SOUTHWEST INDIAN

Distribution of Southwest Indians and their reservations and lands. member of any of the aboriginal North American peoples inhabiting the southwestern United States. More than one-third of the rapidly growing population of American Indians lives in the southwestern United States, mainly in or bordering Arizona and New Mexico. In this predominantly arid and climatically unstable region, located between the Rocky Mountains and the Mexican Sierra Madre, the Continental Divide separates the watersheds of two great river systems: the ColoradoGilaSan Juan, in the west, and the Rio GrandePecos, in the east. From the viewpoint of human habitation, the region's main geographic features are the two river systems, cyclical droughts, and arid lands, some low and hot, others high and cold. The hot deserts have sparse and irregularly occurring rainfall. Their long growing season supports a great variety of plant and animal communities adapted to desert conditionscreosote, sage, tarbush, and numerous cactus species, as well as such small, nocturnal, burrowing animals as the kangaroo rat. Along the river flood plains grow cottonwood, willow, mesquite, and sycamore. Basin and range landscape, from about 1,000 to 4,000 feet (300 to 1,200 metres) in elevation, predominates. Despite its low moisture content, coarse texture, and occasional salty patches, the soil of most of the Southwest is relatively fertile. The cold semideserts include the Colorado and other plateaus of northern Arizona. The frost-free growing season is relatively short. Much of this plateau area is covered with scrub or with pionjuniper woodland, where rattlesnakes, rabbits, coyote, bobcat, and mule deer are found. Antelope, American elk, and mountain sheep were once plentiful. Bordering the plateau country are sheer cliffs, deep canyons, and forested mountains. Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, blue spruce, and alpine meadows shelter weasel, deer mouse, porcupine, squirrel, and chipmunk, as well as the larger animals of the region. In the past century most of the wild mammals have disappeared from the region. Domesticated species brought to America from Europe by the Spaniards during the 16th and 17th centuries, such as cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and burros, have multiplied and destroyed delicate ecological balances, critically accelerating natural erosion processes, especially on the Colorado Plateau and in the basin and range country. The Indian tribes that have gained a foothold in the Southwest are highly diversified culturally, linguistically, and psychologically. From a comparative viewpoint, however, they fall roughly into four groupings, each of which is characterized by living patterns designed to cope with the practical problems of communities attempting to survive and prosper in the diverse geographical zones of the region. The ancient Yuman tribes inhabit the floodplains on both sides of the Lower Colorado River (Yuma, Mojave ) and the Middle Colorado highlands (Havasupai, Hualapai ), as well as the lower Gila (Cocopa, Maricopa) and the Rio Verde (Yavapai). The Pima and Papago, constituting the second group, live along the middle Gila River and in the basin and range country west of the Santa Cruz River, as well as in Sonora across the Mexican border. The Colorado Plateau and the Middle Rio Grande, with its tributaries, have long been the home of the third group, the Pueblo (village-dwelling) Indians, who, although highly diverse linguistically, share many basic cultural traits. These form three subgroups: the western Pueblos (Hopi, Hano, Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna); the central Pueblos (Jemez, Santa Ana, Zia, Cochiti, Santo Domingo, and San Felipe); and the eastern Pueblos (San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Nambe, Tesuque, Taos, Picuris, Isleta, and Sandia). Finally, also on the Colorado Plateau, completely surrounding the Hopi villages and Hano and separating them from the other Pueblos, dwell the fast-growing Navajo, a branch of the Athabascan-speaking Apache who are relative late comers to the Southwest. Their nearest linguistic relatives are found in parts of California, Canada, and Alaska. The Apache, inhabiting the mountains of the plateau rim, form a wedge between ancient Pueblo inhabitants of the region and the PimaPapago. The major Apache tribes are the Western Apache, the Chiricahua, the Mescalero, the Jicarilla, the Lipan, and the Kiowa Apache. any American Indian who inhabits what is now the southwestern United States, including the southern portion of Colorado, most of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, and northwestern Mexico. Though highly diversified culturally and linguistically, the Southwest Indians divide roughly into four groupings: the Yuman tribes (Yuma, Mohave, Havasupai, Hualapai, Cocopa, Maricopa, and Yavapai); the Pima and Papago; the Pueblo (Hopi, Hano, Zuni, Acoma, Laguna, Jemez, Santa Ana, Zia, Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Nambe, Tesuque, Taos, Picuris, Isleta, and Sandia); and the Navajo and Apache. They speak Yuman, Aztec-Tanoan, and Athabascan languages. The best known of the Southwest Indians are the Pueblo Indians (q.v.), whose ancestors built great cliff villages now seen in ruins and equally remarkable multiple apartment houses of adobe and stone masonry. Some of the latter are still occupied, and the Pueblo Indian inhabitants speak languages and observe ceremonies that are at least pre-Spanish in origin. The Hopi and Zuni are among the largest groups of Pueblo Indians. Whether the Navajo (q.v.) and Apache (q.v.) entered the area as a disruptive force or as peaceful neighbours is not definitely known. It is possible that hostility characterized their