Talk:Pueblo

From Academic Kids

Archive of old talk (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Pueblo&oldid=2732619)

There is another article on pueblo peoples, but this one implied that pueblo refers to adobe architecture, especially that of apartment blocks. Appreciation of pueblo as refering primarily to a building is probably a regional construct. I'm not implying their shouldn't be an article about pueblo architecture, but I edited this to accurately reflect where the term comes from, what it means, and how it is used.

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"dodgey"? Is that a British term, William? Anyway, there is little other way to accurately describe Pueblos, unless we want to replace the definition under law with the one informed by the folklore of people who had little knowledge of the indigenous communities of the American SouthWest. There are pueblos and there are reservations, side by side in some areas. One was established by the King of Spain and the other by the United States Congress. The definition in folklore - mud house - started with those postcards wealthy tourists carried home from their vacations. Having this one on the page is both beautiful and offensive. Most of the pueblos have prohibitions against photography in their community. Rainchild 07:56, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 09:44, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) It is if you omit the "e". I've re-removed the text. If you mean a particular King of Spain, say which, and provide some evidence.

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Mr. Connolley, a telephone call to the Bureau of Indian Affairs will provide you the answer you are seeking. The King of Spain refers not to one king but to the Crown of Spain, and that would be the Crown of Spain from the time of Onate's travels up until the time of the Treaty of Gildalgo (if I have spelled that correctly from recollection). The construct of pueblo is recognized in U.S. law and if you will patiently respect the information that has been presented here until you have sufficient knowledge to rebutt the article, I will attempt to kindly look up for you and for other readers those laws. I can develop on other pages information about Congress' current actions regarding ongoing efforts to adjudicate land transfers from the Spanish Crown to the people of the SouthWest, involving today the common lands of the Spanish land grants.

It appears that the writer who recently edited this article had considerable knowledge both of Pueblo history and of the appropriate presentation of Pueblo history in scholarly and legal contexts. If you have evidence that this article is not accurate, please discuss it here on the talk page, and not by reverting edits that are being explained. The sourcing of this article is no weaker than that of any article in Wikipedia.

Kareem 11:13, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

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If you mean crown of spain, say so. Don't say King of Spain.

I don't trust your additions. I hope that other more informed people will comment.

"Spanish Crown" works, but it is inanimate. In the cultural sensitivity training sessions for police, teachers and social workers who work on or near pueblos, the boilerplate phrase is more or less as it appears in this article.

(William M. Connolley 11:54, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) "more or less" is vague. If you can find a link to the text you are referring to and put it here, it will support your case.

It appears at this point the obligation would be yours to present evidence that in the United States a pueblo is any Native American village and not specifically those first established under land grants from the King of Spain. Kareem 12:40, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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I hope that you dignify the Pueblo people with genuine interest in their story. As I noted on your talk page, I will find for you information to explain the root of that term in United States law. Kareem 11:29, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 11:54, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) I dispute your interpretation of wiki policy. It doesn't make your edits wrong, it just makes them suspect.

I would hope editors treat material with suspicion not out of mistrust but of affection for the subject. Do you have much familiarity with English usage in the American Southwest, Doctor? If not, you may be suprised to learn that "King of Spain" is the common term used today to refer to the king du jour of that time.

I think this came from Southwestern Indian Tribes, KC Publications, P.O. Box 428, Flagstaff, Arizona, but the sources were somewhat merged in that document. Anyway, its fair use. This is educational:

In 1598, the Spanish explorer, Juan de Onate, presented Pueblo leaders with silver-topped canes directly from the king of Spain. The Spaniards presented four canes to the Santo Domingo Indians, in recognition of the people and their land as a sovereign tribe. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln presented representatives of New Mexico’s Pueblos with silver-topped, ebony canes as a symbol of the U.S. government’s recognition of their sovereignty. The Pueblos have also received canes from New Mexico’s governors that complete the chain of authority and recognition of their self-government

Reservation tribal chairmen have various staffs and canes they have receieved as well, but the canes from the king of Spain will only be found at one of the 20 federally recognized Pueblos.

I'll find more that is even more specific, at least in the symbols of Western law, but please, don't take anyone's authority on the matter, and do some research of your own. Kareem 12:04, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Dr. Connolley, I trust you will contact the people addressed in this article to obtain the best information:

I archived the contact information. Kareem 03:49, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There are 18 others, but for their privacy I prefer not to republish their contact information any more than neccessery. Each of their Pueblo governments may be located by Google searches.

