•According to a report published on the site, the pre-historic period of Native Americans dates back decades, and research suggests that prehistoric humans have been in the Americas for much longer than most scholars believe. On Indigenous Peoples Day, seven regions in the United States highlight the story of Native Americans. 1. Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) This settlement, which was founded many years ago, may have been named after the Spanish word for Native, and was the center of the Old Pueblo people from around 850 to 1250 AD. At its heart is Pueblo Bonito (“Beautiful Village”), a four-story stone structure with more than 600 rooms and 35 underground ceremonial chambers. Experts estimate that the builders transported more than 200,000 wooden logs from distant mountains to construct these complex structures; the logs were used to reinforce buildings made of blocks of sandstone. The town was once at the center of trade routes stretching more than 400 miles (640 kilometers) and excavations of imported Mexican parrots and cacao confirm trade with distant regions. 2. Cahokia (Illinois) Cahokia was the largest Native American settlement in Mexico and hosted 40,000 people in AD 1100 — comparable in size to major cities in medieval Europe. Strobel, a historian and Native history expert at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Live Science: “It’s an incredibly important site.”
There, the inhabitants lived in houses called “wattle and daub” — a frame of sticks plastered with clay or mud — along with large circular fields, wooden palisades, and dozens of ceremonial earthen mounds. The native people even carried a 5-ton (4.5 metric tons) tree and turned it into a marker known as the Mitchell Log. According to excavation studies, many people from distant places also visited to attend the ceremonies. The area now includes a park and a “woodhenge” of wooden circles that follow the sun’s solstices and equinoxes, along with a reconstructed Monks Mound, a 100-foot (30-meter) high, stepped earth structure. Strobel thinks Cahokia may have been the most important site in the United States before the colony.
This area preserves cliff dwellings built by the Sinagua people between A.D. 1125 and 1250. People can reach the site by walking along a deep limestone and sandstone canyon about 10 miles southeast of Flagstaff. The cliff dwellings were built in natural caves within the limestone; this provided them with insulation from cold and heat, and their high locations on the canyon floor served as defense. Strobel said Walnut Canyon is a lesser-known site, but it is an outstanding example of Native Americans who, despite relatively dry conditions, managed water management skillfully. Those who lived in the caves grew crops on the flat land along the canyon edge, but they drew water from the stream at the canyon base to fill their cisterns.
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