Anasazis gave rise to Pueblos

Early N.M. peoples led peaceful lives when Spaniards arrived

By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
Tree dating tells us much about the Anasazis, believed to be ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians.
The name Anasazi comes from a Navajo word roughly meaning "traditional enemies." That word, although foreign to the Pueblos, has acquired legitimacy through wide public usage.
These people excelled in making baskets and clothing from fiber. Around A.D. 1000, they started to expand to the east and south, building towns such as Mesa Verde and Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. These were not simply clusters of houses, but well-constructed towns. Pueblo Bonito had more than 800 apartments with a population of approximately 1,100. They were occupied for 200 years before conditions began to deteriorate. The precise reason for the evacuation between 1200 and 1300 is debated, but one is believed to be drought, which afflicts the Southwest periodically.
The Anasazis were composed of several language groups: Tanoan (subdivided into Tiwa, Tewa and Towa), Keresan, Zuni and Hopi, which is of the Uto Aztecan group.
The Tiwa people were perhaps the first to migrate to the Rio Grande valley, splitting into those who went eastward ending up as the northern Tiwa, and those who headed southeastward to become the southern branch.
The Keresan people from Chaco Canyon followed around 1250, first to the Rio Puerco, then to the Big River. Some Keresans moved about half a century later to Jemez Creek and others ultimately to the Acoma area.
Now there are 19 pueblos -- from A for Acoma to Z for Zuni -- organized under the All Indian Pueblo Council. An official constitution was adopted Oct. 16, 1965, but unity had existed way before the advent of the Europeans.
They had common interests in coming together in that they were a sedentary farming people who often attracted attacks because of their relative wealth and tranquil life.
Such a lifestyle may account in a large part for the fact that they are living today essentially where they were when the Spanish came.
The Spaniards came to respect their traditional autonomy to a great extent.
They did not find it necessary to bring them into mission communities as they did in other areas. Instead, the Spanish friars went to them in their own pueblos.
As time went by, despite problems that arose between them, the common interests which had brought the Pueblos together also brought the Pueblos and the Spaniards together: defense against common enemies, similar life-styles threatened periodically by the semidesert weather, and perhaps other human factors not always apparent.