If i find more soon, I will post it Kareem 12:30, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Working together 2 Merge two pueblo articles? 3 Question 4 Encomienda 5 Puebloans lived in the pueblos 6 Pueblos ARE Tribal Governments

Working together

I have refactored this page, removing the worst of the personal remarks (see Wikipedia:No personal attacks).

Let's focus on improving the pueblo article. --Uncle Ed 12:53, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 12:57, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)) Hi Ed. I'm happy to take your advice on this issue. Feel free to "refactor"

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The talk page refactor looks okay. The lead sentence in the story was starting to run on, so I cut it into manageble phrases. Also, I preserved the factual accuracy I can contribute re:Spanish origin of Pueblo as a construct, and delimiting pueblos from nearby reservations. Kareem 13:05, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Quotes linked to an outside source for attribution are not the best, because the links aren't durable. I didn't change it because it is set in a block quote, it is hard to change, people get all edgy, and I am more concerned about accurate history, but it should at least have "USNPS" in there or something to identify the source. Kareem

I don't know a thing about pueblos except that they are mud- or stucco-based buildings in use before Europeans came to America. I guess natives lived in some of them for centuries before and after that; kind of interesting, how long that kind of construction has lasted.

I'd like to know more about the history and culture of the Pueblo people. And also, how the arrival of the Spaniards affected their life -- for good or bad. (One source I read today said the conquerors taught them "morals" but also demanded "work" -- an intriguing trade-off.)

And, yes, web links are easy but not durable. I'd love to see references to, er, "dead tree" documentation. We rely on Internet sources far too much around here.

Finally, thank you for your gracious and cordial acceptance of my refactoring -- and Welcome to Wikipedia! --Uncle Ed 13:38, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Spanish influence might be treated by an elder Pueblo story teller not as something either good nor bad, but as something that happened. Changes in the language that describes their history might be cited as evidence of agression against them. We might hear a story about how they endured.

In contributing to the tribal sovereignty article while researching some info for Doc Connolley, I did discover a statement by Cheif Justice John Marshall that said essentially, Europeans gave Native Americans civilization and Christianity, and that was more or less fair compensation for taking whatever Europeans got, but that they still must respect basic property rights of the justly conquered people. Needless to say, many analysts from Indian communities differed with the Justices' sense of justice.

In the past few minutes, I moved the quote from the National Park Service down to fit in the discussion of early buildings and cultures. There is a nod to that subject where it was placed, but the current location places the Park Service use of the term "Late Pueblo" in the context of the Indian Country axiom that there were not Indians - or Pueblos - in the Americas until Europeans came along and applied the Eurocentric names. Floyd Westerman's song "Here come the Anthros" perhaps best typifies the harm recognized when one culture declares itself the official story teller of another.

Actually, the NPS quote backs in to the truth of the matter when it says the Peublo people built the large communities the Spaniards encountered. It doesn't say Pueblo people are the ones who built large communities with mud bricks in the Southwest, it says large communites with adobe architecture whose stories were first Anglicized by the Spaniards are now called the Pueblo peoples. Native communities of the Southwest are separated by linguistic differences, too, but the basic distinction in anthropology and in law was the the nationality of the group so classifying these people, not the history of the people as they told it.

In this case, the prevailing academic anthropology is correctly represented, but the anthropology is not widely accepted by those it describes. Unlike minority views of other sciences that need not be balanced with a greater concensus, in anthropology there is a recognized and long-established community that has a different perspective - and language - behind descriptions of their own history.

For your efforts, Ed, I'm sure the article is less dodgy sounding to our freinds who live in monarchies, and the information is still reasonably fair and accurate to the best of my understanding. Kareem 18:20, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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The discussion of Spanish land grants could grow to become a separate article.

The statement that boundaries "were frequently overturned" is accurate, but is a gross generalization of 500 years of history involving United States, Mexico, Spain, and numerous indigenous nations, each of which produced legal documents regarding the claims. The claims were probably more frequently upheld, but were often lost by chicanery or speculation, were just as frequently clouded by legal questions as by vaguaries of historic surveys.

