When the archaeological curtain first lifted to reveal the early Hohokam, who occupied the south-central Arizona desert region early in the first millennium, there stood, not the last representatives of a predominantly nomadic hunting and gathering people, but rather the residents of full fledged farming and industrial communities. According to George J. Gumerman and Emil W. Haury in their article, "Prehistory: Hohokam," in the Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest, the early Hohokam excavated long and complex canal systems to irrigate their fields of corn, beans, squash and other crops. They dug wells to tap underground water sources. Their craftsmen sculpted stone into bowls and trough-like grinding basins; turned local clays into simple but well-made vessels and figurines; used turquoise to fashion elaborate mosaics; and made Pacific coast shell into jewelry and ornaments. Just to confuse archaeologists, the Hohokam also produced an assemblage of rudimentary artifacts which resembled those of early Mogollon farmers to the east.

Based on the initial archaeological evidence, the first researchers believed that colonial pioneers must have imported a more advanced Mesoamerican tradition to found the Hohokam culture around the beginning of the first millennium. Based on later archaeological evidence, other researchers – perhaps most – came to believe that local descendants of ancient hunting and gathering traditions of the desert responded to Mesoamerican influences and emerged as the Hohokam. Still other students have suggested that Hohokam immigrants arrived from some unknown Mesoamerican homeland region to sweep over the desert hunter/gatherers and set up colonial housekeeping in southern Arizona sometime in the second half of the first millennium. Some investigators argue that the Hohokam region became a Mesoamerican frontier outpost. Others believe that the Hohokam represented an local development with no more than a Mesoamerican veneer. We see Hohokam origins and their early development through a foggy window.

The Hohokam peoples occupied a wide area of south-central Arizona from roughly Flagstaff south to the Mexican border. They are thought to have originally migrated north out of Mexico around 300 BC to become the most skillful irrigation farmers the Southwest ever knew.

The ingenious Hohokam developed an elaborate irrigation network using only stone instruments and organized labor. Before modern development obliterated this system, their predecessors commonly referred to them as the Canal Builders.

The Hohokam were creative artisans who became famous for their intricate work with shells obtained from the Gulf of California and the Pacific coast. They created a coiled pottery finished with a paddle and painted with red designs. They retained a great deal of Mesoamerican influence as can be seen in their use of ball courts and decorative feathers.

They also became entrepreneurs in a thriving trade with their neighbors, the Anasazi and the Mogollon. Their fate is unclear, but they seem to have disappeared from the archeological record between the first half of the 15th century and the time when the Spanish first came upon their descendents, Pima-speaking Indians still using the ancient irrigation techniques. Some of their original irrigation canals are still being used in the Phoenix area today!