Pueblo
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For other uses, see Pueblo (disambiguation).
Pueblos are traditional Native American communities of the Southwest 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. 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 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." (Fletcher 1984)
Of the federally recognized Native American communities in the Southwest, those authorized 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.
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[edit] Colonial history
Early pueblo holdings in the American Southwest often included individual structures and community buildings. Before the arrival of Spanish immigrants, native people of the area had constructed villages, sometimes including large apartment block buildings and some of which remain in use centuries later.
Spanish rule established property holdings in much of the American Southwest. Spanish immigrants and Native Americans alike were assigned by law to various Pueblos. Many Pueblo heirs of Spanish heritage now live on, or hold interest in land grants, which are the modern legal embodiment of the Spanish administration of pueblos. However, the legal descriptions of the land grants were frequently overturned because they were poorly formed when compared to more modern legal descriptions. For example, the land grants would sometimes align to riverine landmarks rather than surveyors coordinates for the statements of boundaries; thus the wanderings of a river could and would overturn the claims granted to a landholder in the name of a King of Spain.
With the spread of photography and geographic information in the 19th and 20th century the term pueblo became popularly recognized afar as describing the original large multistory buildings of adobe, stonework and timber built by the Pueblo people.
[edit] Historic places
Historically, pre-Spanish 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.
[edit] Beliefs
The most highly developed Indian communities of the Southwest built large villages or pueblos at the top of the mesas, or rocky tableland typical to the region. The archetypal deities appear as visionary beings who bring blessings and receive love. A vast collection of myth define the relationships between man and nature and plants and animals. Man depended on the blessings of the gods, who in turn depending on prayers and ceremonies.
[edit] References
- Fletcher, Richard A. (1984). Saint James' Catapault: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela. Oxford University Press. (on-line text, ch. 1)
