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western Arizona. Like the Hohokam to the east
(see entry for CA. 400 TO 1500), the Patayan
people rely on farming for their survival, although
they supplement their food supply with hunt-
ing and gathering. Other cultural traits include
building aboveground brush dwellings and mak-
ing pottery and baskets. The Patayan (the Yuman
word for “old people”) may be the ancestors of
Yuman-speaking groups such as the Quechan and
the Mojave.ca. 900 to 1150The “Chaco Phenomenon” evolves in the San
Juan Basin.
Over a 25,000-square-mile area in the San Juan
Basin in what is now northern New Mexico and
southwestern Colorado, the Anasazi (see entries
for CA. 200 B.C. TO A.D. 750 and for CA. 750 TO
1400) begin to live in large pueblos. Most include
10 to 20 rooms, though nine enormous pueblos
in the basin grow to hundreds of rooms in size.
Archaeologists will refer to this development as
the Chaco Phenomenon, after the Chaco Canyon,
which serves as the trade, administrative, and pos-
sibly ritual center for the outlying pueblos. The
settlements are connected by more than 250 miles
of roads, including elaborate stairways and ramps
to help travelers make their way through difficult
terrain. This travel network permits people from
scattered pueblos to trade food and goods with
one another. The Chaco Phenomenon therefore
allows the dry desert basin to sustain a much larger
population than it could have if the Indians had
been confined to isolated farming settlements.
The area suffers a sustained drought after 1130,
and the Chaco system begins to decline. By this
time, it may have grown too large to remain effec-
tive and thus would have collapsed even if rainfall
had remained at normal levels. The people of the
canyon slowly scatter—some forming new, smaller
settlements, others probably abandoning farming
and returning to hunting and gathering food.ca. 900 to 1200The Toltec establish an empire in central
Mexico.
United under the leader Mixcoatl, the warlike Toltec
overwhelm the peoples of present-day central Mexico.
There, Mixcoatl’s son Topilzin founds a large empire
of states centered around the Toltec capital of Tula.
Tula spreads over an area of more than five square
miles and has a population in the tens of thousands.
The region includes a swampland that provides the
Toltec with basketry materials and gives Tula its origi-
nal name—Tollan, meaning “place of the reeds.”“The Toltecs are wise. Their
works were all good, all per-
fect, all wonderful, all marvelous;
their houses beautiful, tiled in
mosaics, smoothed, stuccoes,
very marvelous.... The Toltecs
were very wise; they were think-
ers, for they originated the year
count, the day count; they es-
tablished the way in which the
night, the day, would work; which
day sign was good, favorable.”
—16th-century Spanish chronicler
Bernardino de Sahagún on the
Toltec EmpireThe Toltec become expert temple pyramid
builders as well as craftspeople, known best for
their chacmools—large stone sculptures of warriors
lying on their backs that may have held the hearts
of human sacrifices. Under Topilzin, the Toltec also
develop the cult of Quetzalcóatl, a mythic feathered
serpent whose name Topilzin adopts. According to
Toltec legend, Quetzalcóatl, driven out of Tula by
the god Tezcatlipoca, goes to live in the east but
vows one day to return to reclaim his throne. Toltecca. 900 to 1150