Much of the grant land lost was lost in chicanery involving multiple members defrauding each other of land rights. Some of the national forests of the Southwest trace back to speculators who obtained a land right from one member of a land grant, then perfected the right in an treaty-related adjudication process that excluded the other land holders simply because the speculator showed up first and made the case at the land office.

The other major land losses had not so much to do with riverine valleys and the vagauries of historic surveys, but with the failure of the United States to recognize common land holdings assigned by the Crown to the pueblos, which would be all of the land grants, not just the indigenous pueblos. The indigenous pueblos did better gaining recognition of common lands perhaps because their legal arguments have long relied first on traditions of Spanish law and secondly on aboriginal rights. Recent water-rights struggles and a very recent settlement proposal in one area highlight the importance of aboriginal rights as an adjunct to historic rights guaranteed in treaty agreements.

Regarding the lost common lands sought by the many land grants now established in the Southwest, the Government Accounting Office is conduction an length assessment of historical records to establish what common lands were expropriated from the land trusts during adjudication of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (text of treaty at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1848hidalgo.html ) article VIII:

In the said territories, property of every kind, now belonging to Mexicans not established there, shall be inviolably respected. The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with respect to it, guaranties equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the United States.

One part of the problem is that land title under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo rested on title conditions estblished in a treaty of 20 years earlier between Mexico and Spain. Current efforts to understand the land title require review of both treaties, and of related title claims and original documents that establish the grants.

Part of the problem was that these so-called Mexicans had immigrant status in the territory dating futher back than many Anglo-European families. After 20 short years under Mexican jurisdiction, these original "American Settlers" with as much claim to a role in early American history as the pilgrims, were now treated as aliens, who could win their rights in this country by proving ownership of their land, based on documents written sometimes more than 100 years earlier. Regardless chickanery of speculators and callous of the land courts, many did prove their claim, but the courts refused to recognize traditional common areas. It would be like a court refusing to recognize public property of any other town of village; Congress now recognizes the error and is attempting to discover the scope of damages that resulted and determine fair ways to make ammends.

So this is all great material for an article on the legal history of land transfers from Spain to the US and from Spain to Mexico to the US if somebody has time and is interested.

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I redacted the comment that "a key point is that these people were agricultural, which fit nicely with Spanish rule."

It is intersting that the Spanish patrons never established permanent recognition of the more nomadic people of the area, but migratory traditions among "Peublo" people who only occassionally used some farm fields also led to conflict with Spaniards who sometimes claimed the same fields. The history at least deserves a more accurate term than "nice" to describe the way the cultures merged.

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When Anglo- or Euro-Americans try to tell Native American history, the accounts often focus more on how indigenous people have been victimized more so than on how these people have used their human wisdom and cultural knowledge to preserve their interests and to maintain strong communities.

Merge two pueblo articles?

I think there's some overlap between pueblo and Pueblo people. Especially the idea that a "pueblo" is a kind of community. Shall we try to merge the two articles? --Uncle Ed 20:01, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that "Pueblo peoples" is a somewhat outdated anthropological construct. "Pueblo" is a precise legal construct on this day. There are actual pueblos today, with pueblo offices, pueblo schools, pueblo governments and pueblo feasts. TO a member of the Hopi tribe, calling them a Pueblo member is simply ignorant. Likewise, to a member of the Zuni, Taos, or San Juan Pueblos, calling theirs a tribal government is simply ignorant - as ignorant as calling the Los Angeles city government a town government. Salvante 20:13, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Ed, I am concerned that the pueblo article will overwhelm the Puebloan article. The issues with Spanish land grants currently in the pueblo article realy belongs in a separate discussion from Puebloans. 169.207.90.219 14:39, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Historic mention of the establishment of pueblos properly includes Native American and Spanish "pueblos" whose founding was documented, literally, on the same pages or volumes of Spanish legal records of land grants established under the Spanish king. It is better to make modern language comport with history than to attempt to twist history to fit our uninformed views of the past. Salvante 20:13, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

What if a series of articles were defined?

1. Ancient Puebloans
2. Arrival of the Nomads (Navajo and Apache)
3. Arrival of the Spanish
4. Migration and settlement
5. Peace Treaties
6. Bureau of Indian Affairs
7. Enfranchisement
8. Tribal government today

1. Ancient Puebloans

It is an academic term not consistent with the people's own definition of who they are. Maybe "ancient peoples of the American Southwest"

1. Tribal government today

It fails to recognize the difference between a tribe and a pueblo, which are distinct if only in name, but also in format. Pueblos typically have governors, tribes typically have chairmen.

