April 14: Around Sedona - Indians and Cavalry

Thursday, April 14th – Montezuma’s Castle, Fort Verde, and Tuzigoot 

Don writes:  While the beautiful mesas, canyons, gulches, and arroyos are all wonderful to behold, I really enjoy seeing the historic human connection to these features.  Today was devoted to the old Indians and the cavalry. 

We started with Montezuma Castle National Monument, a pueblo built into a cliff by the Sinagua tribe early in the 1100s.  Early settlers assumed it was an Aztec ruin, hence its name.  Located 100 feet above the valley floor, visitors are not allowed to go into the ruins. However, even viewed from the valley, it is very impressive.  There were additional ruins at the site from an earlier time, but they are now badly deteriorated.  One interesting feature near the old ruins was an active bee hive in a small recess in the cliff.  Honeycombs hung from the roof of the small cave while bees busily flew in and out. 

Can you see the beehive at top left?

Leaving the old pueblo, we headed a little south to the Fort Verde State Park.  Fort Verde was an old cavalry outpost established in the mid-1860s to protect settlers in the region from Apache and Yavapai Indians.  Interesting to note that the fort had no stockade walls built from sturdy logs like we all saw in the old westerns.  As a matter of fact, most Army forts in the old West didn’t have the stockade walls.  Indians didn’t so much attack the forts as they did the patrols that went out from the forts.  Fort Verde was closed in 1891 since the Indian Wars had ended almost 10 years before in 1882. 

The fort and museum pointed out that Army life in the old West was pretty desolate and rough.  While officers could bring their wives and children, the enlisted soldiers were discouraged from doing so.  Quarters were sometimes available for the officers’ families, but enlisted families made do in tents or sod homes.  If an officer came to the fort who was senior to one who occupied one of the officers’ quarters, his family would “bump” the next junior officer and so on down to the most junior officer whose family could end up in a tent.  Life wasn’t easy on the frontier.

We visited another set of Sinaguan ruins at Tuzigoot, a village that was built on the summit of a long ridge above the Verde Valley sometime between 1125 and 1400.  These ancient folks farmed in the valley.  At its peak, the pueblo probably housed some 200 people.  Their homes were permanent with water nearby and food from the fields and from hunting local game.  Sounds like they had it better than the soldiers whose accommodations were subject to Army protocol and who had to depend on supplies from the outside world.  Unfortunately, the burgeoning population and a long drought forced the Indians to abandon their pueblo sometime around 1400.

Leaving Tuzigoot, we headed up highway 89A back to Sedona.  We had been told to take the Oak Creek Valley drive to the north of Sedona for its spectacular views.  We got about halfway up the canyon before realizing that we were too tired to appreciate the scenery.  Time to turn around and head back to the campground for evening cocktails.