The first known inhabitants of the Southwest hunted mammoths and other game with
Clovis-style spearpoints by about 9500 BC. As the Ice Age ended (about 8000 BC),
mammoths became extinct. The people in the Southwest turned to hunting bison
(known as buffalo in North America) and spent more time collecting wild plants
for food. The climate gradually became warmer and drier, and a way of life-called
the Archaic-developed from about 8000 BC to about 300 BC. Archaic peoples hunted
mostly deer, small game, and birds, and they harvested fruits, nuts, and the seeds
of wild plants, using stone slabs for grinding seeds into flour. About 3000 BC the
Southwesterners learned to grow maize (also known as corn), which had been domesticated
in Mexico, but for centuries it was only a minor food.

About 300 BC, some Mexicans whose culture was based on cultivating maize, beans, and squash
in irrigated fields migrated to southern Arizona. These people, called the Hohokam, lived
in towns in adobe-plastered houses built around public plazas. They were the ancestors of
the present-day Pima and Tohono O'Odham (Papago), who preserve much of the Hohokam way of
life.

The peoples of the northern sector of the Southwestern culture area, after centuries of
trading with the Hohokam, had by AD 700 modified their life into what is called the Anasazi
tradition. They grew maize, beans, and squash and lived in towns of terraced stone or in
adobe apartment blocks built around central plazas; these blocks had blank walls facing
the outside of the town, thereby protecting the people within. During the summer many
families lived in small houses at their fields.After 1275 the northern sector suffered
severe droughts, and many Anasazi farms and towns were abandoned; those along the Río
Grande, however, grew and expanded their irrigation systems. In 1540 Spanish explorers
visited the descendants of the Anasazi, who are called the Pueblos. After 1598 the Spanish
imposed their rule on the Pueblos, but in 1680 the Pueblos organized a rebellion that kept
them free until 1692. Since that time, Pueblo towns have been dominated by Spanish, then
Mexican, and finally United States government. The Pueblos attempted to preserve their
culture: They continued their farming and, in some towns, secretly maintained their own
governments and religion. Twenty-two Pueblo towns exist today. See Also Acoma; Cliff
Dweller; Hopi; Isleta; Laguna; Zuñi.

In the 1400s, hunters speaking an Athapaskan language-related to languages of Alaska and
western Canada-appeared in the Southwest, having migrated southward along the western
Great Plains. They raided Pueblo towns for food and-after slave markets were established
by the Spanish-for captives to sell; from the Pueblos, they learned to farm, and from the
Spanish, to raise sheep and horses. Today these peoples are the Navajo and the several
tribes of Apache.