The mesa country of northeastern Arizona was inhabited by the Hopi, like the Pima and Papago, a Uto-Aztecan tribe. Central New Mexico was home to the Zuni, who spoke a distinct language of their own, and in eastern New Mexico lived the Pueblo tribes, who spoke several different languages. Though each were distinct tribes by this time, the Hopi, the Zuni, and the Pueblo all shared many similar cultural traits that point to a common ancient heritage, and all are usually grouped together as the Pueblo. Pueblo, of course, is not an Indian name at all; it does not constitute a language family, nor is it a tribal name. Pueblo is a Spanish word meaning town, and it came into usage in early Spanish colonial times as a convenient generic term for all the Indians who lived in the permanent adobe towns throughout the Southwest.
When the Spanish arrived in the American Southwest, the Pueblo people had already lived in their towns for many centuries – a heritage of the ancient Anasazi, whose culture they continued with remarkably few changes. Towns like Zuni, Acoma and Taos are but a few of the pueblos still surviving today from among nearly a hundred inhabited during early Spanish times. And before any Europeans ever arrived, there must have been literally hundreds more such pueblos, most of which were abandoned and destroyed during years of frequent droughts, or during the ever-increasing raids by newcomers like the Apache, the Navajo, and the Comanche.
Many of the later pueblos clearly show the impact of such raids; built on top of steep-sided mesas, they were constructed with a strong defensive position in mind. Some of these stone and adobe buildings rose to heights of five or six stories in terraced tiers; the only access to the upper stories was by ladders, which could be withdrawn in case of an attack, making the entire structure a defensive fort. The interior of the houses was usually white-washed with burned gypsum, but the room contained only few furnishings. Small niches in the walls served as cupboards and as storage areas. The inhabitants slept on blankets and skins spread on the floor. The thick-walled houses, naturally cool in the summer, were easily heated in cold weather by corner fireplaces.
Within a pueblo, each house of connecting rooms was occupied by a single household, an extended family organized along the female lines. The women owned the houses – which seems only fair, since they also did most of the construction and the mud plastering; they owned the fields as well, and they decided what was to be planted. When a girl married, her husband moved in with her family, and additional rooms were added to the house as needed. It was this constant addition of rooms that gave many of the pueblos that typical jumbled look.
A woman usually lived her entire life in the household of her birth. With her might reside as many as twenty or more other people – three or four generations of women, their husbands and children and their unmarried brothers. All other males were considered outsiders, and if a woman decided to divorce her husband, she simply placed his personal possessions outside the house; there were no other claims to be settled since the women owned everything else. The divorced man, on the other hand, could always expect a welcome at his sister’s or mother’s household; they were more than happy to gain another helping hand. Even happily married men, in fact, considered their mother’s or sister’s household as their real home; they remained deeply involved in their affairs and always returned to them on ceremonial occasions.
A Pueblo community was a closely knit unit in which, for the welfare of all, the individual was subordinated to the group. Individualistic qualities, in fact, were looked upon as offensive to the supernatural powers, and in a land so often threatened by drought and enemy attacks, no community was anxious to provoke the anger of the gods. Young people were taught to value modesty and passiveness, to avoid any sort of conflict and violence. Much as among the Indians of the Sub-Arctic, competitiveness, aggressiveness, even ambition to lead were frowned upon; children were treated gently and permissively, though if they got out of hand, they were sometimes threatened with punishment by the spirits. To the outsider, therefore, Pueblo society appeared as good-natured, cooperative and peaceful; the very name of the Hopi, in fact, means the peaceful ones.
But if these people were generally peaceful, in this region they could not have existed for very long without some show of force. Their very nature made them tempting targets for more aggressive neighbors, and they also possessed a great deal more in material wealth than most, including stores of food, which usually was reason enough for an attack. Some of the newcomers to the area – Apache and Navajo, in particular – made the Pueblo their special targets, raiding them for anything they could lay their hands on – food, clothing, jewelry, livestock, even women and children. But while the Pueblo fought fiercely in defense of their homes, they very rarely played the aggressor – there are almost no known instances when Pueblo fought an offensive war against another people. But the fears and inhibitions of the people, reinforced by frustrations from the suppression of all aggression, sometimes led to more or less serious disagreements among the inhabitants of a village. Usually it was little more than petty arguments or gossip, but sometimes these disagreements would spread throughout an entire pueblo, and at least one large group of Hopi is known to have moved away from one town and to have founded another as the result of such arguments.
For the most part, it was religious ceremonies that occupied the life of a male Pueblo Indian, though none of these towns had the powerful shamans or the almost hysterical rituals so common among many of the Native American tribes. Pueblo religious festivals and their ceremonies were orderly and meticulously prescribed by tradition. There were many elaborate rituals in a year-round succession, all rich in myth and folklore, all conducted in beautifully decorated costumes, with songs and dances and poetic recitals. Most of these ceremonies were performed to impress the spirits, to bring on a cure, to make it rain, or to assist the people in planting and harvesting.
Every pueblo also contained at least one kiva, a secret ceremonial chamber, usually built underground. These kivas were barred to women and children; it was there that the men of the pueblo conducted the religious rites, and where the priests kept their sacred objects, the painted and feathered masks and the costumes. Many of these ceremonies lasted a week or more, and in the seasonal cycle of rituals, such ceremonies often followed one another. Observing these religious festivals was a time-consuming duty; Pueblo men, in fact, were said to have devoted at least half their lives to such religious activities.