Modern Pueblo people descended from three major cultures: the Mogollon in Southwestern New Mexico,
the Hohokam (Phoenix Basin), and the Anasazi in the Four Corners region, detailed in the section above.
This section shows some ancient and early modern Pueblos including a detailed page on Taos Pueblo,
the longest continually-inhabited dwelling in North America, built by Northern Tiwa over 1000 years ago.

This page contains an overview of Taos Pueblo, two Salinas Pueblos and two Arizona Sinagua sites,
Montezuma Castle (a cliff dwelling) and Tuzigoot Sinagua site in Verde Valley near Phoenix, Arizona.
Detailed presentations are on the sub-section pages, which are linked below the preview images.

Click a preview image for a larger version.
Use your back button to return to this page.
Click a Display Composite to visit the page.

Images in this section are in a number of different Galleries on the Photoshelter website.
The Banner below leads to the Indian Lands & Anasazi Sites Collection where a Gallery can be selected.

There are 14 Sections in the Photoshelter Indian Lands & Anasazi Sites Collection

Direct Links to images from this Section:

Taos Pueblo
New Mexico Pueblos & Bandelier
Canyon de Chelly & AZ Sinagua Sites

Indian Lands Select
(150 Selected images)

Taos Pueblo is an ancient pueblo of the Taos (Northern Tiwa) Pueblo people. Built between
1000 and 1450 AD, it is the oldest continually inhabited community in North America and is home
to about 1900 people. Most of the people have homes outside the Pueblo, but 150 still live within the
two ancient adobe structures separated by Red Willow Creek and several adjacent adobe houses.

Taos Pueblo North House HS6543
(677 KB)

North House (Hlauuma) is the largest multi-storied Pueblo structure still in existence,
and one of the most photographed and painted buildings in the Western Hemisphere.

Taos Pueblo (Tuah-Tah) is the largest surviving multi-storied Pueblo in the United States.
It is the oldest continually-inhabited community in North America, and it has changed little
in over 500 years. The Tiwa-speaking Taos Pueblo inhabitants do not allow electricity,
telephones or plumbing in the pueblo. Taos is the Northernmost New Mexico pueblo,
and inspired the Pueblo Revival style of architecture at the turn of the 20th century.

Tuah-Tah means “Our Village”. Taos means “Red Willow” in the Tiwa language.

Taos Pueblo North House HS6578
(315 KB)

The doors, door frames and window frames are traditionally painted turquoise or shades of blue. This custom came in with the Spanish, and it is supposed to keep evil spirits away.

Taos Pueblo South House HS6628
(438 KB)

Close detail of South House. While there are now doors to the first-floor rooms, ladders allow access to higher floors without having to disturb the people in the lower floor rooms.

Taos Pueblo Adobe House HS6591
(467 KB)

The easternmost Adobe House on the Northern side of the Pueblo, just East of North House.
The exposed joists of the Summer Shelter cast an interesting shadow on the front of the house.

Taos Pueblo Old San Geronimo HS6656
(604 KB)

The bell tower of Old San Geronimo watches over the
cemetery honoring the 150 who died in the Taos Revolt.

Taos Pueblo Dog San Geronimo 6569
(589 KB)

A Pueblo Dog entering the courtyard of San Geronimo
(St. Jerome Church), built in 1850 after the Taos Revolt.

Taos Pueblo North House and Plaza HS6556
(452 KB)

A Summer Shelter at the south edge of the Plaza, North House is in the distance at right.
Under a tarpaulin inside the Summer Shelter is a horno (a beehive-shaped adobe oven).

For more images like those shown above, click the
Display Composite below to visit the Taos Pueblo page.

Images in this section are in a number of different Galleries on the Photoshelter website.
The Banner below leads to the Indian Lands & Anasazi Sites Collection where a Gallery can be selected.

There are 14 Sections in the Photoshelter Indian Lands & Anasazi Sites Collection

Direct Links to images from this Section:

Taos Pueblo
New Mexico Pueblos & Bandelier
Canyon de Chelly & AZ Sinagua Sites

Indian Lands Select
(150 Selected images)

Abo Mission Salinas Pueblo X9440
(580 KB)

The Mission and Convento of San Gregorio de Abo was built 1622-29 of red sandstone.
The pueblo at Abo was a thriving trading community by the time the Spaniards arrived with
the Franciscan Missionaries to ‘civilize the natives’. The Tompiro Pueblo Indians had been
living in the area since the early 12th century, having descended from the earlier Mogollon
and Anasazi cultures. When the Spanish arrived, the Franciscans built their Missions, but
after only 50 years both Pueblo and Mission were abandoned when drought, disease,
famines and Apache uprisings caused both Spanish and Indians to leave (1670s).

