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Sinagua Tribe Essay

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Elden Pueblo was home to The Sinagua. The Sinagua is a early Spanish term for “without water”. The Sinagua people lived off a hunting and gathering lifestyle. They hunted animals like elk and mule deer. They fathered plants in the forest and grew crops. They had farm plots with a system of check dams and irrigation ditches. This allows the water to reach the plants. Their homes consisted of a stone-lined pithouse. In the 11th Century, Sunset Crater erupted. There was also a twenty year drought which displaced many people to seek location in higher elevations. This is why there was a pithouse village in the San Francisco Peaks. There were also Pueblos that were above-ground masonry dwellings. They housed one family in each two to three room …show more content…

This made Elden Pueblo an important trade center. The trade ranged from the Southwest. There were people who would trade shell jewelry all the way from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people rarely made pottery, but received more from other Puebloan tribes. Archaeologists who studied the Sinagua people noticed they had a clan system. This discovery was made when they noticed rare artifacts. There were nose plugs, carved bone hair pins, bird effigy vessels, and turquoise mosaics in the shape of frogs and birds. They also built expensive villages to give a more social system. There were community ceremonial chambers, courtyards, and ball courts. They also buried high status individuals with offerings like ceramics, ands, baskets, and jewelry. Because of the twenty year drought many families started to move into Elden Pueblo. With the drought there was not many crops growing because of the shorter growing seasons. However, with more people to feed and hydrate it became harder for people to survive. This caused families to leave Elden Pueblo. They burned their rooms and gathered their belongings.The Sinaqua emerged with the Hopi and Zuni cultures, however the Elden Pueblo was not forgotten in their culture and still continued to have oral traditions and

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