Southwest Indian Tribes
Southwest Indian Tribe Variations
Divisions based on linguistic affiliation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebloans
The clearest division between Puebloans relates to the languages they speak. Pueblo peoples speak languages from four distinct language families, which means they are completely different languages whose speakers cannot understand one another, with English now working as the lingua franca of the region.
1 Keresan: family to which Western and Eastern Keres belong, considered by some a language isolate consisting of a dialect continuum spoken at the pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, Santa Ana, Zia, Cochiti, Kewa, and San Felipe.
Laguna Pueblo — Keres speakers. Known for its well-preserved 17th Century mission church.
2 Kiowa-Tanoan: stock to which the Tanoan (Puebloan) branch belongs, consisting of three separate sub-branches:
Towa: currently solely spoken at Jemez Pueblo.
Tewa: the most widespread Tanoan language with several dialects, spoken at Ohkay Owingeh, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Tesuque, Nambé, and Pojoaque Pueblos.
Tiwa: the only sub-branch consisting of separate languages:[2]
Northern Tiwa: a language composed of two dialects spoken at Taos and Picuris.
Southern Tiwa: a language composed of two dialects spoken at Sandia and Isleta Pueblos.[3]
Isleta Pueblo — Tiwa speakers. Established in the 14th century. Located on the southern outskirts of Albuquerque.
3 Uto-Aztecan: stock to which Hopi belongs, spoken exclusively at Hopi Pueblo.
4 Zuni: family to which Zuni belongs; it is a language isolate, currently spoken exclusively at Zuni Pueblo.
Zuni Pueblo — Zuni speakers. Known for being the first Pueblo visited by the Spanish in 1540.
Kinship systems and Religion
In 1954, Paul Kirchhoff published a division of Pueblo peoples into two groups based on culture.[5] The Hopi, Zuni, Keres and Jemez each have matrilineal kinship systems: children are considered born into their mother’s clan and must marry a spouse outside it, an exogamous practice. They maintain multiple kivas for sacred ceremonies. Their creation story tells that humans emerged from the underground. They emphasize four or six cardinal directions as part of their sacred cosmology, beginning in the north. Four and seven are numbers considered significant in their rituals and symbolism.[5]
In contrast, the Tanoan-speaking Puebloans (other than Jemez) have a patrilineal kinship system, with children considered born into their father’s clan. They practice endogamy, or marriage within the clan. They have two kivas or two groups of kivas in their pueblos. Their belief system is based in dualism. Their creation story recounts the emergence of the people from underwater. They use five directions, beginning in the west. Their ritual numbers are based on multiples of three.[5]
History
Precursors
Puebloan societies contain elements of three major cultures that dominated the Southwest United States region before European contact: the Mogollon Culture, whose adherents occupied an area near Gila Wilderness; the Hohokam Culture; and the Ancestral Puebloan Culture who occupied the Mesa Verde region of the Four Corners area.[6][7]
Mogollon Culture
Further information: Mogollon culture
Archeological evidence suggest that people part-taking in the Mogollon /moʊɡəˈjoʊn/ culture were initially foragers who augmented their subsistence through the development of farming. Around the the first millennium CE, however, farming became the main means to obtain food. Water control features are common among Mimbres branch sites, which date from the 10th through 12th centuries CE.
The nature and density of Mogollon residential villages changed through time. The earliest Mogollon villages were small hamlets composed of several pithouses (houses excavated into the ground surface, with stick and thatch roofs supported by a network of posts and beams, and faced on the exterior with earth). Village sizes increased over time and, by the 11th century, villages composed of ground level dwellings made with rock and earth walls, with roofs supported by post and beam networks, became common. Cliff-dwellings became common during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Hohokam Culture
Further information: Hohokam culture
Hohokam is term borrowed from the O’odham language, used to define an archaeological culture that relied on irrigation canals to water their crops since as early as the 9th century CE. Their irrigation system techniques allowed for its adherents to expand into the largest population in the Southwest by 1300. Archaeologists working at a major archaeological dig in the 1990s in the Tucson Basin, along the Santa Cruz River, identified a culture and people that were ancestors of the Hohokam who might have occupied southern Arizona as early as 2000 BCE. This prehistoric group from the Early Agricultural Period grew corn, lived year-round in sedentary villages, and developed sophisticated irrigation canals.existed from the beginning of the common era to about the middle of the 15th century.
Within a larger context, the Hohokam culture area inhabited a central trade position between the Patayan situated along the Lower Colorado River and in southern California; the Trincheras of Sonora, Mexico; the Mogollon culture in eastern Arizona, southwest New Mexico, and northwest Chihuahua, Mexico; and the Ancestral Puebloans in northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, southwest Colorado, and southern Utah.
Ancestral Puebloan Culture
Further information: Ancestral Puebloans
The Ancestral Puebloan culture is known for the stone and earth dwellings its people built along cliff walls, particularly during the Pueblo IIand Pueblo III eras, from about 900 to 1350 AD in total. The best-preserved examples of the stone dwellings are now protected within United States’ national parks, such as Navajo National Monument, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Bandelier National Monument, Hovenweep National Monument, and Canyon de Chelly National Monument.
These villages were accessible only by rope or through rock climbing. However, the first Ancestral Puebloan homes and villages were based on the pit-house, a common feature in the Basketmaker periods. Villages consisted of apartment-like complexes and structures made from stone, adobe mud, and other local materials, or were carved into the sides of canyon walls. Design details from Ancestral Puebloan villages contain elements from cultures as far away as present-day Mexico.
In their day, these ancient towns and cities were usually multistoried and multipurposed buildings surrounding open plazas and viewsheds. They were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Ancestral Pueblo peoples. These population complexes hosted cultural and civic events and infrastructure that supported a vast outlying region hundreds of miles away linked by transportation roadways.
The Navajos are speakers of a Na-Dené Southern Athabaskan language known within the language as Diné bizaad (lit. ‘People’s language’). The language comprises two geographic, mutually intelligible dialects. The Apache language is closely related to the Navajo Language; the Navajos and Apaches are believed to have migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska, where the majority of Athabaskan speakers reside.[4] Speakers of various other Athabaskan languages located in Canada may still comprehend the Navajo language despite the geographic and linguistic deviation of the languages.[5] Additionally, some Navajos speak Navajo Sign Language, which is either a dialect or daughter of Plains Sign Talk, as well as some being speakers of Plains Sign Talk itself.[6]
Archaeological and historical evidence suggests the Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajos and Apaches entered the Southwest around 1400 CE.[7][8] The Navajo oral tradition is said to retain references of this migration.[
Apache Indian Language (Tinde, Nde, Ndee, Dine’e, Na’isha)
Language: Apache is an Athabaskan (Na-Dene) language of the American Southwest, particularly Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Actually, there are at least two distinct Apache languages: Western Apache and Eastern Apache. The two are closely related, like French and Spanish, but speakers of one language cannot understand the other well–in fact, Western Apache is closer to Navajo than to Eastern Apache. Chiricahua-Mescalero is considered by some people to be a dialect of Western Apache, by others a separate language; the three forms of Eastern Apache (Jicarilla, Lipan, and Plains Apache) are considered by some to be distinct languages and by others to be dialects of a single Eastern Apache language. All the Apache varieties are tone languages with complex polysynthetic verbs and SOV word order. In total there are about 15,000 speakers of Apachean languages in the American Southwest today.
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