Talk:Pueblo

Definition

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)

Comment

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)

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.

Pueblo?

Living in a 'pueblo' in Spain, I am surprised to see the confident assertion at the beginning of the main article that "Pueblos are traditional Native American communities of the Southwest United States of America." Although the article goes on to concede that "On the central Spanish meseta the unit of settlement was and is the pueblo . . ", the remainder of the article appears to ignore the fact that by far the most common usage of the term is in relation to Spanish pueblos rather than the certainly far less numerous North American variants. I have no objection whatsoever to an article on North American pueblos. However, I think the article should make it clear at the outset that it's purpose is specifically to discuss the North American pueblo and the preliminary definition at the article should make this restricted sense clear. Johngosling 12:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

This is an English-language Wikipedia, so we are using the English definition of the term. Yuchitown (talk) 18:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown

Merge this article?

The quality of this article seems to have deteriorated substantially over the last six months and has never been equal to that of Pueblo_people. Does anyone else think that it would make more sense to discuss Pueblos from within the discussion of the Pueblo people?Bridgewater 23:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

No. (& if the quality did actually deteriorate, revert.) -114.91.69.42 (talk) 11:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Houses

On 15 July 2008, an editor added "Pueblos are also used as houses in some cases." I removed this because it demonstrates a failure to read the article by the editor. The article refers to the fact that "adobe buildings" "are sometimes called pueblos." But the article makes the meaning of the word pueblo reasonably clear, and that is not a synonym for "building". While it is true that people did and do live in pueblos, have there homes in them, etc. It is misleading to call such pueblo dwellings "houses", where "set of rooms" is more appropriate. Now modern pueblos (in the sense of community or town) often have separate houses, that it not the type of building that pueblo refers to in the sense "adobe buildings"; those are large, multiple use, interconnected-room buildings. --Bejnar (talk) 18:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

King and Crown

I came across this article almost by accident and will make a suggestion only as to law, following an invitation at large (unclear from whom) made in 2004. In a legal context, "Crown of Spain" and "King of Spain" would presumably mean the same - that is, the Spanish head of state considered as an abstract, juristic person. See, further, Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (1957). This is what is meant when, in the UK, a criminal prosecution is brought by "the Crown"; Elizabeth Windsor does not, and constitutionally must not, have anything to do with it. "The Crown" there is as abstract as, say, being prosecuted by "State of Kentucky". It is similar to the legal personality of a public authority, both in governing and in entering into contracts. Whether the abstraction has monarchical, republican or other political content may be unimportant for this purpose.

It would be in that capacity that a King of Spain would, for example, have entered into a treaty with another country. It would make no difference, legally, if the king personally had a hand in the negotiations or signed the treaty personally. What was done would be done by Spain, through the king's name as the name of the abstract, juristic person.

What would matter, however, would be the king managing some place as his personal domain, as Leopold II once did with the Belgian Congo.

Hope this may assist. --Wikiain (talk) 04:49, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed

This article sows confusion by focusing on one meaning of pueblo, while giving only passing mention to the civic unit of Spain, and no mention at all to the numerous non-Native American pueblos established in New Spain by the colonial government. For example: the cities of Los Angeles and San Jose, California both began as colonial pueblos.

I agree with the editor above who proposed that this article be merged with Puebloan peoples. Failing that, some disambiguation is needed until a separate article can be composed about the Spanish colonial pueblo. I propose to:

1. move this entire page to a new page titled "Pueblo (Native American)",

2. create a "red link", and eventually a new article called "Pueblo (New Spain)" (or maybe a larger and more general article about colonial organization in New Spain),

3. update the disambiguation page.

Comments, editors? WCCasey (talk) 20:39, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Pueblo/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

To describe the U.S.'s gains in the Mexican war as "Some of the Pueblos also came into the United States by treaty with Mexico, which briefly gained jurisdiction over territory in the Southwest ceded by Spain" is laughable and sad.

