Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest
After the Hohokam disappeared, Spanish explorers of the 16th century noted the use of canal irrigation in only two areas of the Southwest: eastern Sonora, primarily practiced by the Opata and Lower Pima, and among the Pueblos of northern New Mexico. Irrigation by the Opata and Pueblos had different objectives. In Sonora, with a long growing season, two crops of maize a year were grown in river valleys. The spring crop during the dry season was dependent upon irrigation; the summer and fall crop during the rainy season utilized irrigation to supplement rainfall. The necessity of irrigation probably required a high level of social organization. In New Mexico, with only one crop of maize per year possible, irrigation was supplemental and the lesser dependence on irrigation implies less social organization than in Sonora.
Tiguex War
The Tiguex Province was described as the most prosperous area the expeditionaries had seen, with the Rio Grande flowing through a wide, level, desert with vast irrigated cornfields. Alvarado notified Coronado that the expedition should move there for the oncoming winter. To establish a headquarters, Cárdenas commandeered a pueblo the Spaniards renamed as Coofor, forcing the Pueblo inhabitants out with nothing but the clothes they wore. Although Spanish accounts imply the Puebloans left Coofor voluntarily, archaeological excavations in the 1930s prove that an unreported battle took place there.