Pueblo

This article is about the Native American people. For the city in Colorado, see Pueblo, Colorado. For other uses, see Pueblo (disambiguation).
Acoma Pueblo in northern New Mexico, one of the oldest pueblo towns

Pueblo refers to the settlements and to the Native American tribes of the Pueblo peoples in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlements in the United States, are called pueblos (lowercased).

Spanish explorers of northern New Spain used the term pueblo to refer to permanent Indigenous towns they found in the region, mainly in New Mexico and parts of Arizona, in the former province of Nuevo México. This term continued to be used to describe the communities housed in apartment structures built of stone, adobe, and other local material.[1] The structures were usually multi-storied buildings surrounding an open plaza, with rooms accessible only through ladders raised and lowered by the inhabitants, thus protecting them from break-ins and unwanted guests. Larger pueblos were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Puebloan people.

Several federally recognized tribes have traditionally resided in pueblos of such design. Later Pueblo Deco and modern Pueblo Revival architecture, which mixes elements of traditional Pueblo and Hispano design, has continued to be a popular architectural style in New Mexico.

The term is now part of the proper name of some historical sites, such as Pueblo of Acoma.

  1. ^ Stewart, George (2008) [1945]. Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States. New York: NYRB Classics. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-1-59017-273-5.