Ancestral Puebloans

“ The Pueblo Indians have been resistant to change, but although still grinding their blue corn in primitive stone hand-mills, and dressed nearly as the first Spanish visitors found their ancestors in the same villages, there has been a slowly progressing revolution in the undercurrent of their thought, ideas, religion, customs, etc. ”

“ The Pueblo tribes of New Mexico and the Moquis of Arizona are a wonderful people when we consider the wall of savagism which envelopes them; their towns of many-storied structures are better foundations than usually exist for travelers' tales of magnificent cities; ruins are abundant, showing that the pueblo nations were 617 in the past more numerous, powerful, and cultured, than Europeans have found them; rich mines are now worked, and yet richer ones are awaiting development ”

“ The people living here offered but little resistance and were consequently humanely treated. They were found to be a peace-loving and agricultural race, living in great houses of adobe, hundreds of families in a single residence. Their descendants occupy the same dwellings to-day and retain the names given them at that time by the Spaniards. They were called Pueblos—from the Spanish pueblo, or village—and the Pueblos to-day constitute the most civilized and intelligent of our Indians. ”

“ The traditions of the Pueblo Indians, of New Mexico, are to the effect that they came from the north, and also that their ancestors formerly lived in the small houses we have described. But we do not mean to say that all the small houses and pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico are later in date than the cliff-houses. The pressure has always been from the north to the south. Neither would we be understood as saying that all the sedentary tribes, both ancient and modern, belong to the same stock of people. ”

“ Near the center of the area, in northern New Mexico and Arizona, live four groups of Pueblo or town building Indians—the Hopi, Zuñi, Keres, and Tewa or Tano—who represent a sort of élite of the native culture. They farm, make pottery, accumulate wealth in turquoise, are governed by priests, worship under a remarkably complex set of rituals, which involve altars, masks, symbols of all sorts, and a rude sort of philosophy. ”

“ These may possibly be idols, but are not always, for both old and young sometimes play with them as toys. They are a religious people. They believe in a Great Spirit and in a future life. Their forms of worship are very strange and sometimes cruel.
The tribes called Pueblos of New Mexico are not included with those which continue to live in the twenty-seven Pueblo towns, for whatever may have been their customs in past centuries, they are now very different from the Village Indians, who still live and worship after the manner of their ancestors. ”

“ A few of the natives retained their ancient customs, remaining apart and never mixing with others. Many of these can still be found living in towns and villages along the Rio Grande. They are known as Pueblos, and are much more honest and moral than the mixed race. ”

“ There is great variation among the different groups which make up the Pueblo Indians of today, but, in many cases, they have a cultural pattern that upholds the golden mean and discourages all extremes. ”

“ American scholars, with the best of reason, think this section affords the best vantage ground from which to study the question of native American culture. It presents us not only with ruins of past greatness, but in the inhabited pueblos, gives us a picture of primitive times, and invites us, by a careful study of their institutions, to become acquainted with primitive society.
Travelers and explorers describe the scenery of the Pueblo country as a very peculiar one. ”

“ They are by no means to be compared to the nomadic tribes of red-skins, everywhere infesting the prairie, plain, and mountain of the far West, for murder and plunder. Like other Pueblo tribes, these people show marked and distinctive peculiarities, not that they differ essentially in type from the other branches of the great aboriginal families, but as regards their originality in costume, and their strong conservatism. ”

“ The Tañoan pueblos have been pretty fully noted in the foregoing itinerary, but the Tusayan and Keresan have not been sufficiently treated. We must first come to an understanding of the term "Pueblo Indians." This is simply a convenient phrase, or façon de parler, to designate various tribes which, in New and Old Mexico, and Arizona, settled in permanent habitations, became attached to the soil, practiced agriculture, kept flocks, and built the kind of towns called "pueblos." They are thus collectively distinguished from all roving and more or less warring tribes; they are settlers, not nomads ”

“ Although a large number are engaged in the sale of blankets and Indian goods in the southwestern part of the Union, in the gold diggings of California, in Mormon settlements, in the small railroad stations of Arizona, the average Pueblo Indian prefers a settled life. He is domestic in his habits, and loves his family, his cattle, his farm and his neighbors as dearly as does his pale-faced brothers. ”

“ In 1540, when the Spaniards entered the Southwest, several tribes of nomadic Indians were warring on the Pueblo people and the population had dropped radically. When the Pueblo population was at its height there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of villages but when the Spaniards came they found less than eighty villages of Pueblo Indians and these were concentrated in a small area in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. Even after the Americans came the population continued to dwindle. ”

“ The influence of the church upon the pueblo system has of course not escaped well-informed ethnographers, but I suspect they have not always given it full credit for the hand it had in first founding, then maintaining in misery, and finally fetching to grief, some of these sorry settlements of inoffensive Indians, who had escaped the Apaches on one side and the Navajos on the other, to be herded about some mud joss-house and fleeced as fast as they acquired any substance worth stealing. ”

“ We tried quite hard to get a hearing from the natives that lived in and around El Paso, but the priest kept such a watch upon our moves that we had but little chance.
These natives are known as Pueblos. Never having mixed with the Spanish blood they are still pure blooded Indians. They are generally poor, occupying lands owned by the rich. ”

“ By investigation and comparison it has, however, been proved that the Pueblos have racial characteristics connecting them with some mysterious stage of human life even older than that of the more barbarous Toltecs or Aztecs. ”

“ By intermarriage with nomadic races and from other causes the character of Pueblo consanguinity is no doubt somewhat different from that of their ancient kin, but the character of the culture, as shown by a comparison of cliff-house and modern objects, has not greatly changed. ”

“ The descriptions of the Pueblo Indians given by the first visitors from civilized peoples would, to a great extent, apply to them at the present day, although in reality their lives have been profoundly modified and their indigenous development checked. ”

