The Anasazi Culture of the Northern Rio Grande Rift

Peckham, Stewart

It is not surprising that in the legends of origin of the modem Tewa-speaking Pueblo Indians, the extent of the "Tewa world" (Ortiz, 1969) very closely corresponds to the geological extent of the Espanola Basin of the northern Rio Grande rift area. (For this paper the terms "Tewa world" and "rift area" will be used anonymously to refer only to the Espanola Basin.) The Tewa world thus is comprised of the Rio Grande valley and its tributaries, the Tewa pueblos, their fields, their range for hunting and gathering, and their sacred areas. Beginning at a shrine in ihe center of the plaza in each of the Tewa pueblos, and extending outward in the cardinal directions to distant mountains that form the horizon, a series of other shrines serves to delineate the Tewa world in the minds of the.Tewa people. The Tewa world not only has areal extent, it has a time dimension; archaeological studies have shown that the Tewa world was a recognizable entity as early as A.D. 1325, and may be traceable back even further. Today's Indian inhabitants of the Tewa world can easily refer to their legends of origin to demonstrate that their roots in the area lie in the distant past-"since time immemorial," as they sometimes put it. Their memory is based in part on the fact that the region abounds with ruins of ancient, long??abandoned villages still bearing Tewa names that are referred to in oral histories. But there are hundreds, or even thousands, of other ancient dwelling sites in the Tewa world that are apparently beyond memory or tradition.