Pueblo Grande Museum Attests to Ancient
Ingenuity and the Worth of Water
By Lori Pfeiffer
At first glance, the mound of earth—30 feet high and as large as a football field—looks inscrutable. Walk around it, and your perspective shifts hundreds of years. Thick adobe and rock walls that once enclosed ceremonial rooms reveal themselves. My husband chases our two-year-old son to the mound’s top, where the two pause to view the Salt River Valley. Some 700 years ago, you could stand here and monitor the head gates of ten different canals. At the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Park in Phoenix, the traces of an ancient civilization persist in an area hemmed by railroad tracks, roads and the airport. These remnants include the channels of a canal system considered one of the greatest technological feats of the prehistoric world. The museum celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, remarkable considering an entrepreneur once wanted to build a sanatorium here. Only a few of the 50 platform mounds that once graced the Valley have survived. The Hohokam farmed in the Salt River valley for around 1,500 years until extreme cycles of flooding and drought destroyed their culture. In the museum, I examine a model of the Hohokam canals, which coursed like veins through the valley. The longest canal ran 20 miles, all the way out to present-day Glendale. “Most scholars agree that the Hohokam canals were the most sophisticated built in the prehistoric world, due to their size and the complexity of the network,” notes Roger Lidman, museum director.The village at Pueblo Grande controlled the head gates of canals that watered approximately 10,000 acres of farmland on the north side of the river. A modern-day demonstration garden showcases ancient crops: cotton, corn, beans, squash and amaranth jostle together behind a ocotillo fence.The mound itself was built during the heyday of Hohokam canal digging. The maze of rooms, with few doors, wasn’t designed for a crowd. Archeologists believe the mound was used by leaders to oversee work on the canals and perform ceremonies.Besides canal building, the Hohokam made pottery, etched petroglyphs and played a sport whose rules we can only guess. We walk past one of the excavated ball courts, similar to ones in Mexico. We peer inside at its angled walls, once covered with a hard layer of soil called caliche, now reinforced with concrete. Two goals bookend the court. Further down the Ruin Trail, we see how the Hohokam might have lived. The new exhibit recreates an adobe compound and a pithouse cluster. We step down the height of a curb into the one-room dwelling, with slats of saguaro, ocotillo and other desert plants paneling the wall. Native Americans guide the museum in recreating ancient traditions, including roasting agave at the annual Ancient Technologies Day in March. The museum’s biggest event is the Indian Market. Held off site in December, more than 500 Indian artisans exhibit their crafts, from pottery to jewelry. The museum also sponsors petroglyph hikes, lectures and archeology sessions for both kids and adults. In its educational play area our son enjoyed building a Hohokam village from blocks and making pottery rubbings.The grounds, once threatened by development, now encompass more than 100 acres, and you can arrange a special tour to see some of its treasures, including the Park of the Four Waters. We walk to the site with Chris Johnson, a museum aide, past modern canals that follow Hohokam waterways, through locked gates and over railroad tracks until we reach the spot. An airplane seems to barrel right at us.“This is the exciting part,” says Johnson. “We’re right in line with the runway.”Here, two ditches run parallel to each other, one gently rounded and the other cut in a “v.” Hohokam canals measured as much as 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The shape of the canal beds controlled the speed of water: if it flowed too fast, the canal banks eroded; too slowly, and sediment clogged them. Despite their canal mastery, the Hohokam’s population outstripped their ability to live off the desert during floods and droughts. They scattered a few decades before Columbus arrived in the New World and today’s Akimel O’Odham and the Tohono O’odham regard them as their ancestors. Something on the ground catches my eye. I pick up a triangle-shaped piece of pottery, as thick as two stacked quarters. The red design flows fresh and fluid across its surface. I gently replace it, for those who come after us.Published in Arizona Highways, October 2004, pp 45-47.