“ The Pueblos.—The Pueblo country in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, as is well known, is inhabited by various tribes of Indians speaking different languages, separated from one another and from all other tribes by differences of language, customs, and habit, but somewhat akin to each other in culture, and many things different from other tribes are peculiar to them. ”

“ In their culture, their ceremonies and ritual proceedings, as well as in their material arts, the Pueblos Indians of the south-western United States show, in many ways, their mental kinship with the creators and sustainers of the civilization of ancient Mexico and Central America. From the table of Indian tribes it will be seen that aborigines of the most diverse stocks have shown themselves capable of assimilating white culture and of adapting themselves to the new set of circumstances. Progress and improvement are not at all confined to any one stock. ”

“ The semi-civilized tribes win that epithet not so much because of their own personal habits as because of the roosters that crow around their barn-yards, the cattle, sheep, and hogs which indicate farms, sheds, and pens. The Pueblo Indians claim to have perpetuated their stage of civilization by the same tokens. ”

“ The cultural distinctions once drawn by writers between the Pueblo Indians and neighboring tribes gradually become less clearly defined as they have been intelligently studied. An understanding of their social and religious system establishes the essential identity in their grade of culture with that of other tribes. ”

“ That the people were vigorous and ambitious is indicated by the progress which they made. Now we see them nearing their cultural peak and it is time for us to leave the Developmental Pueblo period and move into the golden age of the Pueblos. ”

“ After the Spanish reconquered New Mexico in 1692, many Pueblo families from the Rio Grande sought sanctuary with the Navajos. Some of these refugees were absorbed into the tribe, and they brought with them not only weaving, but sheep raising, pottery and basketry techniques, architectural and agricultural ideas, the clan system, and much religious lore. ”

“ Four distinct races are now encountered by the traveller in New Mexico. These are:
The semi-civilised native races and their natural enemies require to be treated of separately. The Pueblo, or town Indians, are the most remarkable and important tribe to be found in any part of the United States or Canada; they are, in fact, the only native race whose presence on the soil is not more of a curse than anything else. ”

“ It is interesting to note that if we now proceed to the southwest of the United States and study the Pueblo people, we seem to find not only more distinctly marked affinities between their customs, etc., and those of the Mexicans, but also traces of similarity with certain Maya symbols. ”

“ The Pueblos are a peaceful people. They have had time to invent things that astonish the white men who have seen only the Indians of the wandering tribes.
The pueblo of Zuñi is in New Mexico, about two hundred miles southeast of Santa Fé. This Indian town was sought for by Coronado and his Spanish soldiers. They had heard marvelous stories of the silver, gold, and jewels owned by the red people living north of Mexico; but the Pueblos were brave as well as wise, and the history of that Spanish expedition is sad reading. ”

“ On the east such pueblos were found among mountains at the headwaters of the Arkansas, Platte, and Canadian rivers. The entire area drained by the Rio Grande del Norte was occupied by pueblo tribes, and a number are still inhabited. To the south they extended far beyond the territory of the United States, and the so-called Aztec cities were rather superior pueblos of this character. The known pueblo tribes of the United States belong to several different linguistic stocks. ”

“ The Pueblo, no less than the Aztec, is the most religious of human beings. His ceremonial, like that of the age of Montezuma, is wonderfully and minutely elaborated; and though originating in a civilization less splendid and refined, it is really less barbarous, since its rites have never, like those of the Aztec, included the horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalism. ”

“ The Pueblo Indians are to be congratulated on one fact especially, that they permitted their moral improvement through the agency of the black-frocked missionaries and school teachers who came from the East, but also that they are one of the few tribes who resisted the conscienceless rascals who would wreck their homes through "fire water" and gambling devices. ”

“ In the modern pueblos we are struck with the small cell-like rooms, yet they are but little smaller than the ordinary single houses plentifully found over the entire field of ruins. All the Pueblo tribes are agricultural, so were these old people. In fact, all evidence confirms the conclusion that the remnants of the Pueblo people that we have already described, are also the descendants of the people driven by hostile bands from north of the San Juan. ”

“ From all this it can be seen that the ethnologist has added much to our story. Since the Pueblo Indians of today are the descendants of the Pueblo Indians of a few centuries ago, a thorough knowledge of them is the soundest approach to an understanding of the ancient people. ”

“ If we are to attempt to understand the Pueblo Indian it becomes necessary to preface our inquiry by a brief outline, however superficial, of those general aspects of his religious belief and practice which scholars have agreed to consider as part of the common heritage of the race. ”

“ The Indians—a race called Pueblos—about here are quiet, civilised after a fashion and a bad one. There is a large settlement some miles farther on than Santa Fé where the train halted, and we were surrounded by red men eager for tobacco, women, and children, with turquoises to sell—keen-eyed, white-teethed, with masses of straight, coarse black hair, cut straight off the forehead, worn by the men in clubs behind, and by the women in unkempt locks. ”

“ All the Pueblo peoples are more advanced than the greater number of the neighbouring tribes; their matrimonial customs are more refined, their domestic life much happier, and they have an appreciation of love, a rare thing in primitive peoples. ”

“ He has shown himself more than a match for other barbarous tribes, and for the semi-civilized natives of New Mexico and Arizona. He infers that because we inhabit the houses of the last mentioned, and consort with them freely, in the absence of other society, that we are of the same general stamp and character. ”

“ Not only do the remains not point in themselves to any extinct race, but if there were any traditional or other evidence indicating the past agency of such a race, it would be impossible to reconcile the traditional with the monumental evidence except by the supposition that the Pueblos are a foreign people who took possession of the abandoned dwellings of another race, whose institutions they imitated to the best of their ability ”