Last edited at 00:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 03:32, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Introduction paragraph

The following seems incomplete and out of place:

There is a legend that states “ There are mountain lions that breaks into peoples houses.” DaddyDevito (talk) 00:45, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 7 March 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. There is a narrow consensus that the current topic remains the primary topic. And conversely, there is definitely no consensus the other way.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:49, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

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• Pueblo → Pueblo (Native American settlement)
• Pueblo (disambiguation) → Pueblo

– I don't believe the type of settlement is the WP:MAINTOPIC of "Pueblo". The current content of the article is a mess. It's not clear what the topic is. Compare:

DAB page description

"Pueblo is a Spanish-language term referring to a town or other small settlement, or to the population of a country."

Article short description

"Native tribes of Southwestern United States"

Article opening sentence

"In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased)."

Article remaining content

There an amount of WP:DICTDEF, a little about the settlement type, and a large amount of content that is a duplicate/summary of information that is already and more properly found in other articles, including Puebloans and Pueblo architecture.

I propose trimming the article down to focus on the settlement-type, and making the dab page the default. I suggest "(Native American settlement)" rather than "(settlement)" as the disambiguator because in Spanish speaking regions other types of settlement are/were called "pueblos". ( I also think the DAB page needs to be tidied but I am holding off on doing that becaues I don't want to pre-empt the outcome of this move discussion.) jnestorius^(talk) 23:53, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose -- the villages and Puebloan peoples are the main topic, replacing the current article with the DAB page is not an improvement. If anything, the Pueblo people should be the main entry but that's not being suggested.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 09:18, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  the villages and Puebloan peoples are the main topic -- those are two different articles! How can they both be the main topic? Perhaps your alternative suggestion is

  • Pueblo → Pueblo (Native American settlement) [with associated trimming of the current messy content]
  • Puebloans → Pueblo [either renaming the Puebloans article to Pueblo, or changing the target of the Pueblo redirect to point to the Puebloans article]

  I can live with that. But the current mess needs to be fixed. The present discussion should be able achieve that. jnestorius^(talk) 11:26, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. The suggested name is not the WP:COMMONNAME. The pueblo settlements and tribes of the Pueblo peoples are the main topic. "I don't believe..." is not a convincing argument for change. Yuchitown (talk) 16:32, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown

  The pueblo settlements and tribes of the Pueblo peoples are the main topic. Is that one topic or two? We have two different articles, the first named Pueblo and the second named Puebloans. The topic of the second is "the tribes of the Pueblo peoples". What is the topic of the first? If it is just "pueblo settlements", is that really the main topic of Pueblo? If it is not just the settlements, how does the first article differ from the second article; should they be merged? Have you any view on the alternative proposal I responded to Oncamera with? jnestorius^(talk) 21:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. In English, the primary use of the term "Pueblo" is specifically the Native American people and their type of settlement. The DAB page description needs to be revised to reflect that. While the etymology of the term may be the generic Spanish term for any settlement, the usage of the term "Pueblo" in English is not its Spanish definition. Walrasiad (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  specifically the Native American people and their type of settlement as I have stated, we have two different articles, one about the people, the other about the settlement. One could merge the two articles; otherwise I think the people is primary and the settlement secondary. jnestorius^(talk) 21:11, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support the settlement type has 5,836 views but the Colorado one has 8,188, the Puerto Rico one has 128, the film has 124, the Rincón, Puerto Rico one has 30, the game has 23, the Corozal, Puerto Rico one has 20, the Indiana has 6, the Lares, Puerto Rico one has 4, the Moca, Puerto Rico one has 2 and USS Pueblo (AGER-2) has 12,566[[1]]. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:13, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. The oppose !votes consistently state that the people and settlements are the primary topic. However, Wikipedia describes the people in one article and the settlements in another. If there were no other meanings then one of the two would probably be primary (though it's unclear which) but the popularity of other topics such as Pueblo, Colorado suggests that neither is primary, which in turn implies that the dab should reside at the base name. Pueblo (Native American settlement) is an unwieldy but necessary title, as a simple Pueblo (settlement) would not disambiguate from the specific places named Pueblo. Certes (talk) 00:15, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose - the Pueblos are not just settlements, they are each their own sovereign nations with their own tribal governance. They are bound together by a council. I disagree with the move proposal, and agree with the comments above by Oncamera, Yuchitown and Walrasiad. Netherzone (talk) 12:59, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, the Puebloan people is an ethnic group article, while the Pueblos are also collectively tribes with governmental structures as well as the physical settlements. I'll grant that the article is neglected but am willing to help improve it. 16:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown Yuchitown (talk) 16:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

