•According to a report published on the site, the indigenous American period dates back decades, and research suggests that prehistoric humans have been in the Americas for much longer than most experts believe. On Indigenous Peoples Day, seven regions in the United States stand out for their stories of Native Americans. 1. Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) This settlement, which was established many years ago, may have been named after the Spanish word for “Native” in the region, and it was the center of the Old Pueblo people from around 850 to 1250 AD. At its heart, it has Pueblo Bonito (“Beautiful Village”), a four-story stone structure with more than 600 rooms and 35 underground ceremonial chambers called kivas. Experts estimate that the builders transported more than 200,000 wooden logs from distant mountains to construct these complex structures; the logs were mostly 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 northern Mexico, and in 1100 AD it housed 40,000 people — comparable in size to major cities in the Middle Ages in Europe. Strobel, a historian and Native American historian at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Live Science: “It’s an incredibly important site.”
There, people lived in homes called “wattle and daub” — a frame of sticks plastered with clay or mortar — along with large circular fields, wooden palisades, and dozens of ceremonial earthen mounds. Native people even carried a 5-ton (4.5 metric ton) 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 ceremonies. The area now includes a park and a “woodhenge” of wooden circles that follow the sun’s solstices and equinoxes, along with a 100-foot (30-meter) stepped earth structure known as Monks Mound. 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 Kuzay 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 southwest 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 above the canyon floor served as a defense.
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