Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona
Schroeder AH and Hastings HF. 1958. Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona. National Park Service. Washington, D.C.. Historic Handbook Series
The aboriginal builders of the Castle left no records, but they did leave broken pottery, trash, and other debris of their everyday life. The analysis of this material tells us that these people, whom we call Sinagua (see glossary), were peaceful farmers who occupied this area from the 1100's until the 1400's; that they were similar in physical type to many of today's Pueblo peoples in northern Arizona and New Mexico; and that they differed somewhat in their daily life from their neighbors in the desert to the south and in the mountains and plateaus to the north. This is their story, and we hope that it can take you back in your mind's eye to the time when their fingers left marks as they plastered the walls of Montezuma Castle, and to the time when their fires left the smoke deposits you still see on those walls. But this story must begin with the land itself. . . .