MODULE 2

THE PUEBLOS

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Key Concepts:
Pueblo
pueblo
Western Pueblos
Eastern Tanoan Pueblos
Keresan Bridge Pueblos
sodality
moiety
cacique
kiva
clan
lineage
matrilineal
patrilineal
bilateral
compartmentalization

Reading Assignment, Text: Chapter 2, "The Pueblos," pp. 34-69

When most people think of the Southwest, they envision cliff dwellings tucked into canyon ledges and multistoried pueblos on sandstone mesas. These dramatic prehistoric ruins were left behind by the Ancestral Pueblos (Anasazi), Mogollon, and Hisatsinom, the ancestors of today's Puebloan peoples, who now live in villages along the Rio Grande and its tributaries in northern New Mexico, villages that are spread out westward toward Arizona, and in the villages on top of and near the three Hopi mesas in northeastern Arizona.

When the Spaniards arrived in 1540, they found over 40,000 Pueblo people living in roughly 90 villages on the Colorado Plateau. Impressed by their settled village lifestyle made possible by agriculture, they named the people, "Pueblo" or "town-dwellers." Today, Pueblo refers to Puebloan peoples collectively and individually, the people of a given village, and the village itself. Thus, we say, "the Pueblos live in the Southwest," "He is Pueblo," "She is San Ildefonso Pueblo," and "San Ildefonso Pueblo is holding a dance."

Pueblo homes tend to have contiguous alignment of rooms and, in some cases, multistoried terraced rooms that rise to four and five stories. Along the Rio Grande, these houses tend to be made of adobe, while away from the river, they are made of sandstone slabs or pumice blocks. While adobe brick was known among prehistoric Puebloan peoples, before Spanish contact, they generally used coursed adobe construction. Since the arrival of the Spaniards, adobe brick house construction has replaced coursed adobe.

Another common trait shared by Puebloans is their reliance on agriculture. All Puebloans live in the high arid plateau country of northern Arizona and northwestern and central New Mexico. Before contact, their important crops included maize, beans, gourds (squash), cotton, and tobacco. The Spaniards brought fruit trees such as apple, cherry, plum, and peach, along with wheat, alfalfa, and chili.

Puebloan peoples never constituted a single tribe, for each Pueblo village acts as an autonomous political entity and has its own distinct culture; while the people of some Pueblo villages spoke the same or similar languages, others spoke entirely unrelated languages. Despite this autonomy, Puebloans constantly traded, visited, and intermarried.