early relations, but in time the Pueblos and their Navajo-Apache neighbours accommodated to each other. The Navajo evidently joined the Pueblos in driving the Spanish out of New Mexico in 1680; and, following that, some Rio Grande Pueblo families joined the Navajo and were incorporated into the tribe. It is believed that the Navajo and Apache, who speak languages belonging to the Athabascan family, came down from the north, possibly from as far as Canada, where the bulk of the Athabascan linguistic stock was still located in the 20th century. They were already in the Southwest when Francisco Vsquez de Coronado entered the region in 1540, and the assumption is that the original immigration occurred at the close of the 13th century, coincidental with the abandonment of the great Pueblo communities in the San Juan River area. When they reached the Southwest, the Navajo were nomadic hunters and food gatherers, but in time they adopted agriculture from the Pueblos and made some pottery. By the beginning of the 18th century agriculture was the basic economy, and livestock raising (sheep and goats) had become established. Weaving of woolen blankets had also begun by that time. The Apache bands, with the exception of the Jicarilla and the Western Apache, seem to have borrowed less from the sedentary peoples of the Southwest and more from the Plains Indians. On the Colorado River a group of tribes belonging to the Yuman language family combined agriculture with wild-seed gathering and hunting. Three of these tribes were in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon: Yavapai, Havasupai, and Hualapai. The tribes at the lower end of the Colorado River, the Cocopa, Yuma, Mohave, and Maricopa, were primarily agriculturists, utilizing flood irrigation. Their excellent pottery was derived from Pueblan types. Although some progress has been made in recent years in alleviating the conditions facing most Southwest American Indians, many problems remain. Unemployment is high among the tribes, in some cases reaching 10 times the U.S. national average, and alcoholism has also been cited as one of the more serious problems. Because most of the tribes are not economically self-sufficient, they are, in greater or lesser degree, dependent on outside help. The U.S. federal government has tried to supply that help. Roads, schools, and hospitals have been built, and assistance has been given not only by the government but by private industry to develop such natural resources as coal, uranium, and oil, which have been found on tribal lands. Indian tribal councils have fostered Indian language schools and Indian-owned businesses, and scholarships have been formed to help train Indian professionals. Beliefs and traditions have been revived in an attempt to develop a viable Indian cultural identity, and Indian arts and crafts have found a ready market among tourists and collectors. Additional reading Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 15331960 (1962), is a comprehensive, authoritative account. Among other significant studies of the region as a whole are John Collier and Ira Muskowitz, Patterns and Ceremonials of the Indians of the Southwest (1949, reissued as American Indian Ceremonial Dances, 1972); Ruth M. Underhill, Ceremonial Patterns in the Greater Southwest (1948, reissued 1966); and Linda S. Cordell, Prehistory of the Southwest (1984).Recommended tribal studies are C. Daryll Forde, Ethnography of the Yuma Indians (1931, reissued 1965); Leslie Spier, Yuman Tribes of the Gila River (1933, reprinted 1978); Ruth M. Underhill, Singing for Power: The Song Magic of the Papago Indians of Southern Arizona (1938, reissued 1993); Alice Joseph, Rosamond B. Spicer, and Jane Chesky, The Desert People (1949, reprinted 1974), also on the Pima-Papago; William H. Kelly, The Papago Indians of Arizona (1963, reissued 1974); Elsie Clews Parsons, Pueblo Indian Religion, 2 vol. (1939, reprinted 1974); Fred Eggan, Social Organization of the Western Pueblos (1950, reissued 1973); Charles H. Lange, Cochit: A New Mexico Pueblo, Past and Present (1960, reissued 1990); Alfonso Ortiz, The Tewa World (1969); Edward P. Dozier, The Pueblo Indians of North America (1970, reissued 1983); Joe S. Sando, Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History (1992); Bill Wright, The Tiguas: Pueblo Indians of Texas (1993); Dorothea C. Leighton and John Adair, People of the Middle Place: A Study of the Zuni Indians (1966); C. Gregory Crampton, The Zunis of Cibola (1977); T.J. Ferguson et al., A Zuni Atlas (1985); Laura Thompson and Alice Joseph, The Hopi Way (1944, reissued 1965); John D. Loftin, Religion and Hopi Life in the Twentieth Century (1991); Dorothea Leighton and Clyde Kluckhohn, Children of the People: The Navaho Individual and His Development (1947, reissued 1969); and a companion volume, Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, The Navaho, rev. ed. edited by Lucy H. Wales and Richard Kluckhorn (1962, reissued 1974); Peter Iverson, The Navajo Nation (1981); James M. Goodman and Mary E. Goodman, The Navajo Atlas: Environments, Resources, People, and History of the Din Bikeyah (1982); Garrick Bailey and Roberta Glenn Bailey, A History of the Navajos: The Reservation Years (1986), an economic and cultural history; Raymond Friday Locke, The Book of the Navajo, 5th ed. (1992), a nontraditional, sociocultural history; Morris Edward Opler, An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians (1941, reissued 1965); Donald E. Worcester, The Apaches: Eagles of the Southwest (1979); James L. Haley, Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait (1981); and Richard J. Perry, Western Apache Heritage: People of the Mountain Corridor (1991). Laura Thompson The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica