Pueblos

Pueblos (Pueblo Indians), North American Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, so called because they occupy pueblos, or permanent agricultural settlements, where the whole community dwells in a single communal building, the so-called casa grande ("big house"), large enough to accommodate scores of families, and constructed like a fortress, with no outer doors, and accessible only from the top of the enclosing walls, which are scaled by means of ladders. Four distinct groups: (1) Moqui or Tusayan, a branch of the Shoshonean (Snake) family, with seven pueblos, all east of the Colorado Chiquito, Arizona; population (1890), 1,996. (2) Keresan, speaking a stock language, with 17 pueblos on the Upper Rio Grande and its affluents, New Mexico; population, 3,560. (3) Tanoan (stock language), with 14 pueblos, on the Rio Grande between lat. 33° and 36° N,; population, 3,237. (4) Zunian (stock language), with one pueblo, New Mexico, lat. 35° N., near Arizona frontier; population 3,613; total Pueblo Indians (1890), 10,406. The Pueblos have never been disturbed in the possession of their settlements, and they consequently represent the primitive sedentary peoples of this region, surrounded by nomad Apache and other wild tribes, and with a culture intermediate between those of the Mound-builders of the Mississippi basin and of the Nahuas of the Mexican plateau. Some of the casas grandes, all of which are solid stone structures, resemble the wooden "long houses" of the Iroquois, while others seem to be a development of the habitations of the Cliff-dwellers in the canons of the Colorado and other western rivers.