The name Mogollon, pronounced mo-goi-YONE, is derived from the mountain range along the southern Arizona-New Mexico border, this cultural group’s core area. The Indians of the Mogollon culture, probably direct descendants of Indians of the earlier Cochise culture, are considered the first Southwest people to farm, build houses, and make pottery. Their culture thrived from about 300 B. C. to A. D. 1300.
Mogollon Indians farmed the high valleys in the rugged mountains, cultivating corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and cotton. They prepared the soil with primitive digging sticks. They also gathered wild food plants and hunted the small game living in the high country. The adoption of the bow and arrow about A. D. 500 made hunting easier for them.
Farming enabled Mogollon Indians to live at one location all year long. For their villages, they chose sites near mountain streams or along ridges that were easy to defend from raiding peoples. They designed houses especially suitable to the extreme temperatures of the region—pithouses for which the ground provided natural insulation. The frameworks of these structures were made from logs, walls, from reeds, saplings, and mud. The largest served as social and ceremonial centers called kivas.
The earliest Mogollon pottery was brown. The Indians shaped it by rolling the clay into thin strips, then making coils in the shape of pots. They smoothed it over, then covered it with a slip (coat) of clay, and finally baked the pot in an oven. Late in their history, Mogollon Indians painted their pottery with intricate designs. A subgroup of the Mogollon culture, the Mimbres culture, is famous for black-on-white pottery from about A. D. 900.
Mogollon pottery dish in black-on-white Mimbres style
Mogollon Indians also wove plant matter into baskets. They used their cultivated cotton or animal fur to make yarn for weaving clothing and blankets. Feathers were added as decoration. Mogollon Indians also had many tools and ornamental objects made from wood, stone, bone, and shell.
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