Nomads/Puebloans

I want to add one more comment to the earlier posting on The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts. One of my friends was bothered by Roberts' description of the Apaches and Navajos as "nomads" during the 16th century, where that term was used to contrast their societies with those of the Pueblos. She felt that the term was derogatory.

The Pueblos were permanent towns built by people whose diet was based on agricultural products which they produced locally. The Spanish word "pueblo" means both "people" and "town" or "village". Their agriculture was relatively complex, and they had long used fairly sophisticated means of water control to assure productivity in an arid land.

The Apache and Navajo were semi-nomadic. They did not live in permanent towns but moved from place to place. Their food included more produced from hunting and gathering (and trade with more agricultural tribes).

So at one level, the terms Roberts used were descriptive. I don't know any other simple term than "nomad" to describe the way of life of people who do not live year round in towns but move from place to place to take advantage of the seasonal opportunities of different locations. The term "puebloan" seems quite reasonable to describe the people who lived full time in the Pueblos, which were in some cases built of stone masonry.

It is interesting that many of my friends now live a nomadic existence in the sense that they spend the warm months in Washington and move to other climes in the winter. Still, I think there is a tendency to attach negative connotations to the nomadic way of life.

Of course traditional nomadic cultures tend not to accumulate too many goods, limiting their physical possessions to what can be easily moved. Indeed, one associates wealth of nomadic people with their flocks and herds, self propelled possessions. (My mother once worked for the Clark family of Singer Sewing Machine wealth, who migrated from place to place in their five railroad cars, keeping lots of immobile possessions in each of their estates.)

We should not assume that the lacking heavy physical possessions, nomadic cultures are impoverished. Poetry, music, textiles, and other forms of cultural expression don't weigh much but can be very rich! These indigenous cultures tend to have rich religious traditions and a lot of oral history.