The Western Pueblos-Hopi, Hano, Laguna, Acoma, and Zuni-practice matrilineal kinship, and everyone belongs to their mothers' clans. When a couple marries, they go to live with the wife's parents (matrilocal residence). Women own the houses and garden plots.

The Katsina cult is extremely important; Katsinam are ancestral beings who have the power to bring rain and well-being. These pueblos are theocracies, and clans dominate government, religious, subsistence, and community affairs. Although Zuni, discussed in Module 4, has more centralized political authority, in general, political power is most dispersed among the Western Pueblos (in comparison to the other two regional groups). In an environment where the success or failure of crops is never certain from year to year, ceremonies emphasize on weather control and rainmaking. A bountiful harvest is believed to be the result of the successful observance of religious retreats and rituals.

The Eastern Tanoan Pueblos-Tesuque, Nambe, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, San Juan, Taos, Picuris, Sandia, Isleta, and Jemez-practice a dual chieftainship based the division of the village into two groups, each of whom governs for half of the year. Each group is called a moiety and the individual usually joins the moiety of his or her father, but this affiliation may be changed later for various reasons. Children may be assigned alternately to one moiety and then to the other if the parents belong to different moieties. The important unit of social, ceremonial, and governmental organization is the moiety. Each moiety is headed by a cacique (village chief) with his own staff, headed by a war captain who carries out the decisions of the cacique.

These pueblos are bilateral which means that both the father's and the mother's lines are important, with land use rights being passed on to both daughters and sons. Except for Jemez, none of these pueblos have matrilineal clans.

The Katsina cult is weak, if it is present, and has none of the power that it does in the Western Pueblos. The ceremonial focus is warfare and hunting. Sodalities (nonkinship associations) are social and ceremonial associations that have special functions, such as hunting, warfare, clowning (associated with the Katsina cult), and, in some cases, medicine. A major role that sodalities play is uniting the pueblo because each sodality has members from both moieties. Thus, factionalism is minimized because sodality members share a common focus.

It was the Eastern Tanoan Pueblos that experienced the greatest pressure from representatives of all three Spanish groups-the Catholic church, the civil government, and the military. Religious oppression-not only were Puebloans forbidden from practicing their native practices but some of their medicine men were also executed-led the Pueblos to compartmentalize the two religions. Thus, they outwardly practiced the Catholicism that was forced upon them, while they secretly continued their traditional beliefs and practices, keeping the two separate and distinct.

The Keresan Bridge Pueblos-Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Santo Domingo, and Cochiti-had the most centralized political authority of all three groups because of the power vested in the medicine societies who coordinated communal tasks instead of simply fulfilling less specific functions as they did at other pueblos. In addition to their usual duties related to curing of disease and rites of exorcism, medicine societies in Keresan Bridge Pueblos played a much greater role than elsewhere by exerting a powerful influence in preserving traditional ways. The medicine societies have also assumed governmental and ceremonial functions. Through their status as medicine men they exerted a great deal of influence over other people, to the point of being called an embyonic ruling class. The village chief (cacique) and his assistants in Keresan pueblos are medicine men. The governmental and religious duties that clans have as part of their dominant role in the Western Pueblos, are the responsibility of medicine societies in Keresan pueblos, thus consolidating authority in a small, powerful group of officers. The focus of Keresan ceremonies tends to be on curing and warfare.