Pueblo Indian Villages Described
Among the Village Indians of New Mexico a more advanced form of house architecture appears, and their joint tenement character is even more pronounced. They live in large houses, two, three, and four stories high, constructed of adobe brick, and of stone imbedded in adobe mortar, and containing fifty, a hundred, two hundred, and in some cases five hundred apartments in a house. They are built in the terraced form, with fireplaces and chimneys added since their discovery, the first story closed up solid, and is entered by ladders, which ascend to the platform-roof of the first story. These houses are fortresses, and were erected as strongholds to resist the attacks of the more barbarous tribes by whom they were perpetually assailed. Each house was probably occupied by a number of household groups, whose apartments were doubtless separated from each other by partition walls. In a subsequent chapter the character of these houses will be more fully shown.
Our knowledge of the plan of life in these houses in the aboriginal period is still very imperfect. They still practice the old hospitality, own their lands in common, but with allotments to individuals and to families, and are governed by a cacique or sachem and certain other officers annually elected. An American missionary to the Laguna Village Indians, Rev. Samuel Gorman, in an address before the Historical Society of New Mexico in 1869, remarks as follows: "They generally marry very young, and the son-in-law becomes the servant of the father-in-law, and very often they all live together in one family for years, even if there be several sons-in-law; and this clannish mode of living is often, if not generally, a fruitful source of evil among this people. Their women generally have control over the granary, and they are more provident than their Spanish neighbors about the future. Ordinarily they try to have one year's provisions on hand. It is only when they have two years of scarcity succeeding each other that pueblos as a community suffer hunger." [Footnote: Address, p. 14.]
The usages of these Indians have doubtless modified in the last two hundred years under Spanish influence; they have decreased in numbers, and the family group is probably smaller than formerly. But it is not too late to recover the aboriginal plan of life among them if the subject were intelligently investigated. It is to be hoped that some one will undertake this work.
