
kivas (permanent ceremonial structures used by the Pueblo Indians)
Eastern Pueblos along the Rio Grande and its tributaries
Western Pueblos away from rivers

Rancheria Farming
practiced by ¾ of the indigenous peoples of the Southwest
also agricultural but with a much more dispersed settlement pattern
houses separated by as much as half a mile
often shifted location when river flooded
O'odham (Pimans)
River Yumans
Yaqui

Foraging and Farming
(Casual Agriculture)
no fixed points of settlement but returned seasonally to plant and harvest
practiced an annual round of seasonal gathering and hunting
Upland Yumans
Navajo
Apaches
Southern Paiutes

The type of religion that a particular culture tends to have is also related to their type of economic adaptation. Religious specialists fall into two categories: shamans and priests. A shaman learns ritual through personal revelation and usually accesses power through a trance state; shamanism is most closely associated with loosely structured food-gathering societies, such as those who rely more on foraging and who live a more nomadic lifestyle. Rituals in such a society tend to be crisis-based, that is, held according to individual or communal need instead of on a scheduled basis. A priest learns ritual procedures from other priests and the power resides more in the ritual itself than in the person who conducts it.

Agriculturalists tend to develop a more complex ceremonial system led by priests. More rituals in agricultural societies tend to be calendrical, that is, performed at a set time each year. These types are not mutually exclusive: societies can have both crisis and calendrical rituals and practice both shamanistic and priestly rituals. The Navajo, for example, have handtremblers, stargazers, crystalgazers, and listeners who are in the shamanistic tradition, while Navajo singers/chanters are in the priestly tradition because they must go through a lengthy apprenticeship to learn a codified body of standardized ritual.