Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection more

 Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection Randall H. McGuire The late thirteenth-century religious ideologies that transformed the Pueblo world sprang from far-ranging beliefs, rituals, and social relations inextricably linked to Mesoamerica (see figure 2.1). Indigenous peoples living in the Southwest of the United States and the Northwest of México clearly share many aspects of cosmology, iconography, belief, and ritual with peoples living in Mesoamerica. But Pueblo religion also differs from Mesoamerican religion in many ways. It did not diffuse north in neat packages of cosmology and ritual, nor did Mesoamerican missionaries, traders, or conquerors impose a new religion on Pueblo peoples. We need more complex models of this relationship that consider the historical dynamics of similarity and difference between the Pueblos and Mesoamerica. The Pueblo world at the end of the thirteenth century participated in religious changes that occurred across the Southwest/Northwest and that involved multiple archaeological traditions, including Casas Grandes and the Salado. These new religions of the fourteenth century also integrated Mesoamerican beliefs and rituals that had entered the Southwest/Northwest hundreds of years before. Thus, our analyses also need to historically contextualize Pueblo religion within the Southwest/ Northwest. Here, I unpack the historical and spatial relationships that created the Mesoamerican connection to Pueblo religion. My approach challenges analyses that treat the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica as bounded units and that paint Mesoamerican ideologies with too broad of a brush. I instead focus on historically shifting networks of social and cultural relationships. The starting point of the analysis is a review of the Mesoamerican elements in contemporary Pueblo religion and a reflection on how the Pueblos differ from Mesoamericans. The history 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 23 8/11/2011 8:33:24 AM 24 Randall H. McGuire Figure .. Map of the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica. about how these elements came to be, that is, the history of the Mesoamerican connection, occupies the bulk of the chapter. Finally, I examine how the Pueblo Katsina religion differed from and resembled the other major religious, ideological movements of the late thirteenth century at Casas Grandes and in the Salado religion (also known as the Southwestern Cult). Approaches to Studying Pueblo Religion Archaeologists have often produced explanations for Pueblo religion that are both too specific and too general. Specific explanations tend to 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 24 8/11/2011 8:33:30 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 25 focus on unique aspects of Pueblo religion and on religious variation between the Pueblos. They usually acknowledge Mesoamerican components but they rarely look further south than Casas Grandes (Adams 1991; Adams and LaMotta 2006; Crown 1994). Broad similarities between Mesoamerican and Pueblo religions entrance other researchers (Mathiowetz 2009a, 2009b; Schaafsma 1999, 2000, 2001; Taube 2001). Their analyses of iconography, cosmology, and ritual leap great expanses of time and space as they take specifics from Olmec, Aztec, or Maya religion as representing all of Mesoamerican belief, and they then find parallels in the Southwest/Northwest. For example, Taube (2001:18) equates Post-Classic Mexican wind temples, such as the Caracol at Chichén Itza, to Pueblo kivas simply because both structural types are round. These scholars tend to favor event-oriented explanations that populate the Southwest/Northwest with Mesoamerican traders, missionaries, and rulers. A multiscalar, relational approach suggests that the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica were both more connected and less connected than either specific or general explanations suggest and that the nature and degree of this connection varied greatly across time and space (see also Lekson 2009). Scholars often have treated the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica as bounded units that exchanged cultural traits. This view structures archaeological thinking in negative ways (McGuire et al. 1994). By defining their objects of study as categorical units, archaeologists do not allow for the ebb and flow of people, things, and ideas in time and space. Cultural traits reduce everything to equivalent units. Thus, warrior twins, metaphors of wind and breath, copper bells, masked dancers, and pole-climbing rituals all become equivalent markers of the Mesoamerican connection. Yet these things significantly differ in their roles, impacts, and connotations for society, culture, and change. Societies may share cultural traits but the lived experiences of these traits may be quite different. From a relational perspective, such categorical thinking is counterproductive. A relational approach does not attempt to reduce our understanding of the Mesoamerican connection and its role in Pueblo religion to a specific cause such as migration or trade. Rather, it asks how relations among actors and societies constructed and remade this connection (see also Pauketat, this volume; Plog, this volume). 