  I'm also willing to improve the article. Replacing it with the DAB page is not an improvement and doesn't align with WP:COMMONNAME anyway.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 09:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

  I don't have a legal bone in my body (my brain stops working when I see legalese language), so I don't think I'm the right person to tackle this, however I just stumbled across this online, 2021 New Mexico Statutes Chapter 53 - Corporations Article 9 - Indian Pueblos Section 53-9-1 - [Pueblo Indian communities; bodies corporate; powers.] [2] Here a few things/sections that immediately jumped out:

  • "History of title held by Pueblo Indians. — The Pueblo Indians hold their lands by a right superior to that of the United States."
  • "The Pueblo Indians became citizens of the United States by virtue of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which guaranteed their property rights equally with other citizens of New Mexico. They are a body corporate and have complete title to their lands which the courts protect the same as titles to other lands."
  • "The Indian tribes are distinct political entities, with the right to self-government, having exclusive authority within their territorial boundaries and are not subject to the laws of the state in which they are located nor to federal laws except where federal laws or the jurisdiction of courts is expressly conferred by federal legislation."

  Perhaps some of this may be helpful to establish the Primary topic/Common name regarding "Pueblo" as suggested by the "oppose" editor's comments. Netherzone (talk) 15:49, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - I disagree with this move proposal. Like others I want it overstated that the Pueblos are their own sovereign nations and not a group of settlements. As such this move doesn't make sense and is not an improvement. --ARoseWolf 15:19, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  Our article Pueblo is mainly about a group of settlements, though some text about people has been added recently. Our article on the nations is titled Puebloans. This sounds like an argument for a different move rather than no move. Certes (talk) 20:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  It looks to me that Puebloans article is about the people (see Cherokee vs Cherokee Nation), if anything, we might need to visit reorganizing our coverage of the subjects. ASUKITE 15:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  Pueblo is not just about the people and it's not just about the place - Pueblo is the intersection of collective factors: people/place/culture/political entities/dwellings/governance. Pueblo is complex and integrated, it is not one thing or the other that can easily be placed in a pigeonhole or silo. Netherzone (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, a thousand percent agree with Netherzone's statement. --ARoseWolf 11:26, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  The focus in this move proposal is very specific on describing Peublo, or more importantly the article, as about a Native American settlement and that is where my focused statements have directed. I don't see that when reading the article and believe describing it as such is incorrect for articles on sovereign nations other wise why don't we move United States of America to United States (American settlement). As far as other potential moves, I don't think we should be discussing it in this proposal.--ARoseWolf 11:47, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with others that the article needs clarification, but I don't believe the proposed moves would provide any. WCCasey (talk) 14:27, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Primary topic

There is a narrow consensus that the current topic remains the primary topic. That's a reasonable summary of the !votes, but what is the current topic: people, settlements, both or something else? Certes (talk) 16:42, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

The settlements, lands, and civic institutions (geographical, physical, governmental, and legal aspects of the Pueblos), while the ethic group conversations go on the Pueblo peoples page (language, etc.). For instance, the feast days should probably be moved here, since those are when outsiders engage with the pueblos (the physical/geographic villages) the most. Yuchitown (talk) 17:32, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Yuchitown