Harold Sterling Goodwin, who first discovered the Hohokam in his excavations of Snaketown in the 1920s, thought they were a Central American culture like the Maya or Zapotec. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community located in the metropolitan Phoenix area now occupy the Hohokam homeland, although they and the related Papago (Tohono or Desert O’odham) are ambivalent about whether they are the descendants or conquerors of the Hohokam.
Their name means “the vanished ones” in the modern Pima Indian or O’odham language. Phoenix where the Salt and Gila rivers meet was their center, and the site of the present-day Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Park near Sky Harbor is believed to have been their capital city, with an area population at its height of 50,000 people–the greatest civilization of North America, excluding Mexico. Whoever they were, they appeared and disappeared suddenly with about 1500 years in between. If you ask this question of the archeological establishment today, the answer you are likely to receive is something like “Darned, if we know!”
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