Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/604

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PUEBLA.
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PUEBLO.

dominate the view of the city. Other notable buildings and institutions are the Palace of Justice, the Alhóndiga, a large and handsome building occupied by the State Legislature, the State College with a large library, the School of Medicine, the Palafoxiana Library containing over 100,000 volumes, the Academy of Fine Arts, and several theatres and hospitals. The city is an important commercial and industrial centre. It has several cotton and woolen mills, foundries, and glass factories, and is connected by rail with Mexico, Vera Cruz, Orizaba, and Oaxaca. Population, in 1895, of the city proper, 88,684.

Puebla was founded as a mission station in 1530 by Toribio de Benaventa. In 1847, during the war with the United States, it was occupied for some time by the American forces. In 1862 it was attacked by the French army, which was repulsed by General Zaragoza, in whose honor the city received its present name. The French, however, captured it in the following year. Consult: Romero, Geographical and Statistical Notes on Mexico (London, 1898); Ramirez, Informe sobre la exploración hecha en los terrenos de Tultic (Mexico, 1883).

PUEBLO, pwĕb′lō̇ (Sp., village). A name first used by the Spaniards, and later adopted by the Americans, to designate the semi-civilized agricultural and sedentary Indians dwelling in adobe or stone-built communal houses in the arid region of the Southwestern United States, chiefly along the Rio Grande and its tributaries. The term ‘village Indians’ was used in distinction from the ruder wandering tribes, without reference to political or linguistic affiliations. The existing pueblos, or settlements, now number 27, besides the Mexicanized colonies of Isleta in Texas and Senecú in Mexico, together with several sub-pueblos, representing in all four distinct stocks, with about twice as many languages and several additional dialects. With the exception of Zuñi, the seven Moki villages in Arizona and the two Pueblo colonies below El Paso, all the existing pueblos are within a limited area of north central New Mexico, but the hundreds of ruins, together with traditional and historical evidence, prove that the area of Pueblo culture formerly comprised the whole region from the Pecos to the middle Gila, and from central Colorado and Utah southward into Mexico. This does not mean that all of the ruins were occupied at the same time, but that at one time or another every part of the region in question was within the sphere of Pueblo culture. There seems to have been a gradual withdrawal from the northern and other more exposed sections and a concentration upon central points, due to the invasion of the savage Apache and Navaho. Some Pueblo tribes have distinct traditions of their former occupancy of particular ruins, frequently remote from their existing villages.

The recorded history of the Pueblos begins with their discovery by Father Marcos de Niza in 1539, followed up by the expedition of Coronado (q.v.) the following year. Later on the occupation and conquest of the country was begun in earnest. Within the next century missions were established in nearly every pueblo, and the whole country was mapped out into districts, held under close subjection by Spanish garrisons. The exactions of the commanders, the outrages of the soldiers, and the interference of the missionaries with the old-time pleasures and ceremonies of the Indians, bred discontent, and in 1680, under the leadership of Popé, a medicine man of the Tewa, there was a simultaneous rising of the Pueblos from the Pecos to the Hopi villages so sudden and complete in its surprise that priests, soldiers, and civilians were everywhere butchered, and the survivors after holding out for a time under Governor Otermin at Santa Fé fled to El Paso, leaving not a single Spaniard in New Mexico. A few of the Piro and Tigua tribes who adhered to the Spaniards followed them in their retreat, and were afterwards colonized respectively at Senecú and Isleta, below El Paso. The people of Awátobi, one of the Hopi towns, who had refused to dismiss or butcher their missionaries, were massacred by their kindred of the other Hopi villages, and their town was destroyed. Taking care to make their preparation complete, the Spaniards gathered their forces together for another invasion of the country, and this time with such success that by 1692 the reconquest of the Pueblos was complete. The missions, however, were not reëstablished, and most of the tribes relapsed into their primitive religion and ceremonial. Their history from that period until the Mexican War brought them under American jurisdiction is of little outside importance. By the treaty with Mexico they were declared American citizens on the same terms as their Mexican neighbors, but the new territorial administration refused to admit them to equal rights, and they continue to be treated as Indians under Government control according to the regular agency system. They are entirely self-supporting, however, and ask and receive little beyond schools and recognition of certain village and farming reservations.

Physically the Pueblo Indians are small in stature, but very strong, being able to walk or even run long distances, or climb steep or difficult mountain trails, under burdens that would tax the strongest white man. They are darker than the Plains Indians, with mild and friendly countenances, indicative of their disposition. They are not aggressive warriors, fighting usually only in self-defense, and preferring rather to avoid trouble with the wild Apache and Navaho by building their settlements upon the tops of high cliffs, to be ascended only by narrow and easily defended trails. Hence the name ‘Cliff Dwellers’ frequently applied to them and more particularly to the extinct inhabitants of the northern cañon ruins. Since the Government has interfered to restrain the predatory tribes, most of the Pueblos have come down upon the plain, but the Hopi of Arizona still have their villages upon mesas several hundred feet above the surrounding level. Their houses are solidly built communal structures of adobe or stone set in clay mortar, with square rooms and flat roofs, through which trap-doors with ladders give access to the interior, the outer walls being frequently without door or window as a precaution against attack. Rooms are added to the original structure as needed, and a whole village frequently forms one compact building, with stories in terrace style, one above another. An important feature of each pueblo is the kiva or underground chamber for the use of the various ceremonial societies.

Their dress is of buckskin or of cotton or woolen fabrics of their native weaving. In some