Question

Has anyone arguing here that pueblos are something besides pueblo governments and the people and property within their jurisdiction actually visited a pueblo and spoken with its members about "what is a pueblo"? I have. Salvante 20:13, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Encomienda

"Spanish immigrants and Native Americans alike were assigned by law to various Pueblos." In the context of the enclosing paragraph, it implies that there was no free movement of immigrants or Native Americans from the pueblos, which fits with the era 1500-1800, but does not apply today. That smacks of encomienda which was outlawed by 1600.

It is a historical statement written in the past tense. It explains how pueblos were established, not restrictions on movement of villagers. The only legal entity in the United States today that is legally called "Pueblo" was first established when the Spanish crown designated legal pueblos. Those pueblos then came into the United States by treaty. Perhaps a more precise wording would state that "Spanish authorities created laws defining pueblos, or villages, which were populated in some cases by Native Americans and in some cases by Spanish immigrants." The fate of immigrants and natives who did not join a village, or who established settlements outside of legally recognized villages is a different matter.

My problem with the quoted sentence is that it doesn't reflect the US custom of free movement. Certainly today, when people leave the pueblos, it is a non-event. One point about the pueblos: they are currently tourist attractions; thus, modern-day Native Americans can live in modern dwellings, in town, and simply re-appear at the pueblos for the tourists. 169.207.90.219 13:03, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It is wrong to define Pueblos as tourist attractions. Some historical buildings have historical value within and outside of the communities, but those buildings are only colloquially referred to as pueblos. To the residents of Pueblos today, Pueblo refers to their government, their land and their unity as a people, in much the same way "City" refers to the government, land and people of the City of Los Angeles. Pueblos are not primarily tourist attractions. They include modern dwellings, though some ill-informed tourists want to beleive a pueblo is an adobe building in the American Southwest. ----

Puebloans lived in the pueblos

"Many Pueblo heirs of Spanish heritage now live on, or hold interest in land grants, ..." My problem with this quoted sentence is that the article on Pueblo people clearly is about Native Americans. When the Puebloans were brought into the church system, they were forcibly converted, spoke Spanish, etc. That is the extent of the Spanish heritage; there should be no admixture of the other meaning for Spanish heritage which means ethnicity. From the Pueblo heirs phrase, it appears that the writer is trying to construct an argument based on a landholding as in the real estate sense. I think that needs to be a separate article from an article on the Pueblos which the Conquistadors encountered in their search for the Seven Cities of Cibola. If the thought is to discuss the turnover of ownership from Native Americans to Spanish immigrants to American ..., then that definitely needs to be a separate article. 169.207.90.219 14:39, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The sentence quoted is not only about "Native Americans"; it is about Spanish heirs of pueblos. it is quoted out of context. The preceding sentence states:"Spanish immigrants and Native Americans alike were assigned by law to various Pueblos." Lets take it again, from the top .... The conquistidors did not encounter "pueblos." They encountered Tenoa, Terres, Hopi and Zuni-speakers and other people many of whome lived in seasonal or year-round villages, which the conquerors then began calling pueblos. Under Spanish rule, pueblos were established under Spanish law. Pueblos were in some cases populated by the natives of the region, and in other cases were populated by Spanish immigrants. Today, Spanish heirs of pueblos live on, and hold interest in land grants first established as pueblos by Spanish conquerors. There are numerous Spanish-American owned land-grants in Florida, California, New Mexico and Arizona. American tourists of the Southwest typically call these heirs of early Spanish immigrants "Mexicans", and dine on traditional Spanish-American meals they call "Mexican food." But these Spanish-American people's American ancestory and local attachment to their land often far exceeds that of Anglo-American tourists. Congress and the General Accounting Office to this day are investigating lingering legal questions related to the property rights of Spanish-immigrants whose "pueblos" were granted land by the Spanish crown.

. Salvante 19:47, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Read the articles on kiva and sipapu to see that the Puebloans had a different take on landholding; the land was literally Mother Earth. Of course, in the US, there is a different set of priorities and entitlements, which frankly would not entitle any claimant on a Spanish land grant; things move too fast for that. If someone tried to construct a case based on that claim, they would simply get outmaneuvered by someone with an interest in making money out of it.

