Pueblo Indians of Historic Times

IN THE period of instability from about 1275 A.D. to 1400 or 1450, the Pueblo Indians abandoned most of their former domain. By five hundred years ago, they had concentrated in the three general areas where the Spanish explorers and Franciscan missionaries found them, and where they still live today. These three districts are the Hopi country in northeastern Arizona, the vicinity of Zuñi, and the Rio Grande area in New Mexico. The forested mountains of central Arizona and southwestern New Mexico and the high dry plateau of the San Juan drainage had been left to the Navajo and other Apaches, to the Yavapai and Havasupai on the west, and possibly to still other enemy hunters.

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards found many more villages in each of the three regions still occupied by Pueblo Indians. This was true especially of the Rio Grande area. For 250 years there have been no living pueblos south of Isleta (only ten miles below Albuquerque), except for the refugee settlements in the vicinity of El Paso which began at that same period of rebellion and reconquest, 1680-1700. There are only two, Sandia and Isleta, below the mouth of the Jemez River.

But the early entradas, 400 years ago, list numerous Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande, as far south as San Marcial (on the upper end of Elephant Butte Lake, below Socorro). There were several pueblos along the east side of the mountains, from Pecos south to beyond Mountainair, in the early historic period. There were a number of Jemez villages, until the Spaniards congregated the Jemez people at a single mission center. To the north, Taos and Picuris were, as today, the pueblo outposts.

Westward from the Rio Grande Valley, Acoma had already stood for years atop its picturesque mesa. There apparently was a small outlying farm village of some kind where Laguna was settled, under Spanish auspices, about 1699. In the Zuñi valley there were six large pueblos in the 16th century; the Moqui (Hopi) towns numbered five or possibly six at first, but only four were essentially the same as modern villages; and only one, Oraibi, now dying, has not shifted its location since it was first seen by Europeans.

The people of the Southwest, whom the Spaniards found in the 16th century, lived as had their predecessors of the great pueblos now in ruin. Diligent farmers and skillful builders, they supplemented their basic agricultural diet by hunting with the bow and arrow, and they varied their essentially rural existence by trade with distant tribes. Lacking metal tools, livestock, and wheeled vehicles, they nevertheless had a well-developed and successful way of life in settled communities of farmers.

The narratives of the Spanish expeditions record the four-storied "white-washed" houses, the corn, squashes, and beans, the hoes, the crockery, the turquoises, the woven cotton garments and feather-string blankets, the dressed skins of small animals, the hide moccasins, the domesticated turkeys (kept for their feathers rather than for food), the corn-grinding stones, the bows and arrows, war clubs and leather shields, the kivas and idols and ceremonial dances, of the Pueblo Indians.

The primary "tool" of the archeologists, pottery, receives very little attention in the documents. From archeological studies, however, we know what kinds of pottery were being made in the 16th century. The polychrome yellow pottery of the Moqui (Hopi) was much like modern "Hopi" pottery, which is a 20th century revival by the Tewas living on First Mesa, originally stimulated by and imitating the late prehistoric Sikyatki ware found by archeologists (dating specifically from Dr. J. W. Fewkes' digging in the 1890's). In the 16th century the Zuñi were making a buff ware with polychrome decoration resembling (probably inspired by and imitating) the Hopi pottery. The various groups in the Rio Grande area were almost all producing glaze-paint polychrome, mostly with a light-colored surface decorated in black or brownish glaze and red matte paint.

Only the Jemez and the northern Tewa still manufactured black-on-white pottery in the old northern tradition, and that of the Tewa (north of Santa Fe) was a soft gray "biscuit" ware, often cream-colored or brownish. The glaze-paint pottery, with minor local variations, was made all the way from Taos to below Socorro and south of Mountainair, and from Zuñi to Pecos. Originally a western development, the glaze paint had been discontinued at Zuñi before the arrival of the Spaniards, but was later resumed for a time. In east-central Arizona and in the Zuñi area, copper had constituted the glaze; in the Rio Grande, lead was used.

The Spanish conquistadores were little concerned with pottery types, naturally. More significant differences be-tween groups of pueblos were noted in the records. The differences in language, of course, were conspicuous. Costumes of various pueblos are described. That the Zuñi did not raise cotton but got their cotton items from the Hopi is pointed out. The documents of the first expedition, in 1540, state that the Zuñi were cremating their dead-a fact borne out by archeological findings (in Dr. F. W. Hodge's excavations at Hawikuh 30 years ago when both cremations and inhumations were found) and a practice not otherwise found among the Pueblo Indians at any time.

tween groups of pueblos were noted in the records. The differences in language, of course, were conspicuous. Costumes of various pueblos are described. That the Zuñi did not raise cotton but got their cotton items from the Hopi is pointed out. The documents of the first expedition, in 1540, state that the Zuñi were cremating their dead-a fact borne out by archeological findings (in Dr. F. W. Hodge's excavations at Hawikuh 30 years ago when both cremations and inhumations were found) and a practice not otherwise found among the Pueblo Indians at any time.

The arrival of Europeans, strange-looking bearded men, with horses and sheep and with armor and steel weapons (and harquebuses and crossbows), must have amazed and frightened the Pueblos, but for some time it had virtually no effect on their pattern of living. Forty years-roughly an average lifetime-elapsed between the first expedition and those of the 1580's. Some Spanish objects and two Mexican Indians left behind by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado were found at Zuñi, but the sheep left at Pecos and the missionary priests who remained were undoubtedly all promptly killed, as were the Franciscans who stayed at Puaray (close to Bernalillo) in 1581.

