The result is this book, told with much heart and many tears shed while writing it.
If you wish to know about me, I have written some memoirs. (Click here to find out more)
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Glossary
Alabado
Spanish word for a morbid hymn sung at funerals and wakes.
Brujo
Spanish word for a male witch.
Capítan
Spanish word for Captain.
Cicuye
The original name for the Pecos Pueblo until the Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate renamed it Pecos.
Convento
Spanish word for convent or monastery.
Cloud People
In pueblo society, the dead can inhabit clouds or make clouds with their breath. The clouds are considered ancestors who bring rain.
Clown Society
A Pueblo ceremonial organization that provides comic relief and also, instills fear.
Coyote
A Kachina known as the Trickster.
Don Juan de Oñate
First colonial governor of New Mexico. He ruled from 1598 to 1608.
Forked Lightning People
Archaeologists discovered the Forked Lightning Ruin half a mile below the Pecos Pueblo, which was estimated to have been occupied between 1225 and 1300 and housed hundreds of Native Americans. These groups combined to build the Pecos pueblo.
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
The Spanish explorer did not initially go to Pecos in 1540 but sent an expedition of around twenty, led by Captain Hernando de Alvarado. Around 1541, Coronado with around 1500 knights, Tiwa slaves and Indian allies, traveled to Pecos to ask for their help.
Custos
The head of the Franciscan friars in New Mexico, sort of like what an Archbishop is to priests.
Encomendero
A Spaniard given an income from a pueblo or pueblos, paid as a tribute of taxes. The income was given for three successive lifetimes so was inherited. The tributes were normally given as crops, animal hides, blankets and whatever economy a pueblo could provide.
Encomíenda
A pueblo providing an income for a Spaniard.
Encomíenda tax
A tribute required to be paid by a pueblo to the Spaniard to whom it is given.
Flageolet
A flute-like instrument made from the bones of a bird.
Franciscans
A Catholic religious order.
Fray
A Spanish word meaning brother.
Geronimo
An Apache leader and medicine man from New Mexico.
Harquebus (also spelled arquebus)
A rifle-like weapon used in the 15th to 17th centuries and invented by Spain. The first weapon fired at the shoulder. If fired at close range, a harquebus could pierce armor. It was loaded at the muzzle with a range less than 650 feet.
Healing Society
A Pueblo ceremonial organization providing healing.
Hispaño
Spanish word for Spaniard.
Horno oven
An outdoor wood-burning oven made of adobe, shaped like a beehive.
Kachina
A powerful spirit-being who lives half the year at the pueblo to benefit the community as rainmakers and provide growth for humankind. During religious ceremonies, masked dancers embody Kachinas, wearing masks that depict the Kachina they are impersonating.
Kachina Priest
A pueblo man who oversees prayer meetings. He blesses the pueblo and calls up the divine Kachinas.
Kachina Village
The home of the dead for members of Kachina society, which includes the majority of Pueblo men.
Katsina
A Kachina is a powerful Native American spirit being originally called a Katsina in ancient days.
Katsinam
More than one Katsina; i.e. plural form of the word Katsina.
Kiva
A circular ceremonial room located underground like a basement. A ladder is used to enter and exit the kiva through a hole on top.
Kokopelli
Fertility god.
Madonna
The mother of Jesus.
Maize
Also known as corn. Introduced by the American Indian and given to the white man as a gift. The staple domestic food crop of the pueblos.
Mal ojo
Spanish for evil eye. A person with this power can curse people just by staring at them.
Masawkatsina
A Kachina who is keeper of the dead and rules the underworld. He is the only Kachina to live in the fourth world, which is the present world so he exists as an earth god. One myth has it that the third world was destroyed by a flood but the Puebloans used hollow reeds as boats and emerged into the fourth world at the Shipapu of the kiva.
Middle path
Though some Puebloans converted to Catholicism most separated Catholic beliefs and Pueblo beliefs and tried to live both ways.
Moctezuma
The name given Montezuma by the Puebloans.
Montezuma
The famous Aztec ruler. Pueblo legend claims that he was a great witch born in the ancient Pose Uingge Pueblo in New Mexico and founded the pueblos that exist today. He then turned into an eagle and flew south to Mexico to build Mexico City.
Mudhead
A clown-like Kachina made of mud that carries the footprints of humans on its head. His birth is the result of an incestuous relationship between brother and sister.
NAGPRA
Stands for Native American Graves and Protection Repatriation Act and was passed into federal law on November 16, 1990. The law requires agencies that receive funds from the U.S. government to return the remains of Native Americans and cultural items to respective tribes. Federal grants provide financial assistance in the repatriation.
Nunna daul Tsuny
Comanche for Trail of Tears.