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 25 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM 26 Randall H. McGuire The Mesoamerican connection with Pueblo religion involved relations at a macro scale that stretched from the Yucatán to Taos and at a regional scale from Casas Grandes to Hopi. Yet in the end, real people made this transformation in their local communities, in the world that they knew through their particular experiences. What Is Mesoamerican About Pueblo Religion and What Is Not At the end of the sixteenth century, the first Spanish settlers called the Pueblo world Nuevo México because it reminded them of Mēxihco, the land of the Mexica or Aztecs (Hammond and Rey 1966:141). Like the Spanish friars, twentieth-century Pueblo ethnographers observed numerous parallels between Pueblo religion and Mesoamerican beliefs (Broda 2004). These parallels occurred in iconography, cosmology, metaphors, and rituals (see table 2.1) (Parsons 1939:1016–1025). Some contemporary scholars link these parallels to the worship of Tláloc and Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent. Polly Schaafsma (1999: 165) argues that the Katsina Complex is the northernmost manifestation of the Mesoamerican rain god, Tláloc. She proposes that Katsinas per se derived from Mesoamerican concepts that integrated the spirits of ancestors with natural forces in order to transform the deceased into rainmakers (Schaafsma 1999:184). The feathered serpent appears as a puppet in Pueblo kiva ceremonies related to the Katsina religion. In Mesoamerica, Quetzalcóatl cosmology included notions of fertility and regeneration, the legitimation of political power, underworld waters, earth and sky, militarism associated with the planet Venus, human sacrifice, and control of water-bearing winds (Philips et al. 2006; Schaafsma 2001; Taube 2001). In the Southwest/Northwest, Pueblo peoples associated feathered and horned serpents with the unity of the earth and sky as manifest in floods, rain, earthquakes, and landslides. Especially in the Rio Grande, Pueblos associated horned serpents with Venus and warfare. Human sacrifice occurs in Pueblo myths with the killing of twin children to appease the feathered serpent. The similarities between Pueblo religion and Mesoamerican religions, however, existed in very dissimilar social contexts. The scale of Puebloan towns pales in comparison with even minor Mesoamerican cities that had monumental architecture and tens of thousands of peo- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 26 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 27 Table 2.1. Some parallels between Pueblo and Mesoamerican religion. Iconography and Cosmology Warrior Twins associated with the planet Venus Color-directional symbolism Multitiered cosmos with a watery underworld Cyclic destruction and rebirth of worlds Ritual maintains the cycle of the world (Thompson 2007; Riley 2005:10) (Schaafsma 1999:175) (Schaafsma 1999; Taube 2001) (Parsons 1939) (Parsons 1939) Migration histories begin with emergence (Parsons 1939) from a previous world The Flower World Feathered or horned serpents associated with fertility, floods, and earthquakes Young sun god who would later be called Montezuma Common astronomy and star lore Salt woman and Aztec goddess Huixtocihuatl (Hays-Gilpin 2006; Hays-Gilpin and Hill 2000) (Philips et al. 2006) (Mathiowetz 2009b) (Riley 2005:88–89) (Broda 2004:283–284) Metaphors Serpent mouths stand for cave openings and water issues from both Clouds stand for ancestors Cruciforms stand for planet Venus and associated with warfare Flowers, butterflies, and parrots for the Flower World Mountains associated with watery underworld Wind as source of rain and equation of wind and breath (Taube 2001) (Schaafsma 1999; Taube 2001) (Schaafsma 2001:147; M. Thompson 2007) (Hays-Gilpin 2006:67–68) (Schaafsma 1999:173; Taube 2001) (Taube 2001) (continued) 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 