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The
first
Native Americans arrived in
Arizona between
16,000 BC and 10,000 BCE, while the history of
Arizona as recorded by Europeans began when
Marcos de Niza, a
Franciscan, explored the
area in 1539.
Coronado's
expedition entered the area in 1540–1542 during its
search for Cíbola.
Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino
developed a chain of missions and taught the Indians
Christianity in
Pimería Alta (now
southern Arizona and northern
Sonora) in the 1690s and early 1700s.
Spain founded fortified towns (presidios)
at Tubac in 1752 and
Tucson in 1775.
All of
present-day Arizona became part of the
Mexican State of Vieja California upon the Mexican
assertion of independence from Spain in 1821. The
United States took possession
of most of Arizona at the end of the
Mexican-American War in
1848. In 1853, the land below the Gila
River was acquired from Mexico in the
Gadsden Purchase. Arizona
was administered as part of the Territory of New Mexico
until it was organized into a separate territory on
February 24, 1863.
Arizona was
admitted
into the Union—officially becoming a
U.S. state—on
February 14, 1912.
Phoenix was
the site of a German and Italian prisoner of war camp during
World War II. The site was
purchased after the war by the Maytag family and is
currently the Phoenix Zoo. Also
located in the state were the
War Relocation Authority's
second- and third-largest
Japanese American
internment camps,
Poston and
Gila River.
Prehistory
The
Paleo-Indians and Archaic peoples
According
to the best archaeological and geological evidence
available, Paleolithic,
mammoth-hunting families moved into
northwestern North America
sometime between 16,000 BC and 10,000 BC. In central
Alaska, they found their passage
blocked by a huge sheet of ice until a temporary recession
in the last ice age that opened up an
ice-free corridor through northwestern
Canada, allowing bands to fan out throughout the rest of
the continent. The earliest undisputed evidence of humans in
the southwestern
United States is a set of fluted spear
points from the Paleolithic. Some scientists have proposed
that small bands of women, men and children wandered across
the deserts of southwestern Arizona and northwestern Mexico
10,000 to 20,000 years earlier than the mammoth hunters.
In the
opinion of geoscientist Paul Martin, these bands, armed with
Clovis points (named for the
site near Clovis, New Mexico
where the first point was found), encountered mammoths,
camels, ground
sloths, and horses. As these
species had never faced sophisticated big-game hunters
before, the result was the "Pleistocene
overkill", the rapid and systematic slaughter of nearly all
the species of large ice-age mammals in North America by
8000 BC. In a sense, the hunters who pursued the mammoths
may have represented the first of Arizona's many cycles of
boom and bust, in which a
single resource is relentlessly exploited until that
resource has been depleted or destroyed.
Archaeologists call the 7,000 years between the
disappearance of big-game hunters and the emergence of
pottery-making societies, in the 2nd
century AD, the
Archaic period. Most Archaic groups survived by becoming
generalists rather than specialists,
foraging in seasonal movements across the mountains,
deserts and
plateaus. They did not abandon hunting, but they
depended to a much greater degree upon wild plant foods and
small game. Their tools became more varied, with grinding
and chopping implements becoming more common, a sign that
seeds, fruits and
greens constituted a greater proportion of their diet.
Climate
changes drove the transition from big-game hunting. When the
first big-game hunters entered Arizona, the
forests were as much as 3,000 feet
lower than they are today. In the
Sonoran Desert, piñon,
juniper and oak
woodlands extended as far as 1,800 feet down slopes, the
elevation of lower slopes of
Camelback Mountain in
Phoenix. Desert grasslands studded with
Joshua trees,
beargrass and
yucca carpeted valleys below. The great
ponderosa pine forests of the
Colorado Plateau did not
exist. Instead, the Mogollon Rim
supported vast stands of mixed conifers
such as Douglas fir,
blue spruce and
Rocky Mountain juniper—the
trees characteristic of higher altitudes today. The giant
saguaro, the plant that symbolizes
Arizona in many people's minds, had largely taken refuge in
present-day Mexico.
Temperatures rose, and the seasonal distribution of
precipitation
began to change, causing major changes in the
vegetation as well. The Clovis
people were stalking mammoths and other ice-age species in
southeastern Arizona at a time when many streams were drying
up, forcing animals to concentrate around streams and seeps.
The growing aridity of the region therefore coincided with
the arrival of hunters who specialized in the pursuit of
large mammals. It is possible that
climate and humans acted together to bring an end to these
species.
