THE VERDE RIVER

The erde River

BY CHARLES FRANKLIN PARKER PART ONE Reaching down from the Colorado plateau in Central Arizona is a series of arroyos and canyons with trickling streams that one by one merge their waters with the others to form one of the main water courses of the Southwest. The Rio Verde and its tributaries appear topographically as though some very ancient gargantuan bird had clawed out a series of channels in the highlands. From the mountain peaks to the desert the Rio Verde winds its way in the age long process of continuous earth leveling. And along its banks man has come for more than 1,000 years to add his part to the writing of the history of great events. In this area of the Verde Basin, history has been 10,000,000 years in the making. The white man with all of his profusion for recording data has but enough to write one small paragraph in the entire volume already inscribed. Even man inhabited this area more than one thousand years before the first modern historic note had COLOR STUDIES OF THE VERDE: The first picture of this insert was taken by Esther Henderson, the double page panel by Mike Roberts, and the last picture, a study of Sycamore Creek, one of the tributaries of the Verde, was taken by Charles C. Niehuis.

Mr. Roberts used a 5x7 Eastman 2D View Camera, Daylight Ektachrome, Ziess Tessar 6-inch lens. The photograph was taken late one October afternoon last year with backlighting. "This was the last film in my holder," Mike says, "and unfortunately, the horse switched his tail, and I couldn't reshoot it." Mr. Niehuis' photograph was taken with a 4x5 Speed Graphic, 1/5 second at f18, Kodachrome.

Been entered in the annals of a wandering Spanish explorer. And these first notes in turn antedate the founding of Jamestown almost a century. Here is an ancient land! A land wherein migrations of men have come and gone! A land teeming with the romance of struggle and success! And a land of modern living and development wherein out of the past has emerged a glorious present and is projected a more tremendous future. From within these boundaries has been given to Arizona and the Southwest much in resources, especially water and minerals, as well as pioneering leadership that has nurtured its infancy and given attainment to its exuberant youth.

The Verde Basin must not be pictured as one great and expansive Garden of Eden. It is far from that. Many acres of arid, rough and hilly country are contained within the confines. The Southwest is an arid country and the actual valleys of the streams are usually narrow, permit ting a lush growth only within narrow limits along the stream banks. These little valleys are truly oases in the desert land, and are most productive. They are the more beautiful because of the apparent desolation and struggle in all of nature around them. These valleys are as the tiny lines of the turquoise that give design and character to the stone, or as the dainty lines of old china that show the age and genuineness of the ancient art. Within these narrow valleys a civilization has been nurtured from an early day, and the many ancient village ruins stand as markers on the long road of advancement in man's groping and emerging history.

To those familiar with the Southwest the name of the River needs no explanation. To those who are "uninitiated" the name Rio Verde means literally, in Spanish "Green water" or "Green River." This nomenclature may have come into use for several reasons. If viewed from a distance, the long narrow strip of verdant cottonwoods that mark its course might have been the reason; or the very color of the water which even today is definitely green in the midday sun.

The River and the valley were reality long before man came to create all of the confusion about naming it. It has carried many names, but it remains the same river. The Verde River starts in the plateau country at the south end of Aubrey Cliffs at an elevation of about 6,500 feet. This is Chino Valley, after which it becomes designated as the Verde River. However, one tributary to these upper reaches is Hell Canyon whose headwaters are in Bill Williams Mountain at an altitude 8.000 feet elevation. Thus beginning with the sources of Chino Creek until its juncture with the Salt River the Verde flows 220 miles (not including the distances of its various tributaries) and descends in its valley to an altitude of approximately 1,600 feet. Thus from its highest source of 8,000 feet to its lowest point before its juncture, in 220 miles the Verde drops 6,400 feet or an average of nearly 30 feet per mile. These facts, plus the knowledge that a forty-three-year period of recording gives the Verde an average flow of 763 cubic feet per second at its mouth, give to us some idea of the importance of this river in an arid land, and portrays for us the cutting power of such a river in forming its channel, as well as an indication of its silt carrying powers.

The Verde River which begins in the plateau country flows in canyons until it reaches Chino Valley, where for twenty-five miles it flows in a rather shallow bed. It cutsaround the north end of the Black Hills into the region generally referred to as The Verde Valley which has a length of thirty miles. The tributaries that enter now from the east all flow in canyons and thus the river valley itself is marked at its outer edges at intervals as these canyons and streams, varying in height and intensity, join the Verde itself to continue the journey to the Gulf of Lower California.

The drainage basin of the Verde, including its various tributaries, is over 6,000 square miles. Now we have the facts complete; a river carrying 763 cubic feet of water per second at its mouth, traveling a central course of 220 miles, falling a depth of 6,400 feet, and draining a basin of more than 6,000 square miles (an area roughly commensurate with the combined areas of the states of Connecticut and Delaware) in an arid country where the rainfall averages only about 15 inches annually is a factor of considerable importance. Its part in the development of the entire state of Arizona has been vast. It is little wonder that such a river has long been the habitat for man's accomplishment.

