Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ports of the Ruins.....pic heavy....

Notice the shooting ports of these very early Yavapai ruins.
I call them the "Old Ones". I go up there and sit and try and piece together their lives as they lived it then.

Have to wonder just how old these ruins are? Anyone here have any idea?

Entrance into the citadel. This is what faced you. I don't think these were just windows... Anyone else see ruins with ports like this anywhere else?

Is this just north of Phoenix?
There are some other old ruins nearby

Nope! All we have around here is dirt.

Thanks for the memories. Having experienced those, I've wondered if they were just for seeing - or shooting - or both. Years back I asked a friend, the former Chieftess Pat McGee about that - offered little to no info on the subject.

At the many and various "Old" living sites up in this area, the "walls" are rarely so high and defined, but the general surroundings usually yield imaginitive insight to their lives. I, too, enjoy just sitting at those places and wondering what transpired.

They built this place out of fear. They were not migrating that is for sure. They had to be there for awhile.

(Sorry to interrupt, but have I missed something? Didn't you used to be in OR or WA or some such?
I get dizzy when the world moves around me too fast!)

I moved back "home" from WA State. LOVE the sunshine!! In the mid 50's today and couldn't be happier.

OK. Thanks for clearing that up.
Welcome back home.
Looking forward to more of your hunting tales, now "dateline AZ".

looks like some rocks just fell out of the wall to me.

After seeing what some native people produced a bit further south, people like the Mayans and Aztecs and Incas, I have to say, their Northern cousins weren't particularly talented in the stone construction business.

That's a defensive fort, or at least like the forts I've found.

Was there actually a ruin with rooms and patios, pottery on the ground? The forts I've found were hastily constructed, looked like one time use.

My own opinion is they were built by more modern indians during the period between the pueblos and white man.

Kent

Good points Kent,

NO rooms, except for a few at the very top, no patios, no pottery, and no writing.

I think you're right, a defensive fort. It's quite large and would have taken some time to build it. Not for a one time use.

My pics show a lower wall and only about 15% of it.

It also has two upper ring walls as well.

A whole lot more to this fort.

SU35,

look up Perry Mesa, Verde Confederacy and some of the arch. work by David Wilcox. It's pretty cool. Lot of it has to do with line of sight and communication by signals (fire?) over long distances. I'm trying to talk myself out of loading the quad and heading for Bloody Basin/Turret Peak right now.

Sycamore

I'm thinking they are defensive places built by the post pueblos... Yavapai, if that's west of the verde... the ones I found would have been Apache. Pueblos were built starting with a few rooms and adding over the years as they grew larger. Forts seem to have been built by fortifying natural outcropping (those large rocks) and not improved on.

The reason I think they were more modern indians is the hundreds of pueblos I've found, made of rock and adobe covering out in the open, have all fallen in leaving just rings and squares in the dirt after 1000 years. That these unsecured rocks are still up seems to mean more recent.

I wish someone would test the Yavapai, Hopi, Havasupai, Pima for DNA match to Hohokam, Salado, Anasazi, Sinagua... it'd truly be interesting to know if any descended through.

Kent

Cool, thanks for the tip as I will look that up! I can see the bloody basin area from this area and could see that a signal would work.




Kent, again, excellent points. From my understanding in talking with the park ranger at the Homolovi (Hopi) ruins near Winslow.
He said the Old Ones would be Hopi, they migrated up, out of the South. Who knows...?

From my understanding, Anasazi is an offensive term to the Native American. It means "the enemy" it is no longer used to describe a tribe.

Also the no pottery issue probably excludes the pueblos.

I've found pottery in areas that had no living ruins close. But on ridges that had a small ring of rock and would be perfect for trade routes from the valley to Tonto basin. The rings big enough to hold a couple sleeping traders. Tonto basin ruins have alot of seashell bracelets and effigies that could only come from Baja or the Pacific.

Them indians broke pots all over the place and they're still on the ground.

Kent

For the nothing it would be worth, I agree with this - Kent has seen quite a bit more of it all than have I. The old dwelling places are very different from these walls.

Sycamore - hope you get to go - some of those old folks locations up in Bloody Basin are neat. At times, I really miss that "west of the Verde" country, and those white tail that range from there up to Horner Mtn.

Wonder if they had to change the name of the bean (related to the pinto) they grow up in Dove Creek Co? LOL

It's Navajo I think, for ancient ones... doubt anyone knows what they actually called themselves, same with the others... So because of PC, what are they called now?

Kent

Anasazi is more politics. It's a Navajo word, can be translated "ancient enemies". Hopis don't like that, they like "hisat sinom" (in Hopi, ancient people)

So lot of archs use "ancestral puebloans" now.

Sycamore

Well, if the navajos named them the ancient enemy and they now live where the anasazi lived, I guess they knew what they were talking about... PC be damned... it's a badassed name to be proud of regardless.

Kent