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From the early period of ethnological research among the Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley in northern New Mexico, it has been customary to believe that the imposition of Catholicism reconfigured Pueblo social organization to conform to Spanish colonial, particularly Catholic, practice through formal church marriage. Such efforts, it is commonly suggested, have resulted in significant changes in Eastern Pueblo social structures and kinship terminology. Failure to read translated, published, and readily available Spanish colonial and later mission documents, and subsequent accounts and records, I suggest, lend support to such "conventional" beliefs. The token suggestions that "Anglo-American" influences might also have resulted in proposed organizational changes and kin terminology have not been seriously investigated, and I suggest a reevaluation of the "conventional" explanations affecting the Eastern Pueblos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surnames of Pueblo individuals recorded by Franciscan and secular priests in the various mission pueblos of New Mexico reveal details of some ethnographic interest. Pueblo names, as is true in other Native American societies and communities, relate or refer not only to the unique and personal, but often to characteristics of the community's social organization. Names are symbols of social identity and relationships, but they also might reflect categories or positions in the community's social organization. Nicknames aside, surnames recorded at various pueblos in the northern Rio Grande valley of New Mexico suggest that they occasionally reveal aspects of a community's social structure, including apparently extinct as well as existing clan names, ceremonial or ritual behavior, and membership in sodalities, "cultural memory," residential mobility, and other details that have not been recorded or perceived by ethnographers among New Mexico's Pueblos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the Pueblo of Pecos in New Mexico that was abandoned by the descendants of the last Pecos people from 1838 to 1840 and the migration of the Pecos people to the Pueblo of Jemez.

The claim is periodically made for the existence of an Hispano ceramic tradition in Northern New Mexico. The accuracy of that claim is mired in local folklore and anchored more or less firmly in published archaeological speculation. Neither the origins, distribution nor time depth of such a tradition are known, but references to Spanish American pottery making are limited to the 1930s. This article reviews both the folklore and the speculation, not for the purpose of disproving or validating either, but in order to establish a framework for asking why and under what conditions Hispanos in New Mexico may or may not have made pottery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]