Pueblo

The term referring to the indigenous peoples of what is now the American Southwest and the distinctive architecture of their houses and communities.

The term pueblo derives from the Spanish word for village. The Native Americans in the region now located in 1 Mexico and northern Arizona along the Colorado Plateau

Taos Pueblo in New Mexico (Hulton/Archive)

Shared certain characteristics that made them seem, to the Spaniards who first encountered them in the mid-16th century, similar to each other. The tendency to submerge the distinctive identities of indigenous communities into an undifferentiated mass was common in the 16th century and after, but in historic terms these peoples who shared aspects of their cultures also possessed specific cultural traditions. Hopi and ZuNi were among the Pueblo peoples whom Spaniards encountered, as were the residents of Acoma Pueblo and Tewa Pueblo.

The Pueblo peoples shared certain economic practices. All had long practiced agriculture by the time Europeans arrived, and like Native peoples in much of the Americas they relied on corn (maize), beans, and squash (the “three sisters” to the Iroquois). They all produced their own distinctive kinds of pottery, and to the present day the styles of design on pots differ from one pueblo to another. They used irrigation to provide sufficient water for their crops, and they engaged in trade to obtain goods that could not be found locally. The Pueblo peoples also produced such fine cotton that Native peoples across the Southwest knew of it before Europeans arrived.

The first knowledge that any Europeans received about the Pueblo came in 1528, when the shipwreck victim Alvar Nunuz Cabeza de Vaca and his companions heard about—but never saw—Indians who lived to the west, along the upper reaches of the Rio Grande, who were expert blanket makers. When Fray Marcos de Niza and an African named Esteban (who had traveled with Cabeza da Vaca) traveled into Zuni territory in 1539, he thought he had found the Seven Cities of Cibola, but when Esteban was killed in Hawikuh Pueblo, Marcos fled back into safer, already colonized parts of New Spain. Francisco Coronado and those who traveled with him became the first Europeans to spend any significant time among Pueblo peoples when they traveled through the Southwest from 1540 to 1542. Colonists arrived during the administration of Juan de Onate, who came to New Mexico in 1598. The Spanish brought missionaries with them to teach the Pueblo peoples the benefits of Christianity and European ways. Try as they might, neither the missionaries nor the colonists could make the indigenous peoples abandon their ancestral beliefs and practices. Although some communities adopted at least some elements of Christianity (and continue to observe some elements today, as is evident in the survival of the large church atop the mesa at Acoma Pueblo), the Native peoples of the region rose up against the intruders in 1680. That event, now known as the Pueblo Revolt, was the most successful indigenous rebellion against any European colonizing power in North America. Joined together under the leadership of Pope, from Tewa Pueblo, the Natives destroyed colonial settlements, murdered missionaries, and desecrated churches. Their actions drove the Spanish from New Mexico, at least for a time, although the colonizers returned and managed to suppress any further insurrections. By the end of the colonial period, many Pueblos that existed when the Spanish first arrived had ceased to exist, yet another sign of the costs of colonization for the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere.

Further reading: Fred Eggan, “Pueblos: Introduction,” in William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 9, Southwest, ed. Alfonso Ortiz (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 206-223; Barry M. Pritzker, A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Albert H. Schroeder, “Pueblos Abandoned in Historic Times,” in Southwest, ed., Ortiz, 236-254; Marc Simmons, “History of Pueblo-Spanish Relations to 1821,” in Southwest, ed., Ortiz, 178-193.