The Southwest

The Southwest Region encloses Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.

The first settlers of the Southwest were American Indian. Some of the well-known tribes were the Ute, Navajo, Apache, Comanche and Hopi.

The earliest known occupation of the Southwest dates to 9000 BC. The people of the American Southwest made agricultural communities and grew maize, beans and squash. They constantly tried with a variety of irrigation techniques to defeat the hot dry climate. Modern settlement is closely linked to water use.

Some of the earliest and most expansive attempts at colonizing were made by the Spanish.

The names of the American Southwest evokes a beautiful land of deserts, mountains and fertile valleys which are both very old and very new. Arizona and New Mexico, admitted to the Union in 1912, are two of the youngest states in the nation; Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado still contain abandoned prehistoric ruins collectively representing thousands of years of human habitation.

The American Southwest with its special building traditions, languages, religions, and foods, reflects the vitality of the Spanish, Mexican, Indian and Anglo cultures which created the history and the Southwest we see today.

Bibliography

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/usa/southwest/history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amsw/intro.htm

http://www.fws.gov/southwest/

History and Culture - Group AA

Adrian de Cozar Fenoll