At varying times in the past, local economies and cultural practices depended on the Verde Valley's mineral resources. For the people of Tuzigoot, rocks provided material for paints, adornments, and stone carvings with personal and ritual significance. People living here had access to rare and sought-after resources including blue azurite, green malachite, red argillite, and salt from a local mine that remains vitally and culturally important to the region's indigenous groups today. These valuable minerals were traded with other groups to obtain goods. The Yavapai term for money is wi, meaning rock, reflecting the importance of rocks and minerals in trade. Yavapai consultants say their ancestors mined ores in the nearby mountains for centuries and traded them to other tribes. In the southern Verde Valley, white cliffs reveal a salt mine that provided one of the most valuable prehistoric resources in the Southwest; likely used for trade, salt may also have been ceremonially important. Important minerals from around the valley included salt, azurite, malachite, and argillite, a soft red mudstone used for beads and carvings, and although copper minerals were used, prehistoric peoples in the Verde Valley never extracted the metal.