Pojoaque
The Pojoaque are Pueblo Indians and speak Tewa , a language from the Kiowa-Tano language family . They live in the southwest of the USA on the Rio Grande , about 40 km northwest of Santa Fe in New Mexico . The name is a Spanish alienation of the proper name Posunwage and means place of drinking water .
Early history
The Anasazi ancestors of today's Pojoaque probably lived at the end of the first millennium AD in the area where the four states of Arizona , New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet (English Four Corners region). They built and lived in cliff dwelling ( Cliff Dwelling ) in Mesa Verde and one or more villages in the Montezuma Valley in southwestern Colorado.
The indigenous people were threatened by numerous dangers. There were periodic droughts, locust plagues , plague epidemics, and the invasion of the Apache and Navajo tribes in the 15th century, who often invaded them and got involved in wars. In times of hunger, their food supplies were also stolen from neighbors. It is believed that these constant threats triggered their migration to the Rio Grande valley.
History after 1540
The invasion and the subsequent repression by the Spaniards from 1540 onwards must be seen against this background. The Spaniards posed a new threat to survive, and the people met them with the same pragmatism as any other threat. They inherited what they deemed good from the intruders and rejected anything they saw as a threat to their cultural integrity.
Decades of religious persecution and cultural repression by the Spaniards triggered a general bloody uprising of all Pueblo Indians in 1680 . After the victory of the Indians, the repression against the religion of the indigenous people was relaxed and the Catholic Church apparently accepted a coexistence with the local religion.
Like their Tewa neighbors, the Pojoaque adopted much of the Spanish that they saw as beneficial to their daily lives. The Spaniards brought horses and other domestic animals to New Mexico, along with a variety of fruits and vegetables. In return, the Spaniards took from the Pojoaque maize , beans and pumpkins, the knowledge of medicinal plants and hunting techniques of the Indians.
The Pojoaque have struggled to survive several times. A particularly difficult time began after the Pueblo Uprising when severe epidemics decimated the population. In the early 20th century, the pueblo should be dissolved, as there were hardly any inhabitants. But many Pojoaque came back and thus saved the population of the Pueblo.
In 1946 a reserve was set up for the descendants of the original pub . There are currently no Indian ceremonies in Pojoaque, but some of its residents participate in dances in the neighboring Tewa-speaking pueblos. In the year 2000 there were 211, 60 of them permanent residents, in the approximately 47 km² large reserve.
literature
- William C. Sturtevant (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest. Vol. 9, 1979 ISBN 0-16004-577-0
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest. Vol. 10, 1983 ISBN 0-16004-579-7
- Tom Bathi: Southwestern Indian Tribes. KC Publications, Las Vegas 1995
Web links
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tom Bathi: Southwestern Indian Tribes. Page 65. KC Publications, Las Vegas, 1997 ISBN 0-916122-01-8