The Verde Valley (speaking particularly of the thirtymile stretch along the Black Hills) is an old valley. It was formed during the Pliocene period of the earth's history, roughly ten million years ago. It is bounded by plateau cliffs to the east and the Black Hills to the west. The Black Hills, which are a fragment of the earth's crust, pushed up bodily along fractures, or faults as geologists use the term, and the Verde Valley block subsided, creating the early course for the water flow. Some of the oldest rocks on the continent of North America can be seen along the west flank of the Verde Valley, on the west side of the old fault, forming a belt of reddish brown rocks from Jerome southward. Paleozoic rock, 200 million to 400 million years old, can be seen in the upper part of the Black Hills and along the plateau cliffs below the Mogollon Rim. These rocks are red and white sandstones, shales (mudstones) and white limestones. They are all capped by black lava flows on the plateau and on Mingus Mountain.

This old Verde River, that flowed in this old valley, was dammed by a series of lava flows at the south end of this thirty-mile area, and an ancient lake came into existence. The Verde River and its tributaries from the Black Hills and the Mogollon Rim, washed in muds, sands, and gravels gradually filling the lake basin. The climate, in that far off time, must have been somewhat arid since the lake did not always overflow the outlet, and thus soluble sulfate of sodium was concentrated in the brines at the lower end of the lake. Too, soluable lime derived from the adjacent limestone cliffs, was carried down and deposited as limestone in the lake. The lake was gradually filled by this stream deposition to the level of the lava dam at the southern end. The river then overflowed the dam cutting a deep gorge through the former lava barrier (area now known as the Box Canyon) and washed away some of the sediments deposited in the old lake, leaving cliffs of dazzling white limestone, pink to gray mudstones and gravels.

These facts account for the later use of the cliffs for Indian habitation, and account for the scale deposits we now know to exist, and the faulting accounts for the availability of the copper ore since mined extensively in the In many places the Verde has left its marks in the soil. During flood stages the river has cut deep gashes along its path.

Jerome and Clemenceau district for so many years. It needs to be noted, also, that this lava barrier and the ultimate cutting through it by the Verde have given the river rejuvenated life, and the new canyon in this location differs greatly from the wider valley below where the distance in width approaches ten miles. In these lower reaches the Verde is something more like an old meandering stream, as it emerges from the confines of the wild and rugged Mazatzal country some miles above the juncture with the Salt. Sufficient for our purpose here that we are now somewhat familiar with the River and its own history as it has labored over the years to create a place inviting to man around whose coming the later consequences are entwined.

The Ancients

Centuries after the present geological conditions had been established and the Verde had cut through the barrier and again became a water course flowing to the ocean, came the first men of antiquity, to make the first foot prints in its soft banks. Prints that were in time to become the trails of civilization.

From the knowledge now available it seems that some time about 700 A. D. the first settlers of ancient heritage came into the region of the Verde from the South, where an earlier colonization had existed. It may be that those who came to the Verde region were simply the "frontiersmen" of that early age who preferred ever to move out than to become involved with in-laws and the complexities of an emerging communal life. Their numbers were sufficient that a few communities were established at points where both water and tillable soil were available to them.

This first migration into the Verde came between 700 and 800 A. D. They are now referred to as the Hohokam. From evidences gathered from the early homes it is certain that they were pottery makers as well as home builders and agriculturalists. The pottery which they made bears a resemblance to that made in the area around what is now Phoenix. It was of two types: a plain gray pottery which had small particles of mica on the surface, and also a buff colored pottery with designs in red paint. These early ones lived in jacal-like structures whose floors were excavated below the ground surface and a superstructure imposed over and around it. These Hohokam dug irriga-tion ditches-the first to find a way to carry the waters of the Verde to the rich alluvial fields. They were the forerunners of those of today, farmers, who by use of Horseshoe, Bartlett and Granite Reef Dams now make the desert, many miles away, blossom from these same waters. About 1070 A. D. some or all of this group moved on north to the area of Flagstaff. They apparently were attracted there by the good farmlands that had resulted from the eruption of Sunset Crater (now a National Monument).

Shortly after 1100 A. D. there was another movement into the Valley and these people came in turn from the north and east. These new migrants made a plain brown pottery without mica and a red pottery. They, too, did some irrigating. They lived in masonry surfaced houses. Unlike the Hohokam, who practiced cremation, the new arrivals buried their dead. From the archeological investi-gations, it appears that some of these new arrivals followed the Verde to the area around Phoenix, others remained and lived peacefully in the area (center Verde) until about 1300. The great drought in the north between 1276-99 A. D. may have caused an exodus from the north edge of the valley which in turn caused a building expansion program in the Verde Valley. It is estimated that by 1300 A. D. the Valley was definitely over-populated. This period seems to have produced a development of defensive building and the limestone caverns left from the old lake gave refuge for homes. The former probably was due to the great demand for the limited farm lands of the valley which brought strife and warfare.

