Montezuma Castle National Monument, located near Camp Verde, Arizona, in the Southwestern United States, features well-preserved cliff-dwellings. They were built and used by the Pre-Columbian Sinagua people, northern cousins of the Hohokam, around 700 CE. It was occupied from approximately 1125-1400 CE, and occupation peaked around 1300 CE. Several Hopi clans trace their roots to immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/Beaver Creek area. Clan members periodically return to their former homes for religious ceremonies. When European Americans discovered them in the 1860s, they named them for the Aztec emperor (of Mexico) Montezuma II, due to mistaken beliefs that the emperor had been connected to their construction. (See also Montezuma (mythology).) Neither part of the monument's name is correct. The Sinaqua dwelling was abandoned 100 years before Montezuma was born and the Dwellings were not a castle. It was more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".
Read more about Montezuma Castle National Monument: Cliff Dwelling, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words montezuma, castle, national and/or monument:
“There is only one evil, to deny life
As Rome denied Etruria
And mechanical America Montezuma still.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Let me be at the place of the castle.
Let the castle be within me.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Let us put an end to self-inflicted wounds. Let us remember that our national unity is a most priceless asset. Let us deny our adversaries the satisfaction of using Vietnam to pit Americans against Americans.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)