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What's In A Name?
Sinagua?
Throughout the Verde Valley and north central Arizona, you may hear and read the word Sinagua as the name of the prehistoric people who once lived here. But no Native group has ever called themselves that.
In the early 1900s, it was common for southwestern archeologists to classify and name various culture areas based on similarities in pottery, tools, building styles, and burial practices. We will likely never know what names or borders prehistoric people might have used for themselves.
Dr. Harold S. Colton, founder of Flagstaff's Museum of Northern Arizona, coined the term in the 1930s for the culture area there. He took it from the early Spanish explorers' name for the nearby San Francisco Peaks: la sierra sin agua, the mountains without water. Though water is plentiful in the Verde Valley, the name he chose was later applied here, too. |