The Pueblo peoples, sometimes referred to as Puebloans, are Native Americans in the Southwestern United States who share common agricultural, material, and religious practices. Among the currently inhabited pueblos, Taos, San Ildefonso, Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi are some of the most commonly known. Pueblo people speak languages from four different language families, and each pueblo is further divided culturally by kinship systems and agricultural practices, although all cultivate varieties of corn (maize).
Pueblo peoples have lived in the American Southwest for millennia and descend from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. The term Anasazi is sometimes used to refer to Ancestral Puebloan. "Anasazi" is a Navajo adoption of a Ute term that translates to Ancient Enemy or Primitive Enemy, but was used by them to mean something like "barbarian" or "savage", hence the modern Pueblo peoples' rejection of it (see exonym).
Pueblo is a Spanish term for "village". When Spanish conquest of the Americas began in the 16th century with the founding of Nuevo México, they came across complex, multistory villages built of adobe, stone and other local materials. New Mexico contains the largest number of federally recognized Pueblo communities, though some Pueblo communities also live in Arizona and Texas and along the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers and their tributaries.
Pueblo nations have maintained much of their traditional cultures, which center around agricultural practices, a tight-knit community revolving around family clans, and respect for tradition. Pueblo people have been remarkably adept at preserving their culture and core religious beliefs, including developing syncretic Pueblo Christianity. Exact numbers of Pueblo peoples are unknown but, in the 21st century, some 75,000 Pueblo people live predominantly in New Mexico and Arizona, but also in Texas and elsewhere.
Pueblo, which means "village" and "people" in Spanish, was a term originating with the Spanish explorers who used it to refer to the people's particular style of dwelling. The term Puebloan was previously common in an archeological context during the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, Pueblo peoples and their archaeological culture were often referred to by the term Anasazi exonym, a term introduced by Alfred V. Kidder from the Navajo word anaasází meaning 'enemy ancestors' (anaa– 'enemy', -sází 'their ancestors') although Kidder thought it meant 'old people'. Contemporary Pueblo object to the use of this term, viewing it as derogatory.
Despite various similarities in cultural and religious practices, scholars have proposed divisions of contemporary Pueblos into smaller groups based on linguistic and individual manifestations of the broader Pueblo culture.
Pueblo peoples speak languages from four distinct language families, which means these languages are completely different in vocabulary, grammar, and most other linguistic aspects. As a result, each Pueblo language is not easily understood by speakers of the other languages, with English now working as the lingua franca of the region.
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.
Tanoan:, consisting of three separate sub-branches:
Tewa: the most widespread Tanoan language with several dialects, spoken at Ohkay Owingeh, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Tesuque, Nambé, and Pojoaque Pueblos.
Towa: currently solely spoken at Jemez Pueblo.
Tiwa: the only Tanoan sub-branch consisting of separate languages:
Northern Tiwa: a language with two dialects, one spoken at Taos and the other at Picuris.
Southern Tiwa: also consisting of two dialects, spoken at Sandia and Isleta Pueblos.
Uto-Aztecan: Hopi, spoken exclusively at Hopi Pueblo.
Zuni: family to which Zuni belongs; it is a language isolate, currently spoken exclusively at Zuni Pueblo.
Anthropologists have studied Pueblo peoples extensively and published various classifications of their subdivisions. In 1950, Fred Russell Eggan contrasted the peoples of the Eastern and Western Pueblos, based largely on their subsistence farming techniques. The Western or Desert Pueblos of the Zuni and Hopi specialize in dry farming, compared to the irrigation farmers of the Eastern or River Pueblos. Both groups cultivate mostly corn (maize), but squash and beans have also been staple Pueblo foods all around the region.
In 1954, Paul Kirchhoff published a division of Pueblo peoples into two groups based on culture. 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. In contrast, the Tanoan-speaking Pueblos (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 people from underwater. They use five directions, beginning in the west. Their ritual numbers are based on multiples of three.