Q: There is a lot of evidence to support that Chaco may have had commerce with Mexico and Central America. What was the relationship between Chaco and Central America?

A: There’s a lot of physical or logical evidence at Chaco of close connections with the high civilizations in Mexico. Chaco and Tula, in Central Mexico, were contemporary. They are at the same time. Many things came from Mexico to Chaco, which, I believe, the leadership at Chaco used as badges of authority, as ways of symbolizing their power. [They had] copper bells, which [were] a very big deal. Macaws and parrots with their plumage, which is incredibly important during Aztec times. We know that plumes were more valuable than gold, [and they] came up from Mexico a thousand kilometers.
What was going the other way? Well, the Southwest has turquoise, which was very highly valued by the Mexica people and the Aztecs, the people of Oaxacan, and the people of Central Mexico. And a lot of turquoise was probably going the other way, but Chaco and the Southwest was probably far more interested in Mexico than Mexico would ever be interested in Chaco. And if the people of Tula ever heard about Chaco, they’d probably heard it was someplace out in the boonies, it was out there in the northern frontier of Mexico. Not a place of tremendous interest to them. Whereas Mexico is, I think, very much of interest to the people of Chaco.


Q: How far did Chaco’s communications links go?

A: Chaco was a central place. I think, a political center. And from it, roads radiated out like spokes on a wheel, a hundred, a hundred twenty miles out, at least that far. The roads were interesting because the people didn’t have wheeled vehicles. And everywhere else in the Southwest, a trail would do just fine. They rode in single file. But the roads are seven meters wide, straight as an arrow, engineered. They have ramps and cut and fill, and all that kinds of thing--that’s why we call them roads. Chaco, somehow, was central to that region. It [controlled] an area the size of Ireland. Did it control that, in some political sense? Well, it probably controlled the middle part of it, at least, and around the edges. It's thumb might not have been quite so firmly planted. But it certainly looks like, if we saw it anywhere else in the world, we’d say Chaco was a capital city.


Q: Who were the Hohokam? And how are Casas Grandes in Arizona, and Paquimé or Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, related? Or are they related?

A: The Hohokam people of southern Arizona, who lived under where Phoenix is today, and Tempe, and that whole huge metropolitan area, were one of the most remarkable people in the Southwest in the same time as Chaco, eleventh century, twelfth century, built enormous canal systems that were bigger than anything in Mexico, and had a remarkably brilliant civilization that ends about thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred, somewhere in there. They were desert people, where Chaco is up on the Colorado plateau, as enough rainfall to grow corn in the Pueblo area. In the desert that rain was not there, so they had to divert water from the rivers into these huge canal systems, but again with the long growing seasons and permanent water, which they controlled, they could double or triple crops, so these guys could really do some business.
They built a building we call Casa Grande, Big House, near Coolidge Arizona now, and it’s a National Park, which is a four-story, massive adobe wall tower that dominates the landscape. It’s quite a construction.
Casa Grande near Coolidge, in southern Arizona, often gets confused with Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, which is sixty miles south of the border. Sort of southwest of El Paso, which is also, massive adobe, four or five stories tall, but enormously larger. And the Big Houses are enormously larger than the Big House. And Casas Grandes another name for that, is called Paquimé. Paquimé was a city. A very cosmopolitan city. It was the greatest city in the Southwest in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.


Q: What is the relationship between the peoples of these two cities? Were they the same peoples?


A: It certainly looks like the people that built Casa Grande in Arizona were different than the
people that built Casas Grandes in Chihuahua. Although they certainly knew about each other. They are like two ends of a major axis across the southern Southwest. Where you have Casa Grande or Casas Grandes, Paquimé, at the other end. A lot of trade going back and forth, but everything else looks different, the pottery looks different, the other things that archeologists talk about, who people are, looks different. The Hohokam people who built Casa Grande are remembered by the current Pima people, Tohono O’odham people, as their ancestors. We don't know. There aren’t too many native groups that have stepped up to claim Casas Grandes, Paquimé. That great city [is] kind of a mystery.


Q: Could the Hohokam have been the Mexicas, and could Casa Grande have been Aztlán?

A: Certainly, Casa Grande and the Hohokam people of southern Arizona, [could be] another candidate for Aztlán. Most archeologists, I think most of the native people in that area, the Tohono O’odham, the Pima people, look at the Hohokam as their ancestors. In fact, Hohokam is a sort of archeological corruption of a word from the Piman peoples for "Old Ones,""Our Old Ones."
The Piman people tell a story, however, that within the Hohokam, of their leaders, who are a different race, who lived on the platform mounds and impressed them, and they rise up with their culture heroes and smite them. And they talk about going from Hohokam city to Hohokam city and dashing these people in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. A little too late for Aztlán, perhaps. But again, the Hohokam is interestingly complicated. We have more to learn there.