The Pueblo Peoples, Nineteen Nations

Long before any European set foot in the Southwest, the people who would come to be called Pueblo Indians built some of the most sophisticated settlements in North America. They did not call themselves Pueblo, that Spanish word simply means town or village, and their identities are as distinct from one another as the languages they speak. Today nineteen Pueblo nations are federally recognized in New Mexico, each with its own government, language, and ceremonial life.

They include Taos, Picuris, and Ohkay Owingeh in the north; Nambé, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, and Tesuque in the Santa Fe basin; Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Zia, and Jémez along the middle Rio Grande; and Acoma, Laguna, Isleta, Sandia, and Zuni across the central and western reaches. The languages spoken among them fall into three groups: the Tanoan languages, which include Tewa, Tiwa, and Towa; the Keresan languages; and Zuni, which stands alone with no known relatives on earth. Their ancestors, known to archaeologists as the ancestral Puebloans, built great houses at Chaco Canyon beginning around the ninth century, multi-story stone complexes aligned to solar and lunar cycles, connected by roads radiating outward across the San Juan Basin.

Chaco served as a regional center for trade, ceremony, and community for roughly three centuries before its population dispersed around eleven fifty, likely driven by prolonged drought. The Pueblo peoples of today are the direct descendants of those builders, and the continuity is not merely symbolic. Ceremonies that have been performed for a thousand years are still performed.

Languages that were suppressed under Spanish and then American rule have been taught in tribal schools. The nineteen Pueblo nations of New Mexico are among the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.