Uncover the Rich History of Phoenix at S’edav Va’aki (formerly Pueblo Grande) Museum

S’edav Va’aki Museum, formerly Pueblo Grande Museum, got its new name in March of 2023, and held a renaming ceremony earlier this month, on November 6TH, 2023.

The new name reflects the acknowledgment of historic tribal connection to the site. S’edav Va’aki is the SRPMIC O’odham spelling for “Central Vahki”, referring to the large platform mound preserved at the site. By renaming the museum and archaeological site, the city of Phoenix recognizes the O’odham way of life. It also makes it clear for all visitors that people who built the ancient city are the ancestors of modern-day native people.

The O’odham traditional blessing song related to the Va’aki opened the ceremony, and later Phoenix city officials read the land acknowledgment statement. This is a new, more positive look at the history of Phoenix and the surrounding desert.

The museum and the surrounding archaeological site reminds us that people lived in the desert long before modern amenities. They preserve the remains of the ancient city that proves the ingenuity of the native people of the desert, who not only survived but thrived in this hostile environment thousands of years ago.

Phoenix today is home to over 1.6 million people, living in comfort in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. We barely notice the temperatures above 110F (over 43C) during the summers, since we have air-conditioned homes, water, food and other goods brought in from faraway places.

We can’t imagine living here without these modern amenities, but people built a civilization here thousands of years ago without them. Did you ever wonder how they did it?

A Visit to S’edav Va’aki Museum Helps Us Understand How Ancient People Lived in the Desert

I often wondered how they lived in this heat. When our air-conditioner broke one summer, we couldn’t stay in the house, we paid top dollars to have someone come out right away, to fix it, while we spent a few hours at the local air-conditioned library. I could not imagine living here in the summer without it. Yet I knew people did it. Sure, they were tougher than we are. Still, heat is heat, even when it’s a dry heat.

I found the answer at the at the pit house of the S’edav Va’aki Museum years ago, (when it was still Pueblo Grande). Ancient people figured out how to cool their homes in a natural way.

They built their pit houses partially underground, making them cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, forming an all-natural air conditioning.

Before the supermarket system, where we can buy things grown thousands of miles away, wha could people eat in the desert, I used to wonder. After all, nothing grows here. Or so we think, until we move here. But even when we know things grow in the desert, it’s hard to imagine how to use the few plants that do. The Huhugam did.

The yucca plant grows in abundance in the desert, so they learned to use it. They made soap, shampoo, sewing needles and thread, rope, and even candy from it.

With a little care, cotton grows in the desert, so they used it to make their clothing. For food, they grew corn, beans, and squash.

But for any of those crops to grow, they needed water.

The Canal Makers

To grow their food, they brought water to their crops, by building canals around them. Their most important skill was canal building, and because of it, we know them as some of the best engineers of the ancient world. Using only their bare hands and sticks, they built an elaborate canal system, bringing water to Pueblo Grande from far away, sometimes even from a lower elevation. Their handiwork was so good, it lasted through centuries and we still use some of it today.

But civilizations come and go. People move on, and those in this area did, too. We called them Hohokam, meaning “those who have vanished”. In later years historians and archaeologists, working with modern-day Native Americans, realized that no one vanished, only changed or moved on. They are the ancestors of the modern-day O’odham tribes, who call them Huhugam.

In the ancient times though, even as they moved on, they left behind their homes, their canals, their community buildings.

Phoenix Is Born (or Reborn) – Modern History

Thousands of years after the Huhugam left, settlers arrived in the area and noticed the ruins of this ancient civilization. When building their own settlement, they used what they found left.

In the middle of the desert what they most needed was water, and the ancient canals still stood there, abandoned. All they needed was a little work to dig them out and the settlers could use them to bring water to their homes.

As the settlement grew, becoming a town, it needed a name. Darrell Duppa, one of the settlers, who was a well-educated traveler, was part of the naming committee. Looking at the remains of the ancient civilization, he predicted the rise of another one on its site.

So he proposed to name their young town Phoenix after the mythical bird reborn from its own ashes. The name stuck and we use the name for the city to this day.

