The Hohokam: Pre-columbian Engineers

Long before the Spanish settlers, and long before the Pueblo Indians, a vanished , people built extensive irrigation canals in a corner of the Southwest. From about A.D. 300 to 1400, the Hohokam inhabited the arid region that is now southcentral Arizona, around the modern-day site of Phoenix. Today’s Pima Indians gave the Hohokam their name; it has been translated as “all used up,” “the ancient ones,” “people who have gone,” and similar phrases.

Excavations at Snaketown, Arizona, in 1934 yielded the first detailed knowledge of Hohokam culture. Since then archeologists have debated the origins of the Hohokam, who appeared suddenly in the Southwest with no known antecedents. Some seientists believe that they were migrants from Mesoamerica who moved north from what is now Mexico sometime around A.D. 300; others believe they descended from earlier native peoples. As with most matters relating to the Hohokam (such as their peak population, for which estimates range from 50,000 to 400,000), there is considerable scholarly debate over when the Hohokam first appeared in Arizona. Some date their advent as early as 300 B.C.

The Hohokam were an agricultural people who supplemented their primary crop of maize with hunting, fishing, and gathering fruits and nuts. In the warmth of their arid environment the Hohokam could produce two crops a year—as long as they had enough water. Irrigation canals from rivers to the fields downstream were the answer.

Hohokam irrigation technology was impressively complex. Canals were dug with stone and wooden tools for a total of several hundred miles. Lateral ditches (not all were in use at the same time) spread water across a patchwork of fields. Poles set along the canals supported water-control structures, possibly curtainlike fabric sheets. Adobe mud-lined porous areas, and deep pools retained fresh water when the flow in the canals dropped.

The main canals were built with just enough of a grade to flush out silt and keep it from accumulating.

Hohokam canals developed over the years from a broad, shallow configuration into narrow ditches some five to fifteen feet deep. This change reduced surface evaporation and ground absorption and enabled the canals to carry enormous amounts of water during heavy rainstorms—enough to allow even the cultivation of cotton. It has been estimated that at their peak the canals irrigated a total of 30,000 to 60,000 acres.

Hohokam villages were fairly simple affairs. Until about the fourteenth century, when they were influenced by the Pueblo culture of the north, the Hohokam lived in modified pit houses built from the brush and reeds lining the riverbank, held together with mud. While they built no multistoried great houses like those of the Anasazi until their final period, the Hohokam’s success as irrigators and farmers provided food surpluses, which allowed them time to develop beautiful artifacts, including jewelry, incense burners, small clay and stone sculptures, jars with capacities of up to thirty gallons, and sea-shells from the Gulf of California on which they etched designs with fermented cactus juice.

One other aspect of their life and ritual makes the Hohokam unique in the history of Southwestern cultures. Over four centuries starting in the late 70Os, the Hohokam built more than two hundred ball courts. These oval arenas were dug into the ground; the largest is about the length of a football field. Their appearance provides a clear link to the Mesoamerican cultures from which the Hohokam originated. Thus far only one rubber ball has been discovered.

No definitive evidence exists to explain the apparent end of Hohokam culture around A.D. 1400. They may have merged with the incoming Apaches for a while before becoming a distinct people again, this time known as the Pimas. Or they may have left the area entirely for unknown reasons.

One theory suggests that in the end the Hohokam’s irrigation systems were too successful, as excessive watering of their fields made the soil too alkaline to grow crops. Other speculations include drought, war, flood, and plague. Not knowing the end of the Hohokam story, we are left with the picture painted by the ruins: the villages of unprotected thatch houses, the beautiful jewelry and ceremonial artifacts, the ball courts, and the miles of irrigation canals that still trace the once-flourishing fields.