However, at this period, approximating the Dark Ages of medieval history, there was being developed in the Verde basin a civilization, that, while it used only hieroglyphs for writing and recording its history, was of a high character as to agricultural methods, pottery and basketry, weaving and building, and a formation of a cultural pattern of communal living and defense far superior in many ways to the warring brotherhood across the waters. At least they were industrious, peaceful, with soil loving characteristics.

Scattered all over the terrain of the Verde Basin are the ruins of the ancient villages. From the upper reaches of Chino Wash and Williamson Valley, the head waters of Beaver Creek, the Indians Gardens of Oak Creek, the great springs of Fossil Creek, and the innermost valley of the Verde are to be found the remaining evidences of a great and noble people. On the hillsides bordering the farming lands of the valleys and in the recesses of the limestone walls along the streams were their homes. From the evidence of their lives found within them there is every reason to believe that their lives were much the same as the present day Hopi Indians of the northern Arizona mesas, (now a composite people) whose legends tend to establish a cultural relationship with these early ones, now generally referred to as the Sinagua. Comparisons of the findings of the King's and Fitzmaurice ruins in Chino Valley and on Lynx Creek tend to establish a common cultural pattern, but though the dwellers in Chino are on the upper Verde, there is no clearly established relationship between them and those who inhabited Tuzigoot, Montezuma Castle, or Montezuma Well areas. These latter seem to have been much further advanced in many cultural ways. Tuzigoot was an open country village built on a hillside overlooking a great bend of the Verde (near the present town of Clarkdale).

Montezuma Castle, facetiously misnamed by early pioneers, is the most renowned of all the ancient ruins of the Verde Valley. It has been known to the white man for almost a century, and possibly even earlier if the old Scout Pauline Weaver noted it as he trapped beaver on the creek bearing that name as early as it can be supposed he came to the area. An authenticated story persists that the Castle and Well were named by a military party from Camp Verde who in the 1860's had pursued a band of Apaches up Clear Creek and after losing the trail returned to the Fort via Beaver Creek. Of course, the soldiers knew of the Aztec civilization and gave the name of the great chief Montezuma, facetiously according to Edmund G. Wells, who was in the party, to both the Well and the Castle. Anyway, by 1906 the name Montezuma was so definitely associated with them that when the National Monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 the ruin was officially designated Montezuma Castle. Likewise in 1947 the name of the Well was made official in the act setting it aside as a part of the National Monument.

There is no known relationship between the civilization in the Verde Valley with that of the Aztecs of the Valley of Mexico, thus this nomenclature is quite misleading. We can continue to use it only if we are aware of the “facetious element” that created the naming. Too, we must understand that the beginnings of the building of this place of habitation was about 1100 A. D. and that the time of Montezuma was more than 500 years later.

Once you see it, Montezuma Castle is a sight you will not soon forget. The Castle is a five-story structure, forty feet tall, nearly seventy feet wide, and contains twenty rooms. It is so remarkably compact, and its pinkish gray walls are so well pocketed into its ash white cliff cavern, that it looks much smaller. Montezuma Well is also on the north bank of Beaver Creek about eight miles upstream from the Castle and thus twelve miles above the junction with the Verde River. It is now a detached portion of the Montezuma National Monument. The Well is a natural limestone sink in which a large spring flows. The Well is four hundred feet across and the water is eighty feet below the rim. The rim is a near circle and was caused by the spring slowly washing out a large underground limestone cavern. Finally the roof became thin, and weakened and fell leaving the Well. The bottom is saucer-shaped and the depth of the water has recently been established at fifty-five feet another ancient legend crumbles, the well is neither a crater nor is it bottomless.

The water from this spring flows out on the south side into Beaver Creek. The water bearing a heavy lime solution is emerald green. The Well discharges 1,500,000 gallons of water every twenty-four hours and is one of the larger sources of continous flow to the Verde River.

In the ledges within the well walls on the north side are three small house ruins of prehistoric Indians. Two pueblos are on the south rim and are representative of the apartment house construction of the period 1100 to 1400 A. D. as already noted at Tuzigoot.

The ancient irrigation ditches are the intriguing spectacle at Montezuma Well. Here, because of the lime content of the water which flowed through them, we can trace with occasional breaks the ancient ditches which made possible the intensive cultivation by these Verde people. The lime content of the water has so hardened by mineralization the ditch walls that these walls, 4 to 17 inches thick, still stand. The grades of these ditches are almost perfect and from them, large areas were irrigable. The ancient engineers had a genius as houses and ditches easily verify. We have it authoritatively that a cowboy, yet living, once purchased the homestead rights to this well and some of the surrounding valley for one saddle horse and then a year later traded his holdings by doubling his value to two horses. So little was the value in the 1880's.