Arizona
grew even more arid after the last ice
age came to an end. Summers grew wetter, but warmer, so
rainfall evaporated quicker. Winters became considerably
drier, making less moisture available to plants. In southern
Arizona, woodlands gave way to desert grasslands, and desert
grasslands gave way to desert scrub. Important
Sonoran Desert species like
saguaro and brittlebush began to
recolonize the region from the south, while ponderosa
forests and piñon-juniper-oak woodlands climbed back onto
the Colorado Plateau. By 2000 BC, the modern plant
communities of Arizona had been established and a modern
climate prevailed.
The early
Archaic peoples of Arizona survived these changes by
adapting to the cycles of plants rather than trying to
change them. In the woodlands, they gathered
acorns in July and August, and piñon
nuts and juniper berries in November. In the desert, they
picked the leaves of annual plants like
chenopodium (goosefoot) and
amaranth (pigweed). They also
roasted agave in rock-lined pits each
spring, and collected cactus fruit and
harvested mesquite pods in the
summer. Because of their dependence on scattered and
seasonal resources, Archaic groups did not occupy permanent
settlements. Instead, they wandered from camp to camp in
search of water and wild foods.
Their tools
reflected their economy: ground
stones (manos and metates) were used for grinding seeds
into flour, scrapers for working hide and wood, and
projectile points, smaller and
cruder than the earlier Clovis and
Folsom points, for hunting large and small game. The
varying proportions of such tools at different sites suggest
that people moved back and forth between different
environmental zones to exploit their particular resources.
Archaic peoples fashioned
artifacts that demonstrated their capacity for wonder
and their quest for supernatural power.
Intaglios 10 to 100
feet in length appeared on both sides of the
Colorado River in southeastern
California and southwestern
Arizona. Many of them were of stylized
rattlesnakes,
thunderbirds,
phalli, and human forms.
The introduction of agriculture
For most of
the Archaic period, people were not able to transform their
natural environment in
any fundamental way. Many archaeologists assumed that the
Archaic cultures of Arizona were dead ends. They believed
groups outside the region, particularly
Mesoamerica, introduced major
innovations like agriculture into
the Southwest. According to this model,
maize first put down Southwestern roots in the highlands
of western New Mexico and eastern
Arizona, the pre-Hispanic cultural area known as the
Mogollon. Archaic populations there
began growing a small and primitive variety of maize at
places like Bat Cave as early as 3500 BCE. From there, maize
spread slowly to more arid and lowland areas, such as the
Sonoran Desert.
During the
1980s, these early maize dates were challenged by a
refinement in radiocarbon
dating using the
accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) technique.
Accelerator dates reveal that the first corn from Bat Cave
and other highland sites appeared around 1000 BCE, 2,500
years later than previously thought. A number of sites
excavated in southern Arizona demonstrate that Archaic
farmers were cultivating maize in the Tucson Basin at around
the same time as well. At the Milagro site along Tanque
Verde Creek, for example, a Late Archaic population built
pit houses, dug bell-shaped storage
pits, and planted maize around 850 BCE. Archaic groups,
then, were already beginning to make the transition from
food gatherers to food producers around 3,000 years ago.
They also possessed many of the cultural features that
accompany semisedentary agricultural life: storage
facilities, more permanent dwellings, larger settlements,
and even cemeteries.
Despite the
early advent of farming, late Archaic groups still exercised
little control over their natural environment. Furthermore,
wild food resources remained important components of their
diet even after the invention of pottery and the development
of irrigation. The introduction of
agriculture never resulted in the complete abandonment of
hunting and foraging, even in the largest of Archaic
societies. During the 1st
millennium CE, at least three major cultures flourished
in the Southwest: the Anasazi, the
Hohokam, and the
Mogollon. These three cultures are well known for their
architecture and pottery.
European colonization
Although
the first European visitors to Arizona may have come in
1528, the most influential expeditions in early Spanish
Arizona were those of Marcos de
Niza and
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. The accounts of the early
Spanish explorers of large mythical cities like
Cíbola and large mineral deposits of
copper and silver would attract
settlers and miners to the region in later years. These
explorations led to the
Columbian Exchange in Arizona, and widespread epidemics
of smallpox among the Native
Americans. Native-American history of early European
Arizonan exploration is hard to find, but the O'odham
calendar stick is a traditional way
of recording notable events, including droughts, invasions,
floods that could be used as a source.
Early
Franciscans and
Jesuits in Arizona also set
up numerous missions around the area to convert the Native
Americans, such as San Xavier
del Bac. The missionary Eusebio
Kino around the Pimería Alta, exchanging gifts and
catechizing the natives, who were then used as scouts for
keeping track of events on the frontier. In 1680, the
Pueblo Revolt drove Spaniards
temporarily from northern New Mexico,
but the area was reconquered in 1694.
Spanish
Arizona
Although
the Spanish did not yet have towns for
themselves, in the late 17th century, colonists began
steadily entering the region,
attracted by the recent discovery of deposits of silver
around the Arizonac mining camp. Most of the colonists left
after Juan Bautista de Anza
announced it had merely been
buried treasure; however, several stayed and became
subsistence farmers. During the mid-18th century, the
pioneers of Arizona tried to expand
their territory northward,
but were prevented from doing so by the
Tohono O'odham and
Apache Native Americans, who had begun
raiding their villages for
livestock.
In 1765,
the Bourbon Reforms began, with
Charles III of Spain
doing a major rearranging of the presidios on the
northern frontier. The Jesuits were
expelled from the area, and the Franciscans took their place
at their missions. In the
1780s and 1790s, the Spanish began a plan of setting up
Apache peace
camps and providing the Apache with rations so that they
would not attack, allowing the Spanish to expand northward.
For the
most part, Spanish Arizona had a
subsistence economy, with
occasional small gold and silver mining operations.
Mexican Arizona
In 1821,
Mexico won its independence from Spain after a decade of
war. The revolution
had destroyed the colonial silver
mining industry and had bankrupted the national
treasury. Along the northern
frontier, funds that had supported missions, presidios
and Apache peace camps nearly disappeared. As a result,
Apaches once again began raiding, running off horse herds,
and killing anyone caught outside presidial walls. As
missions began to wither, Mexico began auctioning off more
land, causing the Pimería Alta and the Apachería to shrink
as territory expanded.
American
mountain men began to enter the
region, looking to trap beavers for their pelts. In 1846,
the ideology of Manifest Destiny
and the occupation of disputed territory led the
United States to initiate
Mexican-American War.
The U.S. occupied Mexico City and forced the newly founded
Mexican Republic to give up its northern half, including the
later Arizona. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
specified that the U.S. pay Mexico the sum of US$15 million
in compensation. In 1849, the
California Gold Rush led
as many as 50,000 miners through the region, leading to
major booms in Arizona's population. In 1853, President
James Buchanan sent
James Gadsden to
Mexico City to negotiate with
Santa Anna, and
the United States bought the remaining area of Arizona and
New Mexico in the Gadsden
Purchase.
American Arizona Territory
On
March 16, 1861
the southern half of New Mexico Territory declared itself
independent of the United States.
Arizona Territory (CSA)
was regarded as a valuable route for possible access to the
Pacific Ocean, with the
specific intention of joining southern California to the
Confederacy. In 1860, Southern
California had cleared all legal hurdles for secession from
the rest of California and was waiting reorganization as a
new US territory, which never materialized. At that time
sparsely populated southern California was a hotbed of
Southern-sympathizers. The
Battle of Picacho Pass was the westernmost battle of the
Civil War fought in the
CSA, and the
only major one to be fought in Arizona. (The westernmost
battle of the Civil War was fought at San José, California.)
During the war, U.S. presidios were moved to New
Mexico, leaving Arizona vulnerable to Native American
attack. Hostilities between the Native Americans and
American settlers began, despite their alliance during the
time of the Mexican-American War, leading to most Indian
tribes being moved to
reservations.
Steamboats, mining, cattle and
trains became vital parts of the
Arizona economy, leading to boomtowns
being formed as prospectors found gold, and the boomtowns
becoming ghost towns as the miners
left. Mexicans, who still were the majority in Arizona
during the time shortly following the Mexican-American War,
constituted most of the mining labor force.
The
Desert Land Act of 1877,
which gave settlers 640 acres (1 sq. mi., 2.6 km²) of land,
caused people to flood into the region.
In the
1900s, Arizona almost entered the Union as part of New
Mexico in a
Republican plan to keep control of the
U.S. Senate. The plan,
while accepted by most in New Mexico, was rejected by the
vast majority of those living in Arizona. On February 14,
1912, Arizona finally entered the Union as the 48th
state of the United States. In the same
year, women gained suffrage in the
state.
The Great Depression and the World
Wars
In 1917,
the United States entered into World
War I, thus beginning a boom in the economy of Arizona.
After suffering through the
Great Depression, the implementation of the
New Deal and another economic boom
after World War II brought
Arizona back into a state of stability.
During this
timeframe, industries such as cotton,
copper, farming, and miniz began to flourish in the state.
The military began using Phoenix
and Tucson for
military bases and
academies, with the army
becoming the community's largest source of revenue. For a
time, the Charter Government
Committee swept the elections.
Barry Goldwater and
Sandra Day O'Connor would
later have successful judicial and political careers.
During the
war, people also began to move to Arizona from other regions
of the country because of its inland position and protection
from aerial attacks. In 1946, Arizona began to enforce
right-to-work laws, which
allowed workers to decide whether or not to join or
financially support a union. The dual-wage system, in which
Mexicans made $1.15 less per shift, was abandoned. In 1948,
the high tech industry began in
Arizona, with Motorola building one
of the first plants in Phoenix. 1948 also saw American
Indians gaining the right to vote, after having been
disqualified for twenty years for being "wards of the
state".
Recent events
In recent
times, Arizona has become a major warm-weather
tourist and retirement destination,
much like Florida. A major part of
the tourism industry is based on the presence of the
Grand Canyon.
In 1963,
the Supreme
Court ruled in favor of Arizona over California in a
dispute over Arizona's share of the
Colorado River. Five years
after the decision, authorization was given for the
construction of the
Central Arizona Project, which was not completed until
1991.
Republican
Senator
Barry Goldwater, a native of
Arizona, ran for the
presidency in
1964, with
William Edward Miller
as his running mate. Due to the
assassination of
John F. Kennedy, Goldwater found himself in the
difficult position of running against the successor to a
slain president, and was soundly defeated by
Lyndon B. Johnson.
Goldwater received only 38.4% of the popular vote and the
electoral votes of just five
states, including 5 from Arizona.
In 1988,
Evan Mecham, the
Governor of Arizona,
was impeached. Mecham faced allegations of
money laundering, including
trying to conceal a $350,000 campaign loan, borrowing
$60,000 of state money to prop up his struggling auto
dealership, as well as allegations of attempting to block
the investigation of a death threat
made by a state official. Rose
Mofford succeeded him as the Governor of Arizona,
becoming the first female ever to hold the office.
Mecham had
already been unpopular for his cancellation of a paid
Martin Luther King Day
holiday for state employees. The holiday had been first
proposed in 1972 by former state senators
Cloves Campbell.
For the first of several times, the legislation had failed
to pass the legislature, causing Arizona to lose its chance
to host the Super Bowl, as well as
costing the state tourism and other benefits that naturally
come from these events. Governor
Bruce Babbitt gave state employees the day off by
executive order, but Mecham later voided the order just a
week before the holiday was to be celebrated, based on a
legal opinion by the state's
Attorney General that the holiday had been created
illegally.
When the
legislation passed in 1989, Rose Mofford signed into law a
paid state holiday honoring
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
making it possible for the state to host a
Super Bowl. The chair of the
Americans for Traditional American Values filed a
petition against it, accusing Dr.
King of being a socialist and
philanderer. The two 1990 ballot initiatives were,
respectively, for celebrating both Martin Luther King Day
and Columbus Day holidays, and
for swapping the Columbus holiday for the King one. Both
failed. In 1992, in the face of a tourist
boycott and losing the chance to host
Super Bowl XXVII, 61% of
Arizonan voters publicly approved the payment of state
workers on a Martin Luther King Day/Civil Rights Day
holiday. It was the 49th state in the United States to
approve the holiday, and the first state to have voter
approval of allowing state workers to have paid absence on
Martin Luther King Day. Super Bowl
XXX was later played in Tempe
in 1996 and Super Bowl XLII
will be held in Glendale in
2008.
Mofford's
successor as governor, Fife
Symington, resigned in 1997 after conviction of bank
fraud. His conviction was later overturned, and he was
subsequently pardoned by President
Clinton. On August 17,
2005, the governors of both Arizona and
New Mexico declared an emergency in the Mexico-bordering
counties of their states. Both governors cited violence,
illegal immigration,
drug smuggling, and the
inaction of both the U.S. and Mexican governments as reasons
for the state of emergency. Governor
Janet Napolitano of Arizona
freed $1.5 million in disaster funds to help the border
counties, and Governor Bill
Richardson of New Mexico freed $1.75 million.
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