Phoenix Became the First City in the Nation With an Archaeologist

Today, Phoenix is one of the largest city in the nation, home to millions of people. Some of its buildings in the center of own stand on top of the ruins of ancient homes, and we still use a few of the old Hohokam canals.

But the city didn’t want to forget its roots, reflected in its name. Though some modern buildings already sat on ancient ones, a few ancient structures stood abandoned, as they were in ancient times.

The area with most of the ruins was privately owned, and in 1924 its owner donated it to the city. Now Phoenix had an archaeological site that it could set up as a museum to showcase its roots. A few years later, in 1929, the city opened the Pueblo Grande Museum. During the same time, they hired a city archaeologist who also acted as the museum director. With this measure, Phoenix became the first city in the nation to have an archaeologist.

Building the Museum

With little money, the actual museum building took years to complete, and they only finished it in 1935, using the adobe bricks manufactured on site. Over the years, they added more buildings, more facilities to the original.

They added the latest exhibit during the name changing ceremony, when Pueblo Grande became S’edav Va’aki. Titled “What’s In Our Name?”, the new exhibit is a place for visitors to gain a better understanding of the museum’s history.

A new mural, created by Tohono O’odham Nation artist Thomas “Breeze” Marcus with the help of O’odham artists Dwayne Manuel (SRPMIC) and Zachary Justin (Gila River Indian Community) decorates the outside wall of the building.

Featuring up-to-date exhibits, the museums formerly known as Pueblo Grande, is one of the best museums to visit in the city.

Visiting Pueblo Grande Museum

Living in the city, we visit the museum often. I also like to bring our out-of-town guests here to impress them with our city’s ancient history. Actually, to show them that people lived in the desert before we invented air conditioning. Though it’s not the best place to visit in the summer, it is the best time to appreciate the ingenuity of the ancient people who once built a civilization here.

Start the Visit With the Indoor Gallery

Our visit to the Pueblo Grande Museum starts in the main gallery, where the exhibits help us understand how the Hohokam lived in this harsh environment.

When I look at the map of their canals I can hardly believe their lengths. Living in the city now, I understand where they are, and I realize that most of the canals bringing water to our homes today follow the route of the ancient ones. The name “canal makers” makes perfect sense now, though I find it hard to fathom that they built these elaborate waterways with their bare hands and sticks.

We always enjoy the diorama of a miniature ancient city, one of the highlights of the exhibit. Everything looks realistic here, men hunting, or building homes and canals, women cooking by the fires inside the homes, children are playing between the buildings.

Other exhibits showcase elaborate designs on their pottery, ancient tools, shells, and stone jewelry.

The children’s hands-on gallery is a great place to stop. When the kids were little and we used to visit, they always had fun making “ancient artifacts”.

The Outdoor Trail

Learn About the Three Sisters at the Huhugam Garden

The sisters I am talking about are not of the people variety. When talking about the ancient people of the desert Southwest, the term refers to plants. The three plants that people can live off of, the main crops the Hohokam were squash, beans, and corn.Squash has the vitamins and minerals as a vegetable, beans add the protein and corn the grains, so the three sisters provide everything for a healthy diet.

Set up as in ancient times, the museum staff is still using the garden growing crops, using the ancient methods of the canal-makers. The plants grow in raised beds surrounded by mini-canals, where the water flows to keeps the ground moist.

To protect it, a live ocotillo fence surrounds the garden, just like it would’ve been in ancient times.

Ancient Uses for the Yucca Plant

Across from the garden, where a few yucca plants grow, we learn about all the uses the ancients found for it.

Up until my first visit to the Pueblo Grande Museum, I did not realize how versatile this plant could be. I see them everywhere but never think of using it. But the ancients used every part of it.

The roots were for soap and shampoo; they made pulp from it and mixed it with water. Next, the leaves with their sharp needles made perfect fibers and string and needles. After stripping the leaves by hitting them they got string-like fibers they used to weave into rope, baskets or sandals. By leaving some of them attached to the sharp end of the leaf, they had both string and needle.

In spring, when the flowers came, they ate some but left enough for the fruit, another one of their diet staples. They ate them both raw. I always think I should try it sometime, go back to the basics, eat what grows naturally around us.

