For more than 1,000 years, the Hohokam peoples occupied the land that would become Phoenix.The Hohokam created roughly 135 miles (217 km) of irrigation canals, making the desert land arable. Paths of these canals would later become used for the modern Arizona Canal, Central Arizona Project Canal, and the Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct. The Hohokam also carried out extensive trade with the nearby Anasazi, Mogollon and Sinagua, in addition to Mesoamerican civilizations. It is believed that a Hohokam witness of the supernova that occurred in 1006 CE created a representation of the event in the form of a petroglyph that can be found in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park west of Phoenix. This has been interpreted as the first known North American representation of the supernova.
It is believed that, between 1300 and 1450, periods of drought and severe floods led to the Hohokam civilization's abandonment of the area. Local Akimel O'odham settlements, thought to be the descendants of the formerly urbanized Hohokam, concentrated on the Gila River. Some family groups did continue to live near the Salt River, but no large villages existed. Yavapai also had settlements in the area as well. Later, Maricopa peoples fleeing enemy tribes came from the lower Gila River near its confluence with the Colorado River and settled alongside the Akimel O'odham.
Father Eusebio Kino (1645–1711) was among the few Europeans to travel here in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Spanish focused mostly on the Pima missions in southern Arizona; the Salt River Valley had almost no European inhabitants for several centuries before the 1860s.
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