A traditional Western Apache thatched wickiup shelter.--PHOTO BY JOLYNN PARENTEAU
If you have, then you know, for you’ve felt its spell,
The lure of the desert land,
And if you have not, then I could not tell
For you could not understand.
– Madge Morris Wagner (1862-1924), “The Lure of the Desert Land,” c.1909
Stretching from southern California down Mexico’s Pacific peninsula, and overland into southern Arizona and northwest mainland Mexico lies the Sonoran Desert. Rich in resources, the Sonoran has sustained its original peoples for more than 11,000 years.
Visitors to Phoenix, Arizona’s Desert Botanical Garden can discover early homemaking practices and traditional survival methods of the nomadic Western Apache, Akimel and Tohono O’odham, three of many tribes who have thrived here for countless generations.
Of more than 400 edible plants in the Sonoran Desert, the saguaro fruit, agave plant and the mesquite tree were essential to desert dwellers’ diets.
To this day, the Akimel and Tohono O’odham prize the saguaro fruit. The juice is simmered down to a delicious syrup for jam, and the pulp and seeds are used in porridge and seed meal.
Mesquite tree bean pods are pounded into a sweet flour used in many foods. Mixing the flour with water makes a refreshing drink, still popular in northern Mexico today.
A reliable food and fiber source, the important agave was often grown as a crop rather than simply harvested from the wild. Varieties such as the artichoke, blue glow, sacred mountain, shin dagger and the hohokam (an imperiled species) thrive along the northern border of the Sonoran Desert.
A rock-lined agave roasting pit was essential to the Akimel O’odham open-air kitchen, a central place of activity during the day, with no roof to allow heat from cooking to dissipate quickly. It could take up to four days to roast agave in a pit. To prepare, agave hearts are sandwiched between layers of moist vegetation in the roasting pit and covered with dirt to bake. Fresh baked agave is sweet yet low in calories.
The first desert peoples of the Sonoran began farming about 2,000 years ago to supplement the wild plants they gathered. They grew beans, corn, gourds, squash and cotton, their seeds traced to ancient Mexico. Dried gourds made canteens, and rattles for ceremony and celebration.
Gardens were planted in floodplains, channeling storm runoff to terraced hillsides and irrigation canals. The largest prehistoric irrigation system in Turtle Island (Native North America) was built by the Hohokam where modern-day Phoenix is now.
The earliest inhabitants of this region understood and valued the medicinal properties of hundreds of desert plants, used in teas, salves and elixirs. Plant extracts were also used in a variety of cosmetics, dyes, paints and tattoo ink.
Plants are a natural, hearty and bountiful resource for everyday building materials and tools. Fibrous plants like agave and yucca were woven into rope and twine, baskets, nets, clothing and footwear. The roots and stems of catclaw acacia, desert hackberry and willow, and bear grass were used to make brooms, hairbrushes, thatching, fuel and baskets. Tightly-woven baskets were essential for harvesting edible seeds from grasslands on the eastern border of the Sonoran.
The Western Apache’s earliest shelters can still be found in modern Apache communities for ceremonial and cultural purposes. Seen in the photo above, the low, dome-shaped frame of the wickiup shelter is built with arched willow saplings, secured with split yucca leaves and thatched cottonwood and willow branches with an arched entrance.
The mesquite tree is one of the most important plants to desert peoples. Pitch made from its thick, sticky sap resin was used to waterproof baskets and as a dye to paint pottery. Providing food, medicine, timber, thatching and fiber, pitch and dye, the mesquite is sometimes referred to as the Tree of Life.
The Sonoran Desert’s life-sustaining unique beauty and tranquil landscape is to be preserved, appreciated and enjoyed. If planning a trip to Phoenix, take time to escape the bustling metropolis with an afternoon spent wandering the Desert Botanical Garden, an oasis in the urban jungle.
JoLynn Parenteau is an avid traveler and Metis writer out of Miywasin Friendship Centre. Column feedback can be sent to jolynn.parenteau@gmail.com