Abo Mission Church Salinas Pueblo X9446
(576 KB)

A view over the wall of the Porteria (reception room) towards the Choir Loft and Sacristy in front and the Nave in the rear.

Abo Mission Convento Salinas Pueblo X9449
(597 KB)

The Ambulatorio wall (left), entrance to the Sacristy (center), and part of the Convento (the priest’s home, at right).

Quarai Mission Salinas Pueblo X9458
(601 KB)

The Franciscan Mission Church at the Pueblo of Quarai.
This is the best preserved and most complete of the Salinas ruins.

The holes in the wall between the window and door (on the right) are floor joist sockets
for the porch extending along the front. On the inside they held the floor joists for the choir loft.
The Mission was built like a fortress and acted as a buffer between the Pueblo and the Apache
Plains Indians, who tended to raid the Pueblos (as detailed earlier) due to Puebloan involvement
in the numerous Spanish slave raids on the Apache villages. The walls were four to four and a half
feet thick (relatively thin for their height), but were reinforced by tower buttresses at the corners.

Quarai Mission Nave Transept and Apse Salinas Pueblo X9462
(339 KB)

The flagstone floor of the Nave, the West Transept and Apse. High on the West wall is a window,
which was later filled in when the Friars found that it allowed a strong breeze to flow through the Church.
The vertical holes in the walls supported Vigas (beams) which held up the roofs of the Nave and Transepts.
The holes are rectangular because the beams were supported by corbels as bearing plate timbers.

Montezuma Castle X0096
(723 KB)

Montezuma Castle was one of the four original National
Monuments designated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Montezuma Castle X0087
(876 KB)

Montezuma Castle is one of the finest examples of prehistoric architecture in the Southwest, built into a hollowed-out alcove in the limestone cliffs from 1100 AD by the Southern Sinagua, who lived in the Verde Valley between 500 and 1425 AD.

The ‘high-rise apartment’ dwelling is five stories and contains over 20 rooms. It is thought to have housed about 50 people. It overlooks the fertile fields which were irrigated by the systems left in place by the previous Hohokam residents of the valley.

The only way up into the cliff dwelling was via ladders or by climbing the cliff, which provided the inhabitants with a natural defense against enemy tribes. The structure is a composite of
a rear section (the older of the two sections, three stories tall) and a front section which is three stories tall, the third story of which is a single front room in front of the lowest central room of the rear section. The total complex is five stories tall.

Tuzigoot Sinagua Pueblo X0210
(822 KB)

The North Central rooms of Tuzigoot overlooked by the Citadel (tower room).

The Sinagua people who farmed the Verde Valley 20 miles northwest of Montezuma Castle
built a multi-story Pueblo atop a limestone spine near the Verde River. Tuzigoot is Apache for
“Crooked Water”, referring to the oxbow of Peck’s Lake, a cutoff meander of the Verde River.
The two to three story pueblo had 110 rooms, the first of which was built in about 1000 AD.

Tuzigoot Sinagua Pueblo X0220
(765 KB)

The most dramatic angle of the Southern rooms at Tuzigoot from atop the Citadel (tower room).

The Sinagua left Tuzigoot in about 1400 AD. Several Hopi clans trace their ancestry to the
Southern Sinagua from the Verde Valley, and believe they left the valley for religious reasons.

For more images like those shown above, click the Display Composite
below to visit the New Mexico Pueblos and Arizona Sinagua Sites page.

Images in this section are in a number of different Galleries on the Photoshelter website.
The Banner below leads to the Indian Lands & Anasazi Sites Collection where a Gallery can be selected.

There are 14 Sections in the Photoshelter Indian Lands & Anasazi Sites Collection

Direct Links to images from this Section:

Taos Pueblo
New Mexico Pueblos & Bandelier
Canyon de Chelly & AZ Sinagua Sites

Indian Lands Select
(150 Selected images)

Click the Display Composite above to visit the Taos Pueblo page.

Click the Display Composite above to visit the
New Mexico Pueblos and Arizona Sinagua Sites page.

Click the Display Composite above to return to the Indian Lands and Anasazi Sites Index page.