The desert Southwest, extending from the Rio Grande in present-day New Mexico to the California border, was the home of settled Pueblos and mobile raiders. The Pueblo and other settled peoples developed sophisticated forms of agriculture that efficiently used the limited water resources of the region. Some created extensive irrigation canals, while others relied entirely on scarce rainfall, diverting runoff onto planted fields. Nomadic Athabascan people entered the Southwest from the north in the mid-15th century, eventually splitting into the Apache, who remained nomadic raiders well after the 18th century, and the NAvaho, who combined raiding with agricultural practices learned from their settled neighbors. All were profoundly influenced by the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.
While representing several language groups, Pueblo people were organized in a similar fashion. They all lived in multistory adobe dwellings built around a central plaza. Each Pueblo possessed one or more round or square kivas, part of which was built below ground. It was entered by a ladder from the top. Within the kiva priests performed a variety of rituals generally associated with prayers for rain and successful crops. Pueblo society practiced a form of dual leadership that made some priests responsible for civil and internal matters while a second group was responsible for military and external affairs. Agriculture was both individual and communal. Individual families controlled the use of planting grounds, while the entire community worked to repair and clean irrigation ditches. Before the arrival of the Spanish, crops consisted primarily of maize, beans, and squash.
The Akimel Au Authm (Pima) constructed a large elaborate irrigation system in the Salt River Valley in and around present-day Phoenix. This system, developed over several hundred years, consisted of miles of main canals and diversion ditches. Others in the Arizona region relied on a type of flood irrigation that took advantage of run-off from thunderstorms by building numerous small temporary dams to spread the water across a field located at the mouth of an arroyo. The Tohono O’odham (Papago) used such methods in the Gila River Valley, planting numerous fields to ensure that some produced a crop.
The Spanish arrival altered both farming and governance among the sedentary people of the Southwest. Spanish explorers and Catholic priests introduced wheat, fruit trees, and livestock (primarily sheep) to the region. They also imposed a civil government on the Pueblo. While Native priests remained important and powerful within Pueblo societies, an appointed and later elected governor acted as a mediator between the Spanish and the Catholic Church. Over time rivalries between secular leaders and traditional priests created serious factionalism with-in Pueblo society. By far the most important Spanish introduction altering Southwest Native life, however, was the horse.
Spanish rule was harsh, leading to confiscation of Native land and enslavement of Native people. Several unsuccessful rebellions preceded a major revolt in 1680, led by a warrior priest from San Juan Pueblo named PoPE. The Rio Grande pueblos, supported by those as far west as Zuni and Hopi, pushed the Spanish out of the region for nearly 12 years, although the Spanish returned and reasserted their control. While the settled people of New Mexico eventually learned to live with their Spanish overseers, the Spanish were never successful in bringing the Apache and Navajo under their control.
Undoubtedly, Spanish horses found their way into Native hands before 1680, but the revolt probably increased the number of horses available to the Apache and Navajo. Horses had few predators to limit their numbers and consequently multiplied rapidly. By the time the Spanish returned to the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico and initiated their invasion of the homeland of the Akimel Au Authm and Tohono O’odham in Arizona after 1690, they confronted skillful, horse-mounted, mobile warriors. The Apache and to a lesser extent the Navajo resisted and terrorized both the Spanish and Native farmers for the next 175 years.
Further reading: Ramon A. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991).
—Thomas R. Wessel
World History
