Description
The Tewa are a linguistic group of Pueblo Native Americans who speak the Tewa language and share the Pueblo culture. Their homelands are on or near the Rio Grande in New Mexico north of Santa Fe. n 1630, Fray Alonso de Benavides reported eight Tewa pueblos with a total population as high as six thousand. But, in other reports, about 2,200 Tewa were living in the six New Mexico pueblos, which might not include the other two pueblos mentioned by Fray Alonso. Today, hundreds of these Pueblo ruins in New Mexico have been identified and marked as ancestral sites for the complementary Rio Grande Pueblos; in historical times, at least sixty of them were abandoned.
Language
Tewa is the most endangered language in New Mexico
Culture
The Tewa were primarily cultivators, using irrigation to sustain and grow maize, beans, and squash. While they could be considered nomadic, as they followed herds of deer, bison, and elk to hunt while gathering berries and nuts, they were mostly not nomadic and preferred to settle in an area and farm. They were also proficient at crushing plants and other natural flora to make herbal teas and sometimes even "potions," as their tribe believed in the shaman or works of witchcraft. The primary forms of art in the tribe were shown through pottery, weaving, and wood carving, but the most influential was pottery, as the tribe used it for storage, eating, cooking, and trading.