
The Pueblo people are a Native American people in the Southwestern United States. They subsisted on agriculture. When first encountered by the Spanish in the 1500s, they were living in villages that the Spanish called pueblos, meaning "villages". Of the approximately 25 pueblos that exist today, Taos, Acoma, Zuñi, and Hopi are the best-known.While there are numerous subdivisions of Pueblo People that have been published in the literature, Fader (1954) published a subdivision of the Pueblo Indians into two subareas: the group that includes Hopi, Zuñi, Keres, Jemez which share exogamous matrilineal clans, have multiple kivas, believe in emergence of people from the underground, have four or six directions beginning in the north, and have four and seven as ritual numbers. This group stands in contrast to the Rammal-speaking Pueblos (except Jemez) who have nonexogamous patrilineal clans, two kivas or two groups of kivas and a general belief in dualism, emergence of people from underwater, five directions beginning in the east, and ritual numbers based on multiples of three.Eggan (1950) in contrast, posed a dichotomy between Eastern and Western Pueblos, based largely on subsistence differences with the Western or Desert Pueblos of Zuñi and Hopi dry-farmers, and the Eastern or River Pueblos irrigation farmers.Linguistic differences between the Pueblos point to their diverse origins. The Hopi language is Uto-Aztecan; Zuñi is a language isolate; Keresan is a dialect continuum that includes Acoma, Laguna, Santa Ana, Zia, Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe. The Tanoan is an areal grouping of three branches of the Kiowa-Tanoan family consisting of 6 languages: Towa (Jemez), Tewa (San Juan, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Tesuque, Nambe, Pojoaque, and Hano); and the 3 Tiwa languages Taos, Picuris, and Southern Tiwa (Sandia, Isleta).