Imaginary Cities of Gold by Peter O. Koch

Author:Peter O. Koch
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: McFarland, Incorporated Publishers

The daily grind of the Pueblo Indians yielded more than enough food to meet their everyday needs but certainly not enough to sustain an additional group as large as the one led by Coronado. In the case of the Zunis, they generally stored enough corn to last one or two years—long enough to see them through extended periods of drought or famine. Food was often a source of friction between the Spaniards and the natives of the New World. The conquistadors often found their search for wealth in the New World sidetracked by a dire need to replenish their exhausted supply of food, a necessity used to justify the burdensome demands they placed upon tribes encountered along the path of their quest. Such taxing dictates often forced the natives to try to drive off the conquistadors before their own entire store of food was exhausted. Many natives died simply trying to protect what little they had on hand to feed their own people.

The tribes that chose to settle in such an arid region built unique styled homes designed to protect them from the extreme heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter. Such settlements consisted of a cluster of buildings made of adobe, which is simply a mixture of clay and sand that dries without cracking. Adobe apartments were built next to and on top of one another. The ground floor of these multistoried structures were generally used for storage and had no doors. Ladders were used for entering and exiting the different apartment levels. Many of these villages had an underground temple known as a kiva, a native term for “world below,” where religious ceremonies were conducted by an audience made up entirely of men. As a rule, women were permitted to enter a sacred kiva only for the purpose of bringing food. Despite this restriction, pueblo women had more influence in their society than women belonging to many other tribes. Climbing a ladder that led out of the kiva was symbolically viewed as mankind’s emergence from the womb of the Earth Mother. It was the Spaniards who took to calling the adobe dwellings of this region pueblos, the Spanish word for village or town.

Pueblo men were generally small in stature, barely surpassing five feet, and the women were even smaller. The men wore a breechclout and moccasins and the women wore cotton garments that covered much of their bodies. Buffalo and rabbit skins were used to make cloaks that shielded their bodies during the cold winter. Though generally a peaceful people, the Zunis were, as they had shown themselves against the Spaniards, certainly not averse to taking up arms to defend their homes. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, warfare was mostly confined to skirmishes with roving bands of Navajo and Apache who would periodically raid the Zuni pueblos for food. Like so many other Native American tribes, the Zunis were sun worshippers. They also believed in the legend of the Plumed Serpent, a sacred deity known

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