Pueblo peoples

“ Not only do the ruins of this group bear no resemblance to those of the south, but they represent in all respects buildings like those still inhabited by the Pueblo tribes and the Moquis, and do not differ more among themselves than do the dwellings of the peoples mentioned. Every one of them may be most reasonably regarded as the work of the direct ancestors of the present inhabitants of the Pueblo 684 towns, who did not differ to any great extent in civilization or institutions from their descendants, though they may very likely have been vastly superior to them in power and wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The facts conform still more closely to the step pyramid arrangement when consideration is given not to pottery alone but to the whole culture—agriculture, other arts, social forms, ritual, religious organization, and the like. In that case Pueblo culture is seen to comprise easily the greatest number of traits or component parts, and these to grow fewer and fewer towards the edges of the Southwest. ”

“ The exactions of the commanders, the outrages of the soldiers, and the interference of the missionaries with the old-time pleasures and ceremonies of the Indians, bred discontent, and in 1680, under the leadership of Popé, a medicine man of the Tewa, there was a simultaneous rising of the Pueblos from the Pecos to the Hopi villages so sudden and complete in its surprise that priests, soldiers, and civilians were everywhere butchered, and the survivors after holding out for a time under Governor Otermin at Santa Fé fled to El Paso, leaving not a single Spaniard in New Mexico. ”

“ 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 ”

“ As for our own upstart civilization, in this clime of ancient Pueblo refinements one must own that it takes on the color of an impertinence, and as incongruously exhibits itself as a brand-new patch on a long-worn garment. ”

“ Houses on Rocks and Sand Hills--How Many Families Dwelt Together in Unity--Peculiarities of Costumes--Pueblo Architecture and Folk Lore--A Historic Struggle and How it Ended--Legends Concerning Montezuma--Curious Religious Ceremonies.
Perhaps the most peculiar people to be found in our native land are the Pueblos, who live in New Mexico between the Grande and Colorado Rivers. When Coronado, the great explorer, marched through the territory 450 years ago, he found these people in a condition of at least comparative civilization. ”

“ Take it all in all, this is, indeed, a singular region, and the Pueblo tribes were a singular people. Their architecture shows us a people in the Middle Status of Barbarism. That they practised agriculture is shown by the presence of old irrigating ditches. Corn and corn-cobs are found in the rubbish-heaps of old settlements. Mr. Morgan thinks that the valley of the San Juan and its numerous tributaries was the place where the Indian race first rose to the dignity of cultivators of the soil.36 Cotton cloth has been found in the ruins on the Salado River. ”

“ 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 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 Indian tribes that roamed over mountain and plain have become wards of the Government, debased and denuded of whatever dignity they once possessed, ascribe what cause you will for their present condition. But the Pueblo Indian has absolutely maintained the integrity of his individuality, and is self-respecting and self-sufficient. He accepted the form of religion professed by his Spanish conquerors, but without abandoning his own, and that is practically the only concession his persistent conservatism has ever made to external influence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a significant fact that these people do not all belong to the same stock. On the contrary, the “Pueblo Indians” are members of a number of wholly disconnected stems. This proves that the Pueblo civilization is not due to any one unusually gifted lineage, but was a local product, developed in independent tribes by the natural facilities offered by the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and conditions, which were unusually favorable to agricultural and sedentary occupations, and prompted various tribes to adopt them. ”

“ They did not look to them for leadership for certainly there was no union among the people. Probably there were never more than a few thousand Pueblo Indians in the Mesa Verde at any one time. They lived in hundreds of more or less independent villages. While some of these villages seem large and impressive today, they may have had little real importance in ancient times for only a small percentage of the people lived in them. The bulk of the population was in the hundreds of small towns each of which was an independent community that contained no more than a few dozen people. ”

“ The name Pueblo (city) is used to designate a number of tribes of town-building Indians in New Mexico. They resemble one another very closely in their surroundings, and in their manners and customs; and their history has been the same. Subdued by Coronado in 1540, they made a successful revolt two years later, but were subdued again in 1586. In 1680 they made another unsuccessful revolt. When the country was ceded to the United States in 1848, these Indians were recognized as citizens, and have since remained so. Their houses are communal, generally but one structure for the whole village. ”

“ If we must feel that the Southwest learned from Mexico “how to grow and weave cotton, to irrigate, [177] to build in stone, to obey priests,” we are at the same time impressed by an intrinsic difference in its development and practice from that of Mexico, as we see it in the Pueblo civilization.
THE ILLIMITABLE DESERT
Bolton
Each pueblo is a tribal unit formed of few or many clans, as the case may be, always matrilinear in descent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Admittedly, the latter part of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century was a period of great instability, migrations occurred, and centers of population shifted. Once the shift had been made, however, important new communities developed in the drainages of the Little Colorado and the Rio Grande, and a renaissance began. It seems entirely possible that the Pueblo people might have achieved another remarkably high cultural stage had it not been for the arrival of the Spaniards in 1540. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A STUDY OF PUEBLO POTTERY AS ILLUSTRATIVE OF ZUÑI CULTURE-GROWTH. BY FRANK H. CUSHING. HABITATIONS AFFECTED BY ENVIRONMENT.
It is conceded that the peculiarities of a culture-status are due chiefly to the necessities encountered during its development. In this sense the Pueblo phase of life was, like the Egyptian, the product of a desert environment. Given that a tribe or stock of people is weak, they will be encroached upon by neighboring stronger tribes, and driven to new surroundings if not subdued. ”

“ There are no instances on record of disputes such as are met with in boarding-houses patronized by white people, and in this one respect, at any rate, quite a lesson is taught us by the Pueblo tribes. The people are quiet and peaceable in disposition, and one secret of their peaceful dwelling together is found in the absence of jealousy, a characteristic or vice which does not seem to have penetrated into the houses on the cliffs, or to have sullied the dispositions of these people with such a remarkable and creditable history. ”

“ Fitzpatrick, in writing from Bent's Fort in 1847, thus describes the old Pueblo:—
About seventy-five miles above this place, and immediately on the Arkansas River, there is a small settlement, chiefly composed of old trappers and hunters; the male part of it are mostly Americans (Missourians) , French Canadians, and Mexicans. It numbers about one hundred and fifty, and of this number about sixty men have wives, and some have two. These wives are of various Indian tribes, as follows; viz. Blackfeet, Assiniboines, Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Snakes, and Comanches. ”

“ We purchase corn of some of the people, and after feeding our animals they are intrusted to two Indian boys, who, under the direction of the cacique, take them to a distant mesa to herd. This is my first view of an inhabited pueblo, though I have seen many ruins from time to time. At first I am a little disappointed in the people. They seem scarcely superior to the Shoshones and Utes, tribes with whom I am so well acquainted. Their dress is less picturesque, and the men have an ugly fashion of banging their hair in front so that it comes down to their eyes and conceals their foreheads. ”