Our origins are linked to our homeland, the Sonoran Desert. Thousands of years ago, our predecessors, the Hohokam, settled along the Salt, Gila, and Santa Cruz Rivers. The Hohokam were master dwellers of the desert, creating sophisticated canal systems to irrigate their crops of cotton, tobacco, corn, beans, and squash. They built vast ball courts and huge ceremonial mounds and left behind fine red-on-buff pottery and exquisite jewelry of stone, shell, and clay.
Following our ancestral heritage, we became scientists of our environment. We used and continue to use meteorological principles to establish planting, harvesting, ceremonial cycles and we developed complex water storage and delivery systems. We learned to make the best of our environment, migrating with the seasons from our homes in the valleys to our cooler mountain dwellings. On our Oidag in the valleys, near the washes that crisscrossed our land, we raised a tapestry of crops, including tepary beans, squash, melon, and sugar cane. We gathered wild plants such as saguaro fruit, cholla buds, and mesquite bean pods, and we hunted for only the meat that we needed from the plentiful wildlife, including deer, rabbit, and javelina.
