Running down the middle of modern New Mexico, the Rio Grande has long attracted human communities. For several thousand years, the valley's inhabitants have lived in pueblos (from the Spanish word for "towns"), where they raise corn, beans, and squash; conduct elaborate ritual dramas in open plazas and churchlike kivas to pray for rain; live communally in planned apartmentlike buildings; and govern themselves through officials who draw their authority from their membership in one or more native priesthoods.
Because the area is well watered, the Rio Grande's population has increased during recent centuries as refugees from drought and hostile conditions have joined more ancient inhabitants. When the Spanish arrived in 1540, the Pueblos belonged to two major language stocks: Keresan and Tanoan.
Keresan is a language isolate, perhaps distantly related to Hokan, and is spoken in five towns near the river (Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, and Sia), and two more (Acoma and Laguna) farther west. Although Cochiti maintains its own dialect, the other towns pair up into speech communities.
Tanoan, a branch of Uto-Aztecan, includes four living language groupings: Tewa (represented by the towns of San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Nambe, and Tesuque); Tano, or Southern Tewa (spoken at Hopi First Mesa); Tiwa (divided into a northern dialect at Taos and Picuris, and a southern one at Sandia and Isleta); and Towa (now spoken only at Jemez, but spoken at Pecos until 1838). Tanoan languages now extinct include Piro, spoken in the middle valley; and Tompiro, spoken in the nearby highlands.
After receiving reports of multistoried adobe towns in the vast territory north of Mexico, the viceroy of New Spain authorized the expedition of Francisco de Coronado to explore the area. In 1540 Coronado and several hundred men traveled north and occupied a native town near modern Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Spaniards lived off the stored crops of local Pueblo peoples. When their food supply was nearly depleted, the Pueblos counterattacked but were defeated. From this base, Coronado and his captains explored near and far. They trekked into the plains of Kansas, lured by the promise of gold and urged on by Indian guides who hoped to lose the Spaniards in the vast grasslands. When none of these expeditions found anything worth exploiting, Coronado and his forces returned to Mexico.
Lasting Spanish settlement in the Rio Grande began in 1598, when the adventurer Juan de Oñate and a party of colonists moved north of the area devastated by Coronado and occupied the west section of San Juan, which was inhabited by members of the Pueblo's "Summer half," and was called Yunque Owinge before it was renamed San Gabriel. The "Winter half" occupied the east side of the pueblo, known as Oke (Okeh) and later dedicated to San Juan. Oñate also began a missionizing program by distributing ten friars among the towns. Pueblos that resisted—such as Acoma—were brutally subjugated.
In 1610, the Spanish moved their capital from San Gabriel to a new location called Santa Fe, a river town that has remained the political center to this day. The Spanish settlers established haciendas throughout the Rio Grande valley and in the lands to the west. Under imperial law, the occupying Spanish supported themselves with food and labor provided by native communities living within their area. In many cases, the colonists abused these encomienda privileges by making impossible demands on the Indians' time and labor, adding further to Pueblo resentment.
In 1680, after several unsuccessful attempts to throw off the Spanish yoke, a concerted effort by most Pueblos, under the leadership of a native priest of San Juan named Popé, succeeded. Until the 1692 reconquest by Governor Diego de Vargas, New Mexico remained under native control, a lack of unified leadership eventually working against the rebels and leading to their downfall. Nevertheless, the returning Spaniards were more tolerant of native religion and culture.
Pueblos were governed by an independent Mexico from 1821 until 1846, when their lands were annexed by the United States. Both nations in turn reconfirmed the land grants assigned to each pueblo by Spain. Emerging from its role as the administrative center of Spanish Catholicism, the Keresan town of Santo Domingo became the meeting site for an informal All-Pueblo Council that became reorganized in 1922.
Modern Pueblo town governments show the consequences of the historical forces that have acted upon them. Each was, and to an extent still is, ruled by a religious hierarchy. Until the Spanish arrived, each town had a dual set of leaders, concerned, respectively, with civil or military, internal or external, matters. To this pairing, a Spanish royal decree added a third set of officials headed by an annually elected governor to deal with Spanish and Catholic administrators.
Over recent centuries, constant migration to the Rio Grande has complicated the linguistic and cultural landscape. Happily, superior archaeological research has clarified most major movements. Between about a.d. 1 and a.d. 1000, some Mogollons began moving north along the Rio Grande valley, distributing members of the Tanoan family as they went. Those who stayed in the lower Rio Grande became the Piros and Tompiros, with the Tiwas settling in the central valley. Tanoans who settled in present-day Colorado near Mesa Verde became Tewa ancestors, who later congregated along the Chama River before moving south to the Rio Grande. The Tanos developed somewhat apart in the Galisteo Basin southeast of Santa Fe. During the 1680 revolt the Tanos occupied the Spanish capital, settling to the west in the Española Valley after 1692, and moving to Hopi after 1700. Most divergent of the Tanoans are the Towas, who lived in the Pecos and Jemez Valleys until they joined together in 1838 at Walatowa (Jemez). Their language developed in the Largo upland region of northwestern New Mexico, which long remained a culturally conservative area, using pit houses long after other regions had begun building stone pueblos.
The Keresans, whose ancestors left the Colorado River seven thousand years ago, founded the Oshara sequence, a part of the prehistoric Anasazi tradition. Speaking a language isolate, they developed a highly coordinated intratribal organization that led, between a.d. 800 and a.d. 1150, to the flourishing of Chaco Canyon, a religious-pilgrimage complex with a dozen huge masonry towns and thousands of smaller hamlets. After that canyon was abandoned in the thirteenth century, towns moved east and eventually split the territory of the Tiwas living along the Rio Grande.
