Zuni Pueblo: A Thousand Years of Continuity
New Mexico
About thirty-five miles south of Gallup lies Zuni Pueblo, one of the oldest continuously occupied communities in North America. The Zuni people, who call themselves A:shiwi, have lived in this valley for at least a thousand years. Their ancestors built the multi-story stone villages that Spanish explorers encountered in fifteen forty when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado arrived searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold.
Coronado found stone and corn, not gold, and Hawikuh, one of the Zuni villages he sacked, stood on the same land. Zuni artists are internationally recognized for their channel inlay silverwork and their carved stone fetish figures. The pueblo is a sovereign nation with its own tribal council, courts, and schools, and it remains the center of Zuni religious and civic life today.