The yucca even lent itself for creating candy. Being human like the rest of us, the ancients liked sweets, too. The heart of the yucca plant, what remains after all the leaves are chopped off, offered a way to make a sweet, candy-like treat. For that, they baked it underground for about four days. When they dug it out, they had a candy-like, sweet, gooey treat. Probably not the best for their teeth, but at least it was natural sugar.

Ball Court in the American Southwest

We associate ball courts with the ancient Maya. Though not nearly as big as the one in Chichen Itza, ball courts are also scattered through the US Southwest. They had one at S’edav Va’aki in ancient times, too.

While it looks like a hole in the ground, surrounded by desert soil piled up on its sides, it still held games and acted as a gathering place during market days.

Archaeologists think the people of S’edav Va’aki used their ball courts on these special days when people from far away came to trade. The ball court acted as the center for the event, used as a place to play the game between two different communities, and for feasts, dances, and trade.

Pit Houses along the Trail

The biggest attractions on the interpretive trail are the pit houses. The older one, reconstructed, is a stand-alone, one-room pit-house.

Pots on the ground and cotton-filled baskets hanging on the walls give us the impression that it is still lived in. This is the place I learned about the ancient air conditioning; this pit house is built partially underground, keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It faces a courtyard with the remains of a community fire and cooking area. A few similar pit houses were facing this inner courtyard, where the ancients shared an outdoor kitchen.

A More Recent Pit House

The other pit house is different. In fact, I wouldn’t call it a pit house, it is more of a compound, including several rooms, enclosed within a wall. The Huhugam used some of the rooms for storage. They also kept the fire pit and cooking area inside the walls.

This compound dates from about 1100 AD, later than the older one. The differences seem to be the first signs of people building a civilization.

These newer homes are more elaborate but also walled in. Were they afraid of outsiders? Higher walls, and enclosing the homes, might be an answer to it. Or simply as societies “evolve” we feel the need for walls, to protect ourselves from outsiders, from our neighbors, and even friends.

Walls seem to be the sign of evolution in any civilization, though I often wonder why. While it seems like a step forward, from building perspective (are we building walls simply because we can?), it also seems sad to me, I feel like something, a sense of community is lost as soon as we build a wall around our homes, around ourselves.

A Glimpse at the Old Canal Still In Use Today

Back on the trail, we walk further on and reach a platform mound, built between 1150-1450 AD, about the time the Huhugam stopped building ball courts. Archaeologists think they might have replaced the ball courts as gathering places.

On the far side of the trail, we see the modern-day canal that runs close to the site, still in use today by the city of Phoenix. An important part of the canal system today, it was even more so thousands of years ago. It was the site of a major gate that controlled the flow of water not only for this community but for many others.

End of the Trail

By the time we reach the end of the trail, we gain an insight into the lives of the Huhugam, the ancestors of the O’odham people, who made a life and built a civilization in the desert thousands of years ago.

We have a lot to learn from them still. Not how to live without air conditioning, we don’t need to do that. With a better system using solar panels, we can afford to keep our homes cool even as we try to reduce our carbon footprint.

But we can learn how to use the resources we have, how to eat what the desert offers, how to use plants that grow here naturally. The desert might seem inhospitable, but it has everything we need to live here if we know where to look.

If You Go – S’edav Va’aki Museum Traveler’s Guide

The S’edav Va’aki Museum and Archaeological Site lay in the heart of Phoenix, less than five miles from the airport, accessible not only by car but by public transportation.

It makes a great stop even if you’re just passing through the city and your plane is delayed or you have a long wait between your flights. Give yourself approximately two hours to get there, visit it and return for your next flight.

When you visit, walking through the outdoor trail, remember that you are in the desert. Even though it is a short walk, make sure you wear sunscreen and a hat and carry water. This is especially important if you visit in the summer, but even in the winter, the desert sun can be strong, and it is very dry, so you could get easily dehydrated.

Help preserve the site by making sure you take no artifacts or rocks, don’t sit on walls or lean against them, and stay on the designated trail.

Quick Facts