The prominent figures of three cranes at the Crane Petroglyph Heritage Site.
The Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Ranger District is home to three well-known cultural Heritage sites, Palatki, Honanki, and Crane Petroglyph — visited by 65,000 people annually. Although considered “prehistoric,” these sites and the area’s National monuments (Tuzigoot, Montezuma Castle, and Montezuma Well) are very much culturally alive today.
They all are attributed to a Puebloan culture that archaeologists have named “Southern Sinagua.” The timeframe for this culture starts around 600 CE and extends to 1400 CE, well before the arrival of the Spanish explorers in the 1580s. There is a clear history that links the Hopi, Yavapai, and Apache tribes to the ancient Puebloan culture. Both archaeological and oral history evidence exists for these three indigenous tribes’ direct kinship affiliation and/or living alongside and interacting with the Southern Sinagua for a period of time.Today, the joint Yavapai-Apache Nation areas are in the Verde Valley while the Hopi Tribe’s reservation is on the Hopi Mesas northeast of Flagstaff.
The Heritage sites are considered prehistoric given that the Southern Sinagua culture predates written accounts, and the presence of artifacts, pictographs, and petroglyphs can be attributed as far back as the Paleo-Indians 10,000 years ago. They are culturally important to the Hopi Tribe and Yavapai-Apache Nation through the connections to their ancestors. The petroglyphs and pictographs are understood by the tribes and are an integral part of their history and beliefs.
The tribes regularly visit the managed Heritage sites (as well as other non-managed sites) for religious purposes and to instruct their youth about the tribal history and significance of these places. The Forest Service stewards the sites with the goal of preserving and protecting them for the affiliated tribes’ current and future generations. Importantly, this is done with the collaboration and input of the tribes.
A prime example of this collaboration was the renaming of the V Bar V Heritage Site to Crane Petroglyph Heritage Site in 2024. Palatki and Honanki are both known Hopi names. The V Bar V Heritage Site name, however, originated from the historic Anglo pioneers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since its inception as a Heritage Site in 1995, the focus of the site has been the 1,300+ petroglyphs from the Southern Sinagua culture. Though a significant site to the Hopi, it was nearly unknown to most tribal members because the name was a reminder of suppression of their culture and loss of their ancestral lands.
Cultural directors from the Hopi Tribe and Yavapai-Apache Nation agreed there should be a more meaningful name for V Bar V to reflect what makes it important to their cultures. Each tribe has a name for the site in their own language. The consensus was that most people cannot properly pronounce or know the meaning of the Indigenous names and a more readily recognized name should be used. When first entering the fenced enclosure where the petroglyph panels are located, the central figures are three cranes (a rare motif in the Verde Valley) — hence the new name “Crane Petroglyph.” In a similar vein, the Spanish term “Sinagua” that identifies the ancestral culture is being supplemented with the Hopi term “Hisatsinom,” meaning “People of Ancient Times,” to further acknowledge the linkage between the prehistoric and current cultures.
Author, Jerry Walters
In 1995, shortly after the non-profit Friends of the Forest was formed, it established its Cultural Resources Protection Committee. The Committee’s mission is to aid the Forest Service in the protection and preservation of all cultural sites in the Red Rock Ranger District. The primary effort has been to provide volunteer docents to staff the Heritage sites. The entire support for these sites is provided by a handful of volunteer residential site hosts and a committed group of 40 seasonal and year-round volunteer docents. There are 72 volunteer shifts to staff at Palatki Heritage Site each month and another 30 at Crane Petroglyph Heritage Site. To learn more, visit the Friends of the Forest website and the “Docent FAQ” link on that page. We are always looking to recruit and train new docents.
Serving Sedona, written this week by Jerry Walters, volunteer at Friends of the Forest, appears Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News.