Between a.d. 1200 and a.d. 1400, a new religious organization emerged which served to integrate migrating groups into aggregate towns. Known as the Kachina (or Katsina) cult, this organization sponsored communal rituals that used elaborate masks to portray a variety of supernatural beings. Inspired by Mexican traditions, the Kachina cult moved into New Mexico along the Rio Grande. It flourished along the Upper Little Colorado between 1275 and 1325. Later elaborations appeared—among the Hopis about 1400, emphasizing rainmaking; and among the Jornada Mogollons of the Lower Rio Grande about 1450, with military overtones.
The modern kachina cult is distinguished by masks, group performances in the town plaza, and general membership by all townsmen (and women in half the Keresan towns). It fulfills a variety of community functions, as do the native priesthoods, but does so on a more democratic basis. In particular, the cult is associated with clouds and rain, along with curing, fertility, military strength, and ancestor worship.
Though each pueblo is distinctive if not unique, shared language, kinship, and religion establish some order amid the complexity. All pueblos are distinguished by the use of the kiva, a churchlike building that evolved from the pit houses used by Basketmakers, the archaeological predecessors of the Anasazi. Each town has one or more kivas, either round or square, entered by a ladder through a hatchway in the roof to represent the mythic opening into the underworlds. Inside, on the floor, are a hearth and standing altar, while around the sides is a built-in bench, called the fog seat, which represents billowing clouds and is the place where sacred items are kept. A separate development led to the style of chamber used by each of the native priesthoods, who provided the theocratic leadership of their respective towns.
Thousands of years of local development have produced a bewildering variety of cultural features among Rio Grande pueblos. Kiva shape provides a telling example. Among the northern Tiwas at Taos, kivas within the town wall are round, but those outside it are square. Among the Tewas, San Juan, Santa Clara, and Tesuque have square kivas, whereas San Ildefonso and Nambe have round ones. Kinship systems also differed in elaboration among the pueblos. The Keresans and their close neighbors like the inhabitants of Jemez identified clan membership through the mother. Affiliation with such a unit (known to scholars as a matriclan) could be the basis for access to farmland, homes, and inherited offices. Tanoans largely recognized family units traced through both mother and father, either simultaneously or in alternation. Keresans in particular have elaborated a series of native priesthoods to govern, organize, or cure. Those concerned with medicine divide between those using a brushing treatment for skin diseases, believed to be caused by angry animal spirits; and those advocating the sucking out of internal illnesses, believed to be caused by witchcraft and ill will.
In all, the cultural elaborations among the pueblos can be clearly seen by focusing on the number of kivas, the gender of initiates into the kachina cult, the source of definition for basic social units, the sequence of succession to an office, and the role of native priesthoods—most of the latter inspired by the Keresans.
Each Keresan town has two kivas, called East (Turquoise) and West (Squash). Children initiated into the "secret" that it is adults who wear the kachina masks and not the spirits themselves include only boys at Cochiti, Santo Domingo, and San Felipe, but both boys and girls at the other towns. Basic social units also divide, with the three named towns emphasizing the native priesthoods and the others combining these with membership in matriclans. When an officeholder dies, he is succeeded by his "left-hand man," who in turn is succeeded by the "right-hand" one; in Keresan towns, left is valued over right—the reverse of Euro-American Christian belief.
Each Tewa town has one large kiva, which recruits for the Summer or Winter halves through the father or paternal relatives. Tewas have no kachina cult as such, but the Finishing Ceremony is held for both boys and girls so they might know that adults wear masks of their deities. The social units of Tewa society are the Summer and Winter moieties, mediated by the Made People priesthoods. Within this priestly hierarchy, right has priority over left. Thus, the right-hand assistant assumes a vacated position, and the left-hand man moves up to become the new right-hand assistant. Tewas are cured by members of the Bear (or medicine) priesthoods.
Traditionally, the Tiwas had one large kiva per town, recruiting for each moiety through both parents and initiating both boy and girls. In succession to offices, Tiwas gave priority to the right-hand helper. Tiwa moieties of Winter and Summer included smaller constituents (called corn groups) something like clans. Medicine priesthoods cured the sick, and Isleta also benefited from masks and rituals provided by an immigrant colony from Laguna.
The Tanos, after three centuries among the Hopis, have been influenced by neighboring matrilineal clans. Tanos now have two kivas that recruit through matriclans, and both boys and girls are inducted into the kachina cult. The Tanos also have a group of masked curers called the sumakolih, which seem to be uniquely their own.
For Towa speakers at Jemez, two kivas recruit paternally, and both boys and girls are initiated into the kachina cult. Each of the priesthoods is linked to a particular matriclan. Succession within the priesthoods passes to the left-hand man, then to the right-hand one.
For the larger world, all Pueblos recognize six sacred directions and four sacred mountains, variously identified. For the Keresans, each mountain and direction is associated with particular supernatural colors, weather spirits, warriors, women, animals, birds, snakes, trees, and other features. The Tewas associate them with other colors, corn maidens, mammals, birds, snakes, trees, shells, and lakes.
Because New Mexico's unique history and cultural geography foster cultural diversity, its citizens feel comfortable using English, Spanish, and many native languages. In addition, the non-Pueblo public is eager to know more about tribal traditions. In this atmosphere, Rio Grande Pueblo peoples continue to thrive on their ancestral homelands.
See also
Pueblo Languages;
Zuni Pueblo.
Edward Dozier, The Pueblo Indians of North America (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970); Bertha Dutton, Indians of the American Southwest (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975); Alfonso Ortiz, The Tewa World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).
Jay Miller
Lenape
Lushootseed Research
