Pueblo - Etymology and Usage

Etymology and Usage

The Castilian word pueblo evolved from the Latin word populus (people), meaning "town".

On the central Spanish meseta the unit of settlement was and is the pueblo; that is to say, the large nucleated village surrounded by its own fields, with no outlying farms, separated from its neighbours by some considerable distance, sometimes as much as ten miles or so. The demands of agrarian routine and the need for defense, the simple desire for human society in the vast solitude of the plains, dictated that it should be so. Nowadays the pueblo might have a population running into thousands. Doubtless they were smaller in the early middle ages, but we should probably not be far wrong if we think of them as having had populations of some hundreds.

Of the federally recognized Native American communities in the Southwest, those designated by the King of Spain as pueblo at the time Spain ceded territory to the United States, after the American Revolutionary War, are legally recognized as Pueblo by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Some of the pueblos also came under jurisdiction of the United States (in its view) by its treaty with Mexico, which had briefly gained rule over territory in the Southwest ceded by Spain after Mexican independence. There are 21 federally recognized Pueblos that are home to Pueblo people. Their official federal names are as follows:

Hopi people of Arizona Pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico Pueblo of Cochiti, New Mexico Pueblo of Jemez, New Mexico Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico Pueblo of Laguna, New Mexico Pueblo of Nambe, New Mexico

Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico Pueblo of Picuris, New Mexico Pueblo of Pojoaque, New Mexico Pueblo of San Felipe, New Mexico Pueblo of San Ildefonso, New Mexico Pueblo of Sandia, New Mexico Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico

Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico Pueblo of Santo Domingo, New Mexico Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico Pueblo of Tesuque, New Mexico Pueblo of Ysleta Del Sur of Texas Pueblo of Zia, New Mexico Zuni people of New Mexico