Even the first attempt at actual settlement, by Gaspar Castaño in 1590, when civil governor and other native of-ficers were appointed at pueblos around the present Santa Fe and Albuquerque, undoubtedly made no significant change in the Pueblo way of life. Nor did the Spanish colonization of New Mexico, beginning in the summer of 1598 under Don Juan de Oñate, make a difference at first. But this time the Europeans stayed. Missions were established at most of the pueblos, and in 1610 a new town, Santa Fe, was founded. By 1630 the missionary sphere had expanded southeast to "Humanas" (Gran Quivira) and west to Moqui (Hopi).

Acoma, The Sky City of New Mexico, is built on a high mesa that stands hundreds of feet above encircling plains. Natives of this picturesque pueblo bitterly fought against the Spaniards and European civilization in latter part of seventeenth century.

Eagle dancer of Pueblo of Tesuque

The conquerors, and particularly the Franciscan priests, brought to the Southwest many new things. In addition to political control and Catholic religion, the Pueblos received new crops, new implements and materials, and new techniques; also actual objects from Mexico and Europe and even the Far East. Most important, perhaps, were steel tools and livestock. Scarcely less important were the new crops, notably wheat and melons and peach trees.

The material and useful things were adopted by the

Pueblos and were worked into their scheme of living. The alien ideas, Christianity and the Spanish imperial dominion, were less readily accepted. Despite "conversions" and despite the padres' attempts to stamp out the pagan rituals, the native religion survived; and it still lives. Despite the Spaniards' installations of pueblo governments of European type, the native system of organization and control persisted and still operates.

In the summer of 1680 resentment against the intruders came to a head in a unique concerted action, a successful conspiracy and violent rebellion, in which many of the Franciscan missionaries were martyred at their scattered stations, the Spaniards retreated down the Rio Grande to El Paso (which had its beginning thus), and Santa Fe itself was taken by the victorious Indians and was occupied from 1680 to 1693 by the Tanos (southern Tewa) of Galisteo. Only after twelve years, in 1692, did the Spanish reconquest begin.

Considerable rearrangement of the Pueblo population occurred within the period of the rebellion and reconquest. The people of the Socorro and Mountainair districts, loyal to their new masters, accompanied the Spaniards to El Paso in 1680, founded new pueblos there, and never returned north. The people of the Bernalillo-Albuquerque district went, in large part at least, to the Hopi country; they were persuaded to come back to the Rio Grande and refound Sandia only after half a century, in the 1740's. The people of the Galisteo Basin, south of Santa Fe, abandoned their four large pueblos there; part of the Tanos district disappeared as separate groups, and part-after a brief second attempt at revolt in 1696-fled to the Hopi country, where they still live as the Tewa of First Mesa (Hano).

Other groups retired to mountain or mesa-top refuges temporarily; they were persuaded between 1692 and 1700 or so to come down again to their villages. Acoma had to be besieged and attacked, not for the first time in its history, and even the Spanish city, Santa Fe, had to be retaken by storm. Laguna was established with people from several pueblos.

The Hopi Pueblo of Old Oraibi is oldest inhabited place in U.S.A. Except for clothes, sunglasses, coffee, dishes and pots this scene could have been taken in the Pueblo III Classic period. Tobacco was used by the earlier Indians but only in ceremonies.

To the west, the Zuñi reoccupied only one of their six pre-rebellion towns on descending from their refuge settlement atop the great mesa Corn Mountain (Towayallane), and the Hopi were never reconquered. No longer part of New Mexico, in effect, the recalcitrant Hopi and the apostate Tanos (the Tewa of Hano) and other refugees from the Rio Grande defied, from their mesa-top locations, Spanish attacks, and generally ignored missionary efforts. The one Hopi pueblo that started to accept the returning Franciscans after the rebellion, Awatovi, was destroyed-sacked, massacred, and burned-by the other Hopis (and, undoubtedly, the Rio Grande people) in the winter of 1700-1701.

Many of the Pueblo Indians, also, fled to join the Apaches de Navajo. A large number of these never came back, but instead became Navajos; to this may be traced most of the great differentiation between the Navajo and other Apaches.

After 1700, however, Spanish control of the Rio Grande Valley and of the pueblos (except in the Hopi country) was secure, challenged only by Navajo raids and occasional other Apache attacks, and by the newly arrived and far fiercer Comanches of the Plains. Pueblo resistance after the one outburst of violence was passive, taking the form of turning inward, maintaining outward stolidity while quietly carrying forward their own social organization and, enveloped in secrecy, their own religious beliefs and ceremonials.

Comparatively few major changes in Pueblo culture or in distribution of Pueblo population occurred after the period of changes ending around 1700. Sandia was resettled, and some of the Jemez came back from Hopi and from among the Navajo. Galisteo was refounded in 1706, and abandoned again in 1794, by the Tano Indians, reduced to a small number by epidemic diseases and Comanche attacks. In 1838 the few survivors of Pecos left their similarly decimated great pueblo to join their linguistic kindred at Jemez.

For more than a hundred years now, the Pueblo Indians have been within the United States, and have more and more become fellow citizens, sharing in varying degree in our way of life, as most conspicuously seen in tangible objects such as automobiles and radios, and participating fully and actively in our military efforts in defense of that way of life. Much of the essential pattern of the old Pueblo way-much of the pre-Spanish life of loosely organized settled communities of neolithic farmers-nevertheless persists, and the religious dances, pottery vessels, and other picturesque customs and objects of the modern Pueblos represent an ancient American cultural tradition, deriving without a break in a fifteen-hundred-year continuity from the early people of whose activities the material remains are preserved-occasionally and partially-in the archeological sites of the Southwest, and whose descendants still live at Hopi and Zuñi and along the upper Rio Grande.