27 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM 28 Randall H. McGuire Table 2.1. Continued Water jars stand for rain Cotton as clouds Rituals New Fire Ceremony Swallowing of sticks and handling of snakes Pole-climbing rituals Ritual contests, racing, and ball games Blessing with cornmeal and water Prayer offerings (sticks, feathers, and gum paper) Human sacrifice (mythic and symbolic in Pueblos) Ritual clowns or jesters Masked dances to bring rain Priests with esoteric knowledge (Parsons 1939:1021) (Parsons 1939:1020) (Beals 1944) (Parsons 1939:1017) (Parsons 1939:1022) (Parsons 1939:1022) (Parsons 1939) (Parsons 1939:1019) (Schaafsma 1999; Taube 2001) (Parsons 1939:1020) (Taube 2001:104) (Broda 2004:290) ple. In Pueblo society, everyone farmed while in Mesoamerica; peasants specialized in farming, artisans in crafts, merchants in trade, and warriors in conflict. Noble elites ruled over Mesoamerican cities supported by castes of priests, merchants, and warriors. Elite and upper classes lived in palaces and controlled resources and people by force of arms. Iconography and texts served to legitimate elite power. By contrast, Pueblo elites lived in houses that were comparable with everyone else’s and elites’ power came from the control of ritual knowledge. In Mesoamerica, hierarchy was overt, while in the Pueblos a constant tension between egalitarianism and ranking maintained more communal societies (McGuire and Saitta 1996). Each region actualized parallel rituals and metaphors in very different ways. Both peoples believed they must perform rituals to maintain the cycle of the world. In Mesoamerican rituals, priests dragged war 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 28 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 29 captives to the tops of pyramids and cut their hearts out. In Pueblo ritual, Katsinas danced in the plazas. All people living in a pueblo participated in the Katsina religion and usually all were initiated in the Katsina sodality. In Mesoamerica, elites maintained the cults of the state, while the common people had their own rituals (Gonlin and Lohse 2007). In both contexts, priests controlled esoteric ritual and cosmological knowledge. But in Pueblo society those elites lived humbly like everyone else. In Mesoamerica, priests formed one of three or four elite classes living in opulence, and common people gave them great deference. The Post-Classic Quetzalcóatl cult legitimated elite power, while the rituals of the Katsina religion redistributed food and sacred clowns ridiculed hubris. We thus have a paradox. We can identify a profound degree of shared cosmology, iconography, metaphor, and ritual between the two regions. As Schaafsma (1999:165) said, “The Southwest and Mesoamerica are undeniably and inextricably linked.” Yet the societies of the two regions remain qualitatively different. Ben Nelson’s (1995) comparison of Chaco Canyon and La Quemada suggests that the Southwest and Mesoamerica are like two languages with many cognates, but different grammars and syntaxes. The task before us is to ask how the making and remaking of these cognates contributed to the advent of the Katsina religion. We can start to answer this question by realizing that the parallels between the two areas have varied histories and origins. North American Indian religions share a wide range of iconographies and beliefs (Hirschfelder 1999). Peoples all across the continent use serpent symbolism. Color-directional symbolism has an equally wide distribution. The twins of Mesoamerica and the Southwest/Northwest find parallels in the twins of Iroquois origin. Many western North American cultures begin their history with their emergence from a previous world. These symbols and beliefs clearly transcend both Mesoamerica and the Southwest/Northwest and must reflect a more widespread commonality on the continent as a whole (Wilcox 2008). There can be little question that Mesoamerican peoples first cultivated the corn, beans, and squash upon which Pueblo peoples later built their economies. We would expect that these crops arrived with beliefs and icons related to their cul- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 29 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM 30 Randall H. McGuire tivation. The Spanish conquest also led to similarities between Pueblo and Mesoamerican religions. Pueblo Catholicism and rituals such as the Matachine Dance, have Spanish origins. Mesoamerican Indians who came with the Spaniards probably inspired some Pueblo rituals such as pole climbing (Beals 1944). The historical question is how the Mesoamerican parallels in Pueblo religion came together from the beginnings of agriculture to the intrusion of Spanish conquerors. History of the Mesoamerican Connection For more than a millennium, the social relations that defined the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica ebbed and flowed over the landscape. The most dynamic spaces in this process were West México and the Chalchihuites. West México stretched along the Pacific coast from Michoacán Sinaloa and the Chalchihuites Tradition occurred in Durango, Zacatecas, and Jalisco (figure 2.1) (Williams 2009). This discussion approaches the history of this ebb and flow from a southern perspective, looking at processes in Mesoamerica and how they reverberated to the north. I have used the Mesoamerican chronology to organize the discussion beginning with the Formative, followed by the Classic, Epiclassic, and Post-Classic Periods. Formative Beginnings In Mesoamerica, the conjunction of agriculture, pottery making, and village life marks the Formative Period. The spread of agriculture precedes this concurrence by almost 2,000 years. It is several hundred years after a full Formative pattern appears that it is possible to distinguish developments in the Southwest/Northwest from developments in the Chalchihuites and West México. Several researchers link the northward spread of Uto-Aztecan languages to the adoption of agriculture and the spread of shared cosmologies, symbols and rituals (Gregory and Wilcox 2007; Hays-Gilpin 2006; Hays-Gilpin and Hill 2000; LeBlanc 2008; Mabry et al. 2008). Many of the most fundamental parallels between Mesoamerican and Pueblo religions may spring from this linguistic linkage. Kelley HaysGilpin and Jane Hill (2000; Hays-Gilpin 2006) use linguistic analyses 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 30 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 31 to suggest that Flower World cosmology came to the Southwest/Northwest with proto-Uto Aztecan speakers and agriculture. In the Bajio region of México (figure 2.1), the Formative begins by 250 BC at the site of Chupícuaro (Braniff 1974; Florance 1985; J. Kelley 1976). Chupícuaro and its derivatives spread first westward into West México and then northward into Guanajuato, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Durango, and then later—leaping a gap of arid and rugged territory— into Arizona and New Mexico, edging finally into Utah, Colorado, Chihuahua, and Sonora. J. Charles Kelley (1966) and Beatriz Braniff (1974) have traced striking ceramic similarities from Chupícuaro through the Chalchihuites to the Hohokam. Foster (1982) identifies a continuum in brown ware styles running from Zacatecas, to Durango, to Chihuahua, and to New Mexico. These parallels include red-onbrown decoration, common vessel forms, and quartered designs with bilateral symmetry. In West México, the development of early village life, pottery making, and agriculture look much like the Pioneer Period Hohokam. In southern Sinaloa, archaeologists date the first formative tradition from 250 BC to AD 500 (I. Kelley 1938). The pottery has broad-lined, crude red designs that artisans painted in quarters with bilateral symmetry over a buff slip. The Classic Period and the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Pueblo Great urban centers, including Monte Alban, and Teotihuacan dominated the highland Mesoamerican Early Classic Period (AD 200 to 600). Politics, economics, ideology, and culture all flowed from these centers. In the Southwest/Northwest, during the same period the distinctive Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Pueblo traditions developed. During the Classic Period, West México had its own trajectory of cultural development (López Austin and López Luján 2001:86–88, 123). By the 600s, West Mexican towns had planned mound-plaza complexes oriented to the cardinal directions and domestic residences clustered into courtyard groups (Weigand 2007). Excavations of towns and shaft tombs reveal elaborate figurine styles, effigy vessels, molded spindle whorls, red-on-brown or red-on-buff pottery, and shell jewelry 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 31 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM 32 Randall H. McGuire dominated by bracelets. In Durango, Zacatecas, and Jalisco, the beginnings of the Chalchihuites culture appear between AD 300 to 500 with villages and towns and red-on-buff and red-on-brown pottery (Hers 2001). Hohokam aesthetics with their use of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures on ceramics and shells and their ceramic figurines differed markedly from other areas of the southwestern United States (Meighen 1