Native People

Located in Globe, Arizona, Besh-Ba-Gowah provides the opportunity to discover the cultural period from 1150 to 1450 by climbing ladders, viewing the artifacts and exploring the complex culture. Considered a ceremonial, redistribution and storage complex for food, the Besh-Ba-Gowah Archaelogical Park and Museum is the largest single and most significant archaeological collection in the Southwest United States. Suitable for families, singles or seniors, the park, while tough to pronounce, offers a unique view into an ancient and sophisticated culture.

Visitors to the site will see a partially reconstructed 200-room pueblo with a complementary museum and even a botanical garden that showcases the plants used by the Salado in their day to day life. Some people believe that this thriving pueblo, fed by an abundance of clean water and located along an ancient trade route between Mexico and the Salt River native peoples in Arizona, and although abandoned in 1400, due to a likely drought, is the finest archeological parks in Arizona, if not the Southwest.

In the mid-late 1800’s, when Arizona was in the process of being explored and settled by the “white” settlers from the east, the indigenous people, the Apaches were fierce and committed people who guarded their land ferociously. With a perspective that the land was “empty,” the settlers took territory for their own, to farm, mine, and explore, not realizing due to communication issues and cultural barriers, that they were settling the lands that the Apache relied upon for their very survival. As a hunter/gatherer tribe, large expanses of land were necessary for their survival. The native peoples had apportioned the land amongst themselves for optimum survivability of their families.

The Apaches were a proud and skilled people who strongly resisted the frontiersmen, the infantry, and the settlers. And, as a clan-oriented people, they had no central government so small groups of Apaches were often in conflict with one another, as well as against the new arrivals. Part of the reason this area took so long to settle is the skilled horsemanship, the presence of Chief Geronimo, and speed and range that the Apache used to survive this sometimes harsh and difficult terrain.

Yet there were kind and tender moments between settlers and the Apaches. In her book, “Vanished Arizona, Martha Summerhayes, writes of the birth of her son at “Camp Apache.” She writes, “The seventh day after the birth of my baby, a delegation of several squaws, wives of chiefs, came to pay me a formal visit. They brought me some finely woven baskets, and a beautiful papoose-basket or cradle, such as they carry their own babies in. This was made of the lightest wood, and covered with the finest skin on fawn, tanned with birch bark by their own hands, and embroidered with blue beads; it was their best wrok. I admired it, and tried to express to them my thanks. These squaws took my baby…then, cooing and chuckling, they …found a small pillow…laced the baby into the papoose, laughed in a gentle manner and soothed him to sleep.”

The settling of Arizona in this region was complex and multi-layered to say the least.

Present day Apaches possess tribal lands adjacent to the Copper Corridor and operate the Apache Gold Casino north of the Copper Corridor area. The Apaches of today balance the realities of modern life while still honoring the ceremonies of the past, the Sunrise Dance which celebrates a young woman’s entry into adulthood. Local cultural centers can provide insight into the opportunities to view or participate in cultural exhibitions.