By 1400 A. D. this culture of the Verde had come to an end and the valley was abandoned by these peoples-leaving behind testimony of a “classic” period of living in the area, and one which has long intrigued even the casual observer. But the area was not to remain abandoned and probably even before the last of the Sinagua had moved to the more southerly climes, new arrivals were coming into the Verde area.

The Later Arrivals

As we have noted after three or more centuries of habitation in the Verde Valley, these pueblo people (Sinagua) abandoned the locale never to return. We can only guess, based on the knowledge of common traits and legends, that they may be represented among the Hopi people of the high mesas.

Though there is no clear evidence from burials that these people were driven out by attacking bands, it is likely that such was at least an encouragement to them to go. It may have been the marauders simply ravaged their fields of the ripening crops, leaving the Sinagua without food for their winter months.

It seems that we can assume the intrusion of a new people, probably the Yavapais, for we do know that when Espejo came to the locality, he found many Indians. The Prehistoric people used this ditch to irrigate fields.

reference in the Espejo Journal related to Indians in “rancherias,” not pueblos, would indicate a different type of living, though he seems to indicate some cultivation. It is generally believed that the Yavapais came from the Colorado River region. Since Espejo refers to Indians “with crosses on their heads” and since there is some evidence that Garces came among the Yavapais (though not into the Verde Valley) one can wonder if these people, at some time between 1400 and 1583, had been contacted by some Christian Missionary—the cross being a distinct Christian symbol.

Alarcon, in 1540, came up the Colorado River and contacted tribes there, introducing the cross. He may have reached the Yavapais in the Verde through trade relations, assuming them to have come here as early as the 1300's.

These Yavapais were followed at some later time by the Apaches, who were a vagabond plains Indian that came into this vast region from the south and east. Since there is no evidence of the Apache in Arizona prior to 1600, it must be assumed that it was the Yavapais who had come from the Colorado River Valley with the expansion of the Yuman culture, whom Espejo found living in the very proximity of abandoned pueblos.

While the Spanish influence in the Verde Valley was not as significant as in many other parts of Arizona, still the history of the area would not be complete without mention of the contacts of these intrepid explorers. First, it must be recalled that the name Verde appears in the Kino map of 1701. It is quite unlikely that the padre ever explored the Verde, it is yet significant that he gives it a rather accurate location on that map. So far as can be de termined if Kino ever actually traversed any part of the Verde it was at the very lower extremity at the point where that river joins the Salt. While Kino did cover much of Arizona in his journeys there is no further data alleging that he ever penetrated the fastness of one of the most important basins of the region.

In 1583 Antonio de Espejo, a Spanish merchant adjourning in northern Mexico who had organized an expedition, for the supposed purpose of bringing relief to certain Franciscan priests who had some two years before been left among the Rio Grande pueblos, but more likely in the ever continuing search for silver, came into the Verde Valley. He came to the site of the copper mines near the present site of Jerome, where the United Verde and Phelps Dodge have developed excellent mines. It is now clear from the research of Miss Katherine Bartlett that the Espejo expedition came into the Verde from the Hopi villages over a trail that led down Beaver Creek and to the Verde (some sources indicate a crossing of Oak Creek and both could be true) and thence across the river to the Black Hills. There is an expressed disappointment that silver was not found here instead of the copper ore then mined and used by the Indians for bodily ornament. Though the Espejo visit was of only short duration, we are indebted to this expedition for the carefully written accounts of the journey and the information about the then residents of the Verde (Yavapais) that they contain.

The next contact by the Spaniards was in 1598 when Marcos Farfan, Captain of the Guard and of the horses, in the expedition of Juan de Oñate was sent by Oñate from the Indian villages (Hopi) in search of the mines again reported by the Indians, the same mines which were visited some years earlier by Espejo. Farfan it seems traveled much the same trail as Espejo, save that he may have gone overland from lower Beaver Creek crossing Oak Creek and then the Verde above that juncture to the mine. Like the former contact this one was only momentary and no great silver wealth appearing the expedition moved on, again leaving valuable notes for later study.

In 1604 Oñate again sought out the mines and this time in person. But the interesting thing about this trip made by Oñate is the fact that he traversed so much of the Verde. It appears that going upstream from the point of the mines they followed the Verde around the Black Hills and came to Del Rio and possibly from there on up Chino Wash to Walnut Creek, across the Juniper Mountains to Burro Creek to the Big Sandy, thence to the Colorado River Valley. This is at least one route that the expedition might have followed and is probably the most logical.

Thus the record of Spanish influence is briefly recorded in this basin area of cultural antiquity. (To be concluded in November issue.)