The History of the Grand Canyon

Thousands of Years of Canyon Dwellers

The people's history of the Grand Canyon begins at least four thousand years ago. There are very few places in the United States where we have such ancient evidence of human populations. Most human artifacts and settlements go back just a few hundred years, not thousands. The earliest humans to live in the Grand Canyon left behind artifacts which fascinate today's scientists, and help lead them to draw conclusions and connections regarding acient cultural history and natural history. Archaeologists correlate artifacts and determine dates, connect tiny pieces of raw evidence extruded from the rocks within the walls of the Grand Canyon, to form a history of ancient cultures that we're still discovering today.

Those earliest peoples, 4,000 years ago, left behind only tiny bits of evidence of their existence, but what we do have from these ancient ghosts are fascinating items: effigies and figurines. We see representations of deer, sheep, spears and arrows, and they items were found in cave alcoves, covered intentionally by rocks, as if the ancient people were creating a sacred spot. Perhaps this was a type of praying, and type of offering for a good hunt. Scientists have matched the artifacts with artifacts that were unearthed at sites in California. This tells us that perhaps these ancient canyon-dwellers were hunter-gatherers who migrated each year. Maybe the Grand Canyon was their Autumn home. The types of dwellings they probably had were simple and flimsy. These structures were not durable so they would not have stood up to rough Grand Canyon weather throughout the course of a few centuries. There is constantly new evidence that there were inhabitants of the Grand Canyon between 1000 B.C. and 500 A.D., so we now have continuous evidence of human dwelling in the canyon for thousands of years. Before there was evidence of people living in the Grand Canyon between 1000 B.C. and 500 A.D., it was theorized that during this period there were no dwellers, even though people had lived in the Canyon before and after.

The Anasazi

Anasazi is Navajo for "the ancient people" but can also be interpreted to mean "enemy ancestors". They aren't even ancestors of the Navajo at all. The Navajo are from a more northern background. The Anasazi were actually ancestors of the Hopi and a couple of other Pueblo tribes. The Anasazi did live in the Grand Canyon, but their territory was actually much wider than the Canyon area. They also lived in Colorado, where they lived in the now-famous Mesa Verde cliff dwellings around the late 1200's A.D. We know the Anasazi as holders of a "new" idea for the time: farming the land. Agriculture revolutionized the way the people of the Grand Canyon lived, mainly because they stopped wandering from place to place each season. They stayed in one place, worked on their soil, directed the water flow, guarded their crops, and built houses and farm buildings. Along with the stabilizing effects of the onset of an agricultural way of life comes development of new skills and culture. New tools, baskets, and things like sandals came on the scene, then pottery, bows and arrows instead of spears, and built newer, better types of housing for themselves. Around A.D. 800 they began to form villages with common buildings, and whole new type of civilized culture began to develop. Around this time, the settlement known as Tusayan was created. Anasazi culture flourished, and this period is called the Pueblo Period. Around A.D. 1100, Anasazi culture was at its height, and the Grand Canyon saw its largest population ever. There were hundreds of dwelling sites around the canyon at that time before the population suddenly and sharply dropped off around the middle of the 12th century, forty years later. The people left the Grand Canyon and headed for the mesas beyond and to the Rio Grand in the south. Perhaps they were searching for land with better water supply after a bad period of drought in the Grand Canyon. Although the people left, they never stopped coming back to visit sacred sites in the Grand Canyon. Today, there are still native people living on the rim and some some smaller side canyons of the Grand Canyon: the Havasupai and the Hualapai.

The Europeans

The first Europeans to arrive in the Grand Canyon were the Spanish, in the mid-1500s. They used Hopi guides and came looking for gold. They didn't find any so they left. John Wesley Powell arrived a few hundred years later and was responsible for calling attention to the natural resources and scientific value of the Grand Canyon. After Powell, the miners came and changed everything. Miners were tough people and looked at survival in the Grand Canyon area as a way of life, even if they never got rich and stuck gold. They were the first to really alter the landscape of the Grand Canyon: trails were built, camps were put up, tourism was developed, and yes, some mines were dug. Luckily for the state of the Grand Canyon in the 1800s before environmental laws were put into effect, no miners ever found much in they way of large mineral deposits. One camp is still here today, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon: Phantom Ranch. Today it's used as lodging for hikers and mule riders on tours of the canyon.