The Sinagua lived in a closely knit community beside Beaver Creek, building large, carefully constructed villages such as Montezuma Castle and Castle A and using other ledges and caves along the cliffside. For about 300 years they farmed there and carried on the daily life of a settled neighborhood of families and friends. Sometime around A.D. 1400 the community began to break up, and within 50 years Montezuma Castle was completely deserted. The reason remains unknown, with disease, drought, overpopulation, invasion, inter-group strife, and the breakup of trade networks all suggested as possibilities. Hopi Indian legends and lifeways suggest the Sinagua may have joined the Hopi on their mesas to the southeast.