Contents:
(Click on the appropriate link)
Origins of the Amerindians
Variations in Indian languages
Games and entertainment
Social and political organization
American Indian Culture areas
Spirituality
Conclusion
Bibliography
3. The Southwest
This region includes a vast inland area covering the present day states of Arizona, New Mexico, southern Colorado, and adjacent northern Mexico. It comprehends three sectors: northern (Colorado, northern Arizona, northern New Mexico), with high valleys and pine forests; southern (southern Arizona, southern New Mexico, adjacent Mexico), with deserts; and western (the Arizona-California border area), a smaller area divided between a dry area and a less arid valley.
The Pueblo Indians are often thought of as one people but there were actually many tribes among them. They spoke a variety of languages, belonging to four distinct language families. Customs also differed somewhat from place to place. In northern Arizona were the Hopi villages on high, flat-topped, rocky plateaus and the Zunis, across the border in New Mexico. These two village groups are called the desert Pueblos. Next came the river Pueblos along the Rio Grande and its tributaries in eastern New Mexico. Between lay several other Pueblos.
The Indians of the Southwest had land that was high, dry, and cut by mountains and canyons. They had little rain, but it came mostly in summer when it could help plants grow. Snow fell on the mountains in winter and supplied water for streams.
a) Housing
The population was apparently organized in large villages according to lineage. Each of the larger houses was a village that sometimes grouped together up to 1,000 people. Pueblo homes had several stories and many rooms. These community structures ranged from 20 to as many as 1,000 rooms on one to four stories. When the Spanish explorers saw them in the 16th century, they called the community houses pueblos from the Spanish word for village. To keep out enemies, they made the ground story without doors or windows and residents had to use ladders to reach their apartments. Desert peoples used slabs of sandstone to build thick walls. River valley people made walls of earthen material containing a mixture of clay and sand called adobe. Later, the Spaniards taught the Indians to make bricks by shaping adobe in wooden molds and drying it in the sun. Each family had only one room and each pueblo had dark interior rooms for storing corn, pottery, clay, wood, and sacred objects of the families and clans. The aboveground houses included those storage rooms and a round subterranean ceremonial chamber called kivas for religious purposes. There the men taught the boys religious legends and dances and initiated them into secret societies. Here too they purified themselves and prepared for dances and religious ceremonies. These were held in a plaza outside the pueblo. In some pueblos, a guard kept watch and make announcements from the highest roof. On ordinary days the "front yards" were used by women making pottery and baskets and preparing food. Since the people relied upon crops, especially corn, for their food, they located each village where they could get enough water for the fields. During the summer many families had small houses built nearby their fields. The western sector of the Southwest was also inhabited by farmers. "The Yuman-speaking peoples inhabit small villages of pole-and-thatch houses near their floodplain fields of maize, beans, and squash"1. Each Navajo family had winter and summer homes, called hogans and made of logs, earth, and rocks, along their hunting route.
b) Ways of life among the Pueblo
Centuries before Spanish explorers found them in 1539, the Indians had become settled villagers and, in spite of scanty rainfall, could grow crops by using irrigation. "There were very few animals in the desert. This meant that the Indians could not depend on hunting to find food"2. Consequently, farming is much the older occupation. Many of the religious ceremonials, therefore, were prayers to the gods for rain. From about 3,000 BC Southwestern peoples knew how to grow maize from Mexican tribes which cultivated corn already. About 300 BC, the Hohokam, Mexicans with a culture based on cultivating maize, beans, and squash migrated to southern Arizona. They were the ancestors of the present-day Pima and Papago who built fine irrigation systems. After centuries of trading with the Hohokam, the peoples of the northern sector had modified their life into what is called the Anasazi tradition. The Anasazi are the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians who learned to irrigate their fields and to find moist spots for dry farming. Good crops gave them a dependable food supply. At planting time relatives and neighbors came to watch and help each planter. The planter used a tough, sharp digging stick, hardened by fire. They made dams of brush to check and spread the water over the land. The man was the farmer among the Pueblo tribes. He planted corn, beans, squash, cotton, and sunflowers. The Spaniards brought him wheat, chili peppers from Mexico, onions, watermelons, peaches, and apricots.
At harvest everyone had a great time partying. The corn was laid to dry on the flat roof and women cut strips of squash and hung them to dry. When the corn was dry, the girls and women spent three or four hours a day grinding it on the stone metates. They usually kept a supply of food stored so that they would not starve if a drought came. The women made strong pottery and had been skilled at basketry since early times.
The men often held village hunts to catch a deer, an antelope or a rabbit for stew. They were also the weavers. They began raising cotton and making cloth by the 8th century. They learned how to build looms and weave cloth. The men also did the work of tanning and making moccasins and other leather goods. They made the bows and arrows, stone knives and tools. They drilled and polished turquoise and other stones to make beads. After the Mexicans taught them silverwork, they created silver jewelry set with these stones.
In the 1400s, hunters migrated southward along the western Plains. These peoples were the Navajos and several tribes of Apache. When game was scarce, they raided the farming settlements for food. The Navajos were clever at learning the skills of their neighbors and adding individual improvement. They learned weaving and farming from the Pueblo Indians, from the Spanish, to raise sheep and horses, and silverwork from the Mexicans. The women did all the work involved. "The only good result of the Spanish intrusion into Navajo country was their gift of the horse and the sheep to the nomadic Navajo"3. Indeed, the herding way of life did not develop until after the Spaniards introduced sheep and goats. They ceased fighting and turned entirely to herding after 1867. Apaches were even slower to give up hunting and raiding. After the White people came, the Indians also copied their clothes imported by traders. Although the Southwest Indians had adopted many of the White man’s ways and his manufactured goods, they retained more than a few of their old ways which are well-suited to this dry, rugged, highland region.
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1 Encyclopaedia Encarta - Native Americans http://encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp?mod=1&ti=761570777&page=4#s22
2 Southwest culture http://www.germantown.k12.il.us/html/southwest.html
3 The Navajo (The Dineh') - " In Beauty We Walk " http://www.acie.com/dtp/passages/Monument-Valley/People/TheNavajo.html
