Challenge: Anazazi Survive to challenge European Colonial Powers

There's another question we'll need to tackle too and one I hope American History Indian Author can address: What effect will Anazazi religious beliefs have on any potential migration?

The culture constructed several very extensive religious complexes that were linked together by roads and other substantial markers. It was the need for timber for these complexes, plus other uses, that led to the extensive deforestation of the region which exacerbated the effects of the climatic change that "doomed" the Anazazi culture. How tied to these complexes was the culture? There's indications that the complexes were still used and even partially repaired long after the Anazazi population centers were abandoned. It seem that, as the population crashed and the Anazazi people had reverted to much less farming, plus more hunting and gathering, the survivors still lived near and used their religious centers.

Would it be plausible for a sizable fraction of the Anazazi to migrate away from the centers of their belief system? If a region better suited to farming was found close enough to the original Anazazi lands, could the population that migrated begin a pilgrimage ritual back to the old complexes? What sort of follow on effects would such a pilgrimage system produce in the way of trade or even exploration?

As usual, I've more questions than answers. :(

Bill

Those are not easy questions to answer. The ones who would know better than anyone are Hopi elders, and they tend to distrust outsiders intensely because of some pretty infamous cases of their beliefs being misportrayed by people like Thomas Mails and Catherine Cheshire. The tribal laws actually forbid Hopi from talking to anyone about their spiritual traditions without prior approval from the tribal council. Far as I know, it has never been given, not once.

My best guess, based on what I know only as myself an outsider, is that like most tribes they will only migrate under dire circumstances since the homelands have so much spiritual significance. Perhaps once the last Anasazi and the soon-to-be-Hopi leaders realized the disaster that their spiritual practices had caused environmentally, that might be enough to allow for migration, but not without intense soul-searching. And like you point out, the evidence is that they held onto using the ceremonial centers for pretty long after the collapse.

But it's also possible their descendants went to the Pueblos, esp Zunis, so theoretically there could've been migration elsewhere. All of this is just a lot of guesswork of course.
 
Depends on What you mean by migrate. The Anasazi did move around their own area a lot when faced with changing conditions. But I don't know if they'd do a large scale migration, like the Volkswanderung.
 
A climate POD for the SW could Butterfly into the Missouri planter Tribes surviving. This would have large implications for the East coast settlement, and western movement.
 
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