When White men first discovered this abandoned site, they mistakenly thought it was part of Montezuma's Aztec empire. So they named it Montezuma's Castle. The name of the tribe who created this was named by other Whites "Sinaqua", which means "without water" in Spanish. This would seem to be another misnomer, since Montezuma's Castle is in a cliff banked against a quite lively river that the original inhabitants thoroughly used. The original residents of this site lived here from about 1100 AD to about 1400 AD and used ladders to climb up the cliff to reach their residences. Camp Verde, AZ, Sept. 19, 2005