The article on kiva and sipapu did not inform my understanding of Native views on landholding at all. I listen to Hopi people, not to Wikipedia, about Hopi views on landholding. The reference to "Mother Earth" was not authored by a spiritual authority or member of any practice involving kivas. It leads to another page that has nothing to say about the literal meaning of the word in the several languages swept into the classification "Puebloan". To deny the residents of modern pueblos their property rights to hold land under US, and to refuse to recognize the legal history behind those rights, is a form of racial prejudice. Likewise, speaking out of school on their behalf about what "Mother Earth" literaly meant to diverse cultural groups smacks of colonialism. Members of Pueblos and tribes fought and died under the United States flag to preserve their legal land holdings. Their religious views, unless they care to interpret them, might best be left to them as their private understanding. Perhaps we need a disambiguation page. Kiva also refers to a type of fireplace popular in Southwest Architecture. Salvante 20:23, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

There could be an very interesting article on Mesilla, New Mexico; some Mexicans moved there after the Cession, to leave the US; after the Gadsden purchase, they were back in the US again!.

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By the way, the Puebloans had the technology for towns before the Conquistadors. That is what Mesa Verde and the Gila Cliff dwellings establish. They were clearly pre-Hispanic. 169.207.90.219 14:39, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

They did not. There were no "Puebloans" before the Conquistadors. There were speakers of versions of languages including Hopi, Keres, Tanoa, Zuni who sometimes lived in what we now call (in English) villages, and some of whom were nomadic. Many of those people trace their ancestory to other groups not mentioned. "Pueblo" and "Puebloan" are purely colonial and modern linguistic and legal constructs.

Pueblos ARE Tribal Governments

"For modern Pueblos, the term Pueblo refers to the unique governments of their communities, which are distinct in name from tribal governments first recognized by the United States Congress, rather than by the Spanish monarchy. Pueblo governments are sometimes said to administer members affairs on land grants or pueblos, whereas tribal governments are said to administer members' affairs on reservations."

This is simply incorrect. In fact, many Pueblo governments (e.g., Zuni, Taos and Laguna) administer "reservations" in addition to, or instead of, so-called "grant lands." The suggestion that tribal governments and pueblos are distinguished by whether they were first recognized by the Spanish monarchy or the United States Congress also is a distortion of the historical record: many other native american sovereigns besides the pueblos were "recognized" by Spain. Furthermore, all of the Pueblos are on the same list of "Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs" maintained by the U.S. Department of the Interior (see, e.g., the version published at 60 Fed. Reg. 46,328 (July 12, 2002), which is available online at http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/FRN02.pdf) and thus are, under federal law, legally indistinguishable from any other tribe with respect to their status as recognized Indian sovereigns.

The Pueblos do, of course, have a unique history which continues to have legal consequences. Of key importance was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Joseph, 94 U.S. 614 (1876), which held that the Pueblos were not "Indians" within the meaning of the Indian Non-Intercourse Act of 1834,4 Stat. 730, as extended to the New Mexico Territory by the Act of February 27, 1851, 9 Stat. 574. This decision, which declared the Pueblos exempt from federal protections against alienation of tribal property, resulted in extensive loss of Pueblo lands to non-Indians. In United States v. Sandoval, 231 U.S. 28 (1913), and United States v. Candelaria, 271 U.S. 432 (1926), however, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and repudiated its decision in Joseph and held that the 1851 Act did in fact extend the protections of the Non-Intercourse Act to the Pueblos. These latter Supreme Court decisions resulted in enormous confusion concerning land titles in New Mexico, which Congress attempted to remedy in Pueblo Lands Act of June 7, 1924, 43 Stat. 636, and the Pueblo Compensation Act of May 31, 1933, 48 Stat. 108. Nonetheless, there are on-going legal disputes concerning the nature of some of the Pueblo's land holdings, which have been litigated for decades in the context of water rights adjudications.

This is so well written and you appear to know a great deal about this subject... would you consider adding the comment you've written to the body of the article? I think it would make a very informative replacement to the text you've targeted as incorrect. --ABQCat 19:59, 20 May 2005 (UTC)