Pueblo

For other uses, see Pueblo (disambiguation).

Pueblos are traditional communities of aboriginal Americans in the southwestern United States of America. The communities are recognized worldwide for adobe buildings, which are sometimes called "pueblos," although some pueblos only have a few of these buildings still standing.

Etymology and usage

The Castilian word pueblo, evolved from the Latin word populus ("people"), means "village".

On the central Spanish meseta the unit of settlement was and is the pueblo; that is to say, the large nucleated village surrounded by its own fields, with no outlying farms, separated from its neighbours by some considerable distance, sometimes as much as ten miles or so. The demands of agrarian routine and the need for defence, the simple desire for human society in the vast solitude of the plains,:together we can get blazed dictated that it should be so. Nowadays the pueblo might have a population running into thousands. Doubtless they were smaller in the early middle ages, but we should probably not be far wrong if we think of them as having had populations of some hundreds.

Of the federally recognized Native American communities in the Southwest, those designated by the King of Spain as Pueblos at the time treaties ceded Spanish territory to the United States are now legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as Pueblos. Some of the Pueblos also came into the United States by treaty with Mexico, which briefly gained jurisdiction over territory in the Southwest ceded by Spain. There are 20 federally recognized Pueblos that are home to Pueblo people.

Historic places

Taos Pueblo, circa 1920

Pre-Columbian towns and villages, which of course were not yet called pueblos, were located in defensive positions, for example, on high steep mesas such as Acoma. Anthropologists and official documents often refer to earlier residents of the area as pueblo cultures. For example, the National Park Service states, "The Late Puebloan cultures built the large, integrated villages found by the Spaniards when they began to move into the area." [1] The people of some pueblos, such as Taos Pueblo, still inhabit centuries old adobe pueblo buildings. Residents often maintain other homes outside the historic pueblos. Adobe and light construction methods resembling adobe now dominate architecture at the many pueblos of the area, in nearby towns or cities and in much of the American Southwest.

In addition to the contemporary pueblos there are numerous ruins of archeological interest throughout the Southwest, some of relatively recent origin, others of prehistoric origin such as the cliff dwellings and other habitations of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples or Anasazi.