Southwest

The southwest of the United States and Mexico is a region of arid beauty, carved by erosion over millions of years in plateaux, dusty plains, and deep canyons. In this vast territory, the tones of the earth, from red to black, are mixed with the stunning green of desert vegetation. Steep mountains and volcanic craters rise to the horizon, standing out against the intense blue sky. Life in this area is largely dependent on the scarce, but intense summer rains that temporarily revive the canyons and quickly absorb into the sand. Fluid rivers, such as the Grande to the east and the Colorado to the west, as well as the Salt and the Gila to the north of Mexico, pass through the rocky stretch.

The flora and fauna of this region are delicate and largely dependent on humidity. At high altitudes, pine trees and enebros cling to shallow soils between rocks and canyons, while in desert plains, bushes, cactus and mosques thrive, except in drier areas such as Death Valley, where extreme heat and drought are constant.

In this culture of desert regions are included the various Indians, people, so called for their sedentary life in villages. They share ideas derived from the mythology of the “emergence” and agriculture, and in their religion the masquerading personifications of mythic spirits are of great importance. Navajos and Apaches arrived in the region around 1400 and adopted elements of local myths and rituals.

Water scarcity has been a determining factor in the lives of the inhabitants of this region for thousands of years. Over time, populations have practiced harvesting and hunting according to the traditions of the desert, using all that nature provides as food, clothing and shelter. Some ancient groups even venture into agriculture, growing corn and shrimp, applying knowledge acquired from Mesoamerica. Agriculture flourished in this arid southwest, reaching an unusual level of development compared to other regions of America.

The success of these ancient desert farmers is reflected in their art, technology, and rituals, which were notoriously complex. The Mogollons, for example, lived in the mountains, building semi-buried houses that offered insulation against extreme temperatures. They cultivated a variety of foods, including corn, juveniles, shrimp, tobacco and cotton. His Mimbres ceramics are known for their impressive black and white geometric designs, as well as for figures of animals, human beings and other entities.

Around 1200 or 1400, the Mogollons were influenced by another desert civilization, the Anasazis, who originated around 100 BC between plateaux and canyons. The Anasazis cultivated on terraces and irrigation fields and lived in semi-buried houses. However, around 750, they introduced a completely new architectural style, building adobe houses with roofs of bars, grass and clay, supported by wooden beams. They created large complexes or villages at the top of the plateaux and on the slopes of the canyons, with each floor a little further back than the lower one. The Pueblo Bonito complex, built in the Chaco Canyon around the year 900, has five floors and approximately 700 rooms.

The Anasazis left an impressive legacy of painted ceramics, multicolored fabrics, mosaics, jewelry adorned with turquoise, feathered garments and other ornamental elements. However, this civilization came to an end due to droughts that lasted over several generations. By 1300, the Anasazis abandoned their settlements and moved near the rivers or resumed a nomadic lifestyle, focused on hunting and harvesting.

During the period of the first Spanish incursions in 1539 and 1540, various indigenous groups with varying lifestyles were found in the region. Some lived in villages and practiced agriculture on the banks of rivers or on desert plains. These groups included the villages, the hopis, the zuni, the pimas and the O'odham tohonos. (papagos). Others, such as the Apaches and the Navajo, were nomads, engaged in hunting and harvesting. The Hopis inherited the Anasazi tradition and adapted it to the Colorado River region.

From Pueblo Oraibi, located at the top of the Black Table in Arizona, the hopis descended hundreds of kilometers down steep paths that serpented through cannons and cracks of limestone to the plain. There, they planted corn in sandy soils to take advantage of the underground moisture generated by summer storms. The women grinded the dried grain with smooth stones to make piki, a kind of corn flour bread, water and wood ashes that they boiled on an oily limestone. They also woven baskets with rabbit hair and zumaque branches and created pieces of alpha in a similar style to the Anasazis, decorated with elegant geometric designs in tones of red, brown and black on clear clay. The men collected, carved and threaded cotton, which the women dyeed with the colors of the desert and used to make garments.

