The Southwest provides wonderful examples of the diversities and similarities that can exist within a single culture area. The region encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, southern regions of Colorado and Utah, a slither of western Texas and adjacent northern Mexico, particularly the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. It contains a diversity of ecological niches that, though predominantly desert-like, also include pine forest, snow-capped mountains, sweeping grasslands and fruitful river valleys. There are over 50 reservations in the Southwest.
The Clovis peoples of the region hunted mammoths and other game with particular spearpoints known as Clovis-style. As the Ice Age began its thaw and mammoths became extinct, the so-called Archaic age began and the Southwest became dominated by the generally agricultural cultures of the Mogollon, the Anasazi and the Hohokam. These people reached their decline just before the Spanish arrived in the AD 1400s.
Though their geographical extents overlapped at different times and places, the Mogollon peoples tended to be centred in southwestern New Mexico and the northern Sonora and Chihuahua regions. They are believed by some to be the ancestors of today's upper Rio Grande Puebloan nations, possibly even the Zuni. The Hohokam were centred in southern Arizona and are believed by some archaeologists to be the ancestors of the Pima Alto and Tohono O'Odham tribes. The Anasazi nation settled the Four Corners area where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. Many of today's Pueblo nations are thought to have descended from the Anasazi, including the Hopi.
The Mogollon tradition was a largely egalitarian one that centred upon the steep mountains and within the narrow valleys along the Arizona and New Mexico border. The people tended to be farmers who worked the forests and upland meadows. Though the earliest archaeological record shows the Mogollon residing in round, D-shaped or kidney shaped pithouses, their housing later shifted above-ground and developed into single-story, apartment-style structures with up to 150 rooms built of cobbles and adobe. These were known as pueblos by the Spanish and they further developed into clusters of grouped rooms centred around an open plaza. Their architecture was also characterised by small or large, semi-subterranean ceremonial enclosures or kivas. Distinctive artistic or material culture focused upon the black on white pottery of the Mimbres River region in southwestern New Mexico. These black on white pottery were painted with intricate geometric designs, human forms, birds, rabbits, bats and the famous hump-backed flautist.
The Anasazi inhabited the high desert of the Colorado Plateau, an area of high mesas and deep canyons. The beginning of the Anasazi period is marked by the increase in horticulture in the Four Corners region. Maize and squash were cultivated and irrigation was developed to provide adequate water. Terrace gardening was developed. Permanent settlements were established with extended family groups living in distinctive multi-room apartment-style complexes, sometimes built in caves or cliff overhangs. Subterranean kivas were used for ceremonies. Elaborate baskets and later black-on-white pottery, turquoise jewellery, clay figurines and loom-woven garments were created. Dogs were bred for hunting and for use as companions; turkeys were kept as domestic birds. The Anasazi produced at least 125 large, planned towns with public architecture, all connected by roads, of which over 400 km have been mapped so far. The archaeological record also provides evidence of the creation trading networks by the Anasazi, dealing with food and luxury items such as turquoise.
The Hohokam made their home in the scorching Sonoran desert of central and southern Arizona. Accomplished desert farmers, they are infamous for the hundreds of miles of irrigation canals they built and utilised and for a thriving trade with central Mexican civilisations and also with the California coast. They developed towns with populations in excess of a thousand people. Their adobe pueblo houses clustered around central plazas. They had a privileged, elite class, possibly based on the chiefdom system. Discovery of ball courts in prominent places suggests that leisure was used for ritual and social functions. Their art ranged from mosaic mirrorwork, acid-etched California coast shells and sculpted stonework, to jewellery of turquoise beads and acid-etched shell pendants, rings and bracelets. They imported macaws from Mexico and kept them as pets or for ceremonial purposes. They built special, small beehive-shaped adobe structures to house these beautiful birds. They farmed maize, beans, squash, chillies and mesquite beans as well as harvesting certain cacti fruit.
Sometime in the AD 1400s, if not a little earlier, Athabascans from the Subarctic north swept into the region having migrated southward along the western Great Plains. They continued to hunt and gather their new surroundings. Later they divided into the Navajo and the Apaches. The Navajo borrowed heavily from their Pueblo neighbours and the Spanish colonists, and took up agriculture, sheepherding, weaving, silversmithing and various elements of Pueblo religion. The various groups of the Apache continued with their semi-nomadic existences and developed the reputation for being accomplished equestrians and warriors.
Covering some 17 million acres, the Navajo today inhabit the largest reservation in the United States. These descendants of the original Subarctic Athabascans call themselves the Dine, or the People. The tribe is divided into more than 50 clans, and descent is traced through the female line.
In 1863, the US sent Kit Carson to subdue and remove the Navajo people. His men wreaked havoc upon livestock and corn supplies and many Navajo had starved to death before they surrendered. They were forced to go on the Long Walk - a 350-mile journey that relocated them to a new home. Their new home was a region of flat, inhospitable land with alkali water that made people sick. 1500 more Navajo died there until, four years later, the US relented and allowed the survivors to return to the homeland, or at least to a much-diminished portion of it that became their reservation.
A distinctive feature of Navajo material culture is the hogan - the traditional domed dwelling that today is used almost exclusively for ceremonial purposes. These domed, mud structures can even be seen in the back yards of city Navajo dwellers, though plywood and lumber versions are increasingly common. The entrance always faces the rising sun, and the hogan symbolises the security of shimah, the Navajo mother or the earth.
A distinctive feature of Navajo religion is the sand paintings traditionally traced over several days during a ritual, to ascertain cause and cure of a spiritual, physical or emotional malady. In their ritualistic contexts, they are rich with a religious symbolism that goes beyond mere representation. They frequently feature images or embodiments of the First Man and First Woman.
