The word _pueblo_ in Spanish means simply “town;” but in American
ethnography it has obtained a special signification from the aboriginal
structures so-called, whose remains are found in profusion in Arizona and
the neighboring localities over an area about 350 miles from east to
west and 300 miles from north to south.[129] These are buildings several
stories in height, either of stone or of adobes, communal in character,
that is, intended to accommodate a whole gens or clan, and usually with
certain peculiarities of finish and plan. The adobes are generally large,
some four feet long by two feet wide, and were often made upon the wall
itself, the clay or gravel being carried in a moist state in baskets of
this size and deposited upon the wall till the mass dried. When stones
are employed, they are held together by a mud mortar. The most celebrated
of these adobe edifices are perhaps the Casas Grandes in the valley of
the San Miguel river, in northern Chihuahua. They have frequently been
described and do not differ except in size from hundreds of other ruins
in the Gila basin.
In connection with the pueblos stand the “cliff-houses,” structures of
stones usually carefully squared and laid in mortar, found in great
numbers and over an area of wide extent in the deep gorges or cañons of
the Colorado, the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and their numberless
affluents. They are perched upon the ledges of the precipices, which
often descend almost perpendicularly for thousands of feet, and access to
many of them could have been only by ladders or ropes. Prominent points
are frequently surmounted by round or square stone towers, evidently for
purposes of observation. The disposition of the cliff houses renders it
certain that their plans and positions were selected with a view to make
them safe retreats from marauding enemies.
As descriptions of these interesting ruins have often been introduced
to support vague and extraordinary theories concerning ancient America,
I would emphatically say there is nothing in any of the remains of the
pueblos, or the cliff houses, or any other antiquities in that portion
of our continent, which compels us to seek other constructors for them
than the ancestors of the various tribes which were found on the spot by
the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and by the armies of the United
States in the middle of the nineteenth. This opinion is in accordance
with history, with the traditions of the tribes themselves, and with the
condition of culture in which they were found. When, in 1735, Pedro de
Ainza made an expedition from Santa Fé against the Navajos, he discovered
tribes dwelling in stone houses “built within the rocks,” and guarded
by watchtowers of stone.[130] The Apaches still remember driving these
cliff-dwellers from their homes, and one of the Apache gentes is yet
named from them “stone-house people.”[131] As for the pueblos, seven or
eight of them are occupied to-day by the same people who built them, and
whose homes they have been for many centuries.
It is a significant fact that these people do not all belong to the same
stock. On the contrary, the “Pueblo Indians” are members of a number of
wholly disconnected stems. This proves that the Pueblo civilization is
not due to any one unusually gifted lineage, but was a local product,
developed in independent tribes by the natural facilities offered by
the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and
conditions, which were unusually favorable to agricultural and sedentary
occupations, and prompted various tribes to adopt them.
Of these different peoples, those of the Moqui Pueblo belonged to the
Shoshonee branch of the Uto-Aztecan stock, and is the only existing
Pueblo which is peopled by that widespread stem.[132] We have good reason
to believe, however, that the Pimas of the Sonoran Group of the same
stock once occupied a number of adobe Pueblos, and quite likely were the
constructors of the Casas Grandes.
The natives of the remaining Pueblos belong to three independent stocks,
known as the Kera, the Tehua, and the Zuñi families. No relationship
has been discovered between either of these and any tribe outside the
territory I have referred to.
The culture of the Pueblos, both ancient and modern, bears every mark of
local and independent growth. A knowledge of metals, other than to a
limited extent for ornament, is nowhere evident. Tillage of the fields
in a rude manner was the main source of the food supply. Pottery of fine
temper and in symmetrical forms was manufactured by the women. That they
had any other domestic animal than a fowl, and sometimes a dog, has
not been shown. Mats and clothing were woven of the fibres of bark and
grass, and the culture of cotton was at one time common, especially among
the Moquis and Pimas. The arts of weaving feathers and working shells
into decorative objects are not yet lost. Apart from the development of
the art of architecture, there was little in the culture of the Pueblo
tribes to lift them above the level of the Algonkins. The acequias, or
irrigation trenches, about which much has been written, were a necessity
of their climate, and were in use among their southern neighbors in
Sonora, and the Navajos.