In the deserts watered by the Salt and Gila rivers, pimas continued to practice the way of life developed by another ancient people, the hohokam. These had built irrigation channels up to 16 km long to irrigate corn fields, juveniles, shrimp, tobacco and cotton planted in the desert. In the more arid lands of the highlands, groups such as the O'odham towns in the Sonora Desert harvested cactus, the saguaro, and hunted animals such as muflons, deer, ducks, goats, and rabbits.

The Apaches and Navajoes had more northern roots and spoke Atapascan languages similar to those of the natives of the far north of Canada and Alaska. Although the exact date of their arrival to the southwest is not known, in general terms, the Apachesined a nomadic lifestyle similar to their northern relatives, devoting themselves to hunting and harvesting. The Jicarilla Apaches of northern New Mexico learned agricultural techniques from nearby peoples, although they did not integrate into their cultures. They often came into conflict with the local peoples for the resources of the desert. On the other hand, the Navajo, before the domestication of sheep by the Spaniards, led a life of hunters and gatherers. Once they acquired sheep, they became skillful shepherds, developing skills in threading and weaving. Unlike the Apaches, the Navajo settled in scattered groups and adopted the desert as their home.

California

The southwestern end of North America is surrounded by mountains: coastal chains descend to the sea south of Baja California and to the east the majestic Sierra Nevada. The warm Pacific Ocean air throws moisture into California, irrigating fertile valleys and turning parts of the southeast, the Great Basin, and the Highlands into desolate, rocky slums. The people, finding the richness of this fertile environment irresistible, settled on the banks of the rivers, on the plains and on the coast. As the language mix shows, earlier immigrants came from many different places.

The coastal villages have fishing almost all year round. The Chumash people collected seafood from sandy beaches and fished tuna, plateaus, tuna, white tuna and other species. They entered the ocean in large board boats and hunted whales, foxes, sea lions, dolphins and marine nutries. Inland land, habitat of deer, rabbits and other minor hunting animals; Fish swim in rivers and streams, and the land produces a variety of wild plants that are used as food and medicine. The autumn harvest of bellots is decisive because they represent a basic food, mashed and washed with plenty of water, the bellots become a edible powder that is boiled to make strawberries or baked to make unleavened bread.

The Louisians who lived in northern Baja California had no difficulty gathering abundant land and water resources in the same territory, although for most Californians, the seasonal cycle was the only way: a longer return to the sea.

The sources of food are so clearly defined in time and space that the existence of hunting and harvesting is based on periodic rhythms closer to those of sedentary agricultural societies than those of the harvesters of the plains and forests of Noñe and Oriente. A group may be temporarily accommodated in secoya bark campaign shops. If he enters, he often takes with him the whole winter village, consisting of houses with columns and roofs of straw, and in each house many families live.

To some extent, each group has control over resource-rich lands. For example, the Chumash divided their hunting areas and those of other groups into key areas for wild plants, animal habitats and fishing. In some areas, several enlarged families united and established larger entities with defined territories, each of which was endowed with a main village and heads.

There was so much abundance that trade-off became a common practice. The hups exchanged with the yurok bellotas and other foods from the interior in exchange for algae, dished fish and secoya shelters. The Californians used certain forms of money - for example, the Dentalium shells - for trade, as a symbol of power and social status and as funeral objects.

The discovery of gold, in 1848, achieved what the Mexican and Spanish missions had failed to. Waves of settlers arrived to search for gold and explore the richness of the landscape. Although the Hupa survived thanks to the protection of the isolated river valley they occupied, the life of the Chumash, Louisians, Pomos and other peoples came to a brutal end.

The natives of California were skilled baskets. Both the male and female pomos produced vessels, squirrels, hats, and other objects that they cycled with typical geometric drawings, to which they frequently added feathers and shells.