Nuevo México
Spanish for New Mexico. New Spain included Mexico and New Mexico which was formally named by Oñate though it was first called Nuevo México by Francisco de Ibarra, who traveled north from Mexico seeking gold mines in 1563.
Papoose
A Native American infant.
Pautiwa
A sun Kachina and chief of the other Kachina spirits.
Patrona
A Spanish word meaning patroness.
Pose Uingge
An ancient, New Mexico pueblo purported to be the birthplace of Montezuma. The pueblo was excavated twenty miles north of San Juan Pueblo. Discovered among the ruins are skeletons with their skulls crushed.
Río Grande
Spanish for Grand River. A river that snakes through lower Colorado through central New Mexico and along the western line of Texas. The Rio Grande is the Texas border between Mexico and the U.S.
Quetzalcoatl
A Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity worshipped by Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayans, and other groups.
Quivira and the Seven Cities of Gold
The Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, came to the New World searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. In 1541, he claimed to have found a place called Quivira where golden cups supposedly hung from trees. Gold did not exist at Coronado’s Quivira, only a few tipis. However, the Spanish continued to search for Quivira as late as 1678.
Sangre de Cristo
A Spanish phrase meaning “blood of Christ”
.
Santa Fe
The capital of New Mexico and the oldest capital city in the United States, founded in 1608. Santa Fe was originally occupied by Indian villages in 1050.
Santos
A Spanish word meaning saints.
Shipapu
The doorway to the gods; the place where human souls are kept and emerge from; the place where man first emerged. Located at every pueblo, the entrance to Shipapu is a hole in a kiva.
Skull and Bone’s Society
A secret society at Yale University whose members encompass elite, wealthy students and alumni.
Spanish Inquisition
A Catholic tribunal used to accuse heretics, imprison them, execute them, and seize their property for the church.
Sun Kachina
A spirit of the sun god.
Tamale
An Indian and Mexican dish which originated with the Aztecs. A paste is made from corn meal and spread on a corn husk. Meat filling is placed in the paste and the tamale is then folded and steamed.
Tiwa
The pueblo language spoken by Isleta, Sandia, Picuris and Taos Pueblos.
Tiwas
The group of Puebloans who speak Tiwa as their native language.
Towa
The language spoken by Jemez and Pecos pueblos.
Vigas
A type of Southwest style ceiling beam, often decorative.
Yowi
An ogre Kachina who beheaded priests during the Indian Pueblo Revolt in 1680 in New Mexico.
Zunis
Members of the Zuni Pueblo.
B-i-b-l-i-o-g-r-a-p-h-y
Benedict, Ruth, Patterns of Culture, Mariner Books, January 25, 2006.
Block, Ira. “At Rest, at Last!” National Geographic Magazine, May, 1999.
Branch, Mark Alden; Lassila, Kathrin Day. “Whose Skull and Bones?” Yale Alumni Magazine, May/June 2006.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Henry Holt and Co., Anv edition, January 23, 2001.
Bullis, Don. New Mexico & Politicians of the Past, Rio Grande Books, November 10, 2008.
Bullock, Alice. Living Legends of the Santa Fe Country: A Collection of Southwestern Stories, Sunstone Press, November 30, 1990.
Fine-Dare, Kathleen Sue. Grave Injustice: the American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (Fourth World Rising), University of Nebraska Press, October 1, 2002.
Gewertz, Ken. “The Long Voyage Home: Peabody returns Native American Remains to Pecos Pueblo” The Harvard University Gazette, May 20, 1999.
Goodheart, Adam. “Going Home” Harvard Magazine, September-October, 1998.
Gilbert, Joan. The Trail of Tears across Missouri (Missouri Heritage Readers Series), University of Missouri Press, June 1996.
Harper, Kenn. Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, Washington Square Press, February 27, 2001.
Hoig, Stan. The Sand Creek Massacre, University of Oklahoma Press,1974.
Kessell, John L. Kiva, Cross and Crown—The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540-1840, Southwest Parks & Monuments Association, 2 edition, January 31, 1995.
O’Brien, Dennis. “Returning Bones Is a Daunting Task” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 12, 2004.
Prince, L. Bradford. Spanish Mission Churches of New Mexico, Nabu Press, Feb 16, 2010.
Robbins, Catherine C. “Pueblo Indians Receive Remains of Ancestors” The New York Times, May 23, 1999.
Simmons, Marc. Witchcraft in the Southwest—Spanish & Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande, University of Nebraska Press, March 1, 1980.
Slayman, Andrew L. Archaeology: A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, Volume 52 Number 4, July/August 1999.
Tarpy, Cliff. “At the Jemez Pueblo Reburial” National Geographic Magazine, May, 1999.
Walter, Mariko Namba; Fridman, Eva Jane Neumann. Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, December 15, 2004.
Wilson, James. The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, Grove Press; 1st Grove Press Ed edition, March 3, 2000.
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