Description
The Zuni are Native American Pueblo peoples native to the Zuni River valley. The Zuni people today are federally recognized as the Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico, and most live in the Pueblo of Zuni on the Zuni River, a tributary of the Little Colorado River, in western New Mexico, United States. Zuni traditions depict a past in which their ancestors emerged from underground and eventually settled at the tribe’s present location.
Language
Penutian
Culture
Archaeology suggests that the Zuni have been farmers in the general area for 3,000 to 4,000 years. It is now thought that the Ancestral Zuni people inhabited the Zuni River valley from the last millennium B.C., when they began using irrigation to farm maize on at least household-sized plots. The Zuni tribe lived in multi level adobe houses. Zuni culture is associated with Mogollon and Ancestral Pueblo peoples cultures, who lived in the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and southern Colorado for over two millennia. White Mound was one such settlement of pit houses, farming, and storerooms, built around 700 A.D.