Kinishba Ruins National Historic Landmark

Banner image by salmonboy?, via Wikimedia Commons

From “The Site That Nobody Really Knows: Kinishba Reawakened,” by John R. Welch, Archaeology Southwest Magazine Vol. 30, No. 1:

“Known in Hopi oral traditions as Mäi’povi (Place of Abundant Snakeweed) and to Apaches as kį dałbaa (brown house), Kinishba Ruins is the sprawling remains of a plaza-focused village where people lived from about A.D. 1200 into the 1400s. Located just west of Fort Apache and Whiteriver, on White Mountain Apache tribal land, the site sits in a grassy, conifer-fringed valley that drains into the White River, a principal tributary of the Salt River.

“Beginning in 1931, archaeologist Byron Cummings—University of Arizona professor and director of the Arizona State Museum, affectionately referred to as ‘the Dean’—dedicated most of the last two decades of his long career to the site. He supervised students and local Apache workers in excavating about 240 of Kinishba’s approximately 600 rooms, in rebuilding about half of those excavated, and in launching a site museum. The museum foundered in the early 1950s as archaeologists, museum professionals, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) abandoned Kinishba’s protection and management to the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

“In the 1990s, the Tribe’s Historic Preservation Office and the nonprofit Fort Apache Heritage Foundation began working with local Apache, Hopi, and Zuni leaders to provide culturally appropriate stewardship. Tribal officials and the foundation undertook this charge in conjunction with the preservation and redevelopment of the Fort Apache and Theodore Roosevelt School National Historic Landmark.”

Those wishing to visit Kinishba Pueblo must check in at the Nohwike’ Bágowa (House of Our Footprints) Museum (White Mountain Apache Cultural Center; see right sidebar for hours and phone).