Artistic traditions still include silversmithing, especially with turquoise, and also hand-woven blankets, rugs and garments, and pottery. Though sheep and goat herding are still carried out, much, if not most, economic revenue on the Navajo reservation is generated from the extraction and processing of oil, coal and timber. People also make a living through tourism and the sales of their pottery, baskets, blankets and silverwork.
The Hopi believe they were birthed through a cave in the Southwest and then roamed all over the American continent before returning to settle for good in the arid plateau between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River. Their reservation resides within that of the Navajo - a situation that has led to a fierce land dispute between the two tribes. The Hopi reside on top of and below three finger-like mesas. The oldest continuously inhabited village in the US is thought to be Old Oraibi in Hopi land, believed to have been settled at least 1000 years ago.
When the Spanish made their entrada into the region in 1540, the Hopi had already been settled in their mesa homes for hundreds of years, coaxing melons, beans and corn from the desert as their ancestors the Anasazi had done for centuries before. Searching for gold as well as 'pagan souls', the Spanish closed the kivas, forbade Hopi ceremonies and forced many Indians into slavery. The Hopi and other Pueblo nations revolted in 1680, executing all the friars on the Hopi mesas and destroying the missions. The Hopi enjoyed a period of relative peace, until westward expansion brought Americans into the region and led to the Hopi being forced onto their reservation.
Traditionally, self-governing, autonomous bodies consisting of a spiritual leader, a group of decision-makers and a war captain maintained Hopi villages. More recently, the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 obliged most Hopi villages to organise themselves into federally instituted and accountable tribes, or quasi-sovereign governments as some Indian activists assert today. Various societies such as the Snake and Kachina societies have formed the spiritual infrastructure of the various Hopi clans and villages for centuries. Kachinas are spiritual beings that mediate between the physical and spiritual realms; as ancestral spirits, they also connect the Hopi to their past. In an arid terrain, kachinas play important roles in manifesting themselves as clouds and bringing rain to the Hopi's fields. Kachina and Snake dances provide distinctive features to Hopi religious culture.
Like the other tribes across America, the Hopi are divided into numerous clans. Like other Pueblo cultures, they follow their descent through the female line and females own the houses. Marriage is monogamous and must be with someone outside one's clan, that is, exogamous.
Corn is the lifeblood of the predominantly agricultural Hopi. It features heavily in their religious symbolism. The four colours of corn, for example, exemplify the four directions of the Hopi universe, and sacred cornmeal is frequently used in rituals. An ear of corn each is placed next to a newborn child and his or her mother for some 20 days as an embodiment of life-giving earth. After this period, the baby is blessed with the ear of corn at a naming ceremony, thus completing the baby's passage from the spirit to the earthly world. Similar blessings occur throughout one's life, culminating the final rite when cornmeal is placed on the face of the deceased.
Silversmithing, pottery and basketwork all feature in the Hopi artistic tradition, but what probably defines this tradition as distinctively Hopi is the carving of tihu or kachina dolls. These dolls are not toys but sacred objects. Though they are sold in the market for much-needed income, they tend to be given to children so that they can learn the religious ways.
The Athabascan linguistic cousins of the Navajo are the various tribes of the Apache. Today there are six groups: the Kiowa, the Lipan, the Jicarilla, the Mescalero, the Chiricahua and the Western Apache. Upon arrival in the Southwest from the Subarctic north, they led a nomadic life, hunting buffalo, primarily, although they practiced limited farming also. Upon arrival of the Spanish, they became accomplished equestrians and expanded their territorial range from the prairies of Nebraska to the mountains of Durango, Mexico. The Apache - led in later years, though in part, by Goyathlay or Geronimo - also used the horse effectively in their reactions to Spanish and then American intrusion. Such reactions took the form of raids and warfare.
In 1848, New Mexico moved into United States ownership. In 1853, Arizona came under US control. Subsequent gold rushes into the region led to Apache territory being inundated by Anglo settlers and prospectors. The US decided that the only thing that could be done to alleviate problems in the area was to implement a so-called Peace Policy. This Policy called for the rounding up of all Apache onto small reservations. There, it was hoped, the Apache would make their livings by growing crops and raising livestock - something most Apache had had little experience of compared to other Southwestern Indian nations. Weakened by disease and hunger, and with the buffalo gone, the Apaches had little choice but to resign themselves to the reservation system that by the end of the 1800s had swept all across the United States. Some Apaches - Geronimo's tribe of the Chiricahua, for example - were taken as prisoners and confined in Florida and Oklahoma. It was not until around 1913, after some 27 years of internment, that these prisoners were allowed to return to their homeland. Many, including Geronimo himself, died before they got a chance to return.
The clan system is as strong among the Apache as it is among other Indian nations in America. Ancestry can usually be traced through four major clans: Roadrunner, Bear, Eagle and Butterfly. Traditionally the Western Apache trace their descent through the female lines, but other Apache groups trace descent through both parents.
A distinctive feature of Apache religion is the presence of supernatural beings known as ga'an, protective mountain spirits that are represented or embodied in rituals, such as the girl's puberty rite that is still widely performed by Western Apaches. This puberty rite is known, in English, as the Sunrise Ceremony.
Most Apaches nations derive much of their income from gas, oil, minerals, timber, ranching and tourism. As across the United States, there has been a marked shift over the years from revenue derived from livestock to a wage economy.
© 2002 by Bornali HalderSite, Page and Article © Copyright 2002 by Bornali Halder