Tag: Pueblo

Pueblo is a term used to describe modern (and ancient) communities of Native Americans in the Southwestern United States of America. The first Spanish explorers of the Southwest used this term to describe the communities housed in apartment-like structures built of stone, adobe mud, and other local material. These structures were usually multi-storeyed buildings surrounding an open plaza. They were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Pueblo people.
The Castilian word pueblo, evolved from the Latin word populus (people), meaning “town”.
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 Pueblo also came into under jurisdiction of the United States (in its view) by its treaty with Mexico, which had briefly gained rule over territory in the…