Painting with images from the 1100 - 1400 AD time of the Ancestral Puebloan People.

Painting by David Sine
Yavapai-Apache elder, historian and storyteller

This portrays an ancestral time in the Verde Valley, Arizona
when the Holy Ones were here on earth--they were
supernaturals who could float in the air.

Mr. Sine says they taught his ancestors about religion and healing and when they had finished, they left this earth by walking over a rainbow bridge into another world. They way the spiritual ones are dressed is similar to today's Apache crown dancers. According to archaeologists the Yavapai and Apache people who live here today are not the same people who created the Puebloan culture. The Puebloans were primarilly farmers while the Yavapai and Apache were primarilly hunter and gatherers. But this is a good example of how over the centuries, much cultural sharing has occurred.

By 1450 A.D. they were gone from this Verde Valley (where Sedona is located)--the prehistoric cliff dwellings and village sites of the Colorado Plateau were abandoned by 1300 A.D.
Today's Hopi people (12 villages in Arizona ) and New Mexico pueblo people (18 pueblos) are the descendants of these ancestral pueblo people (called by archaeologists as the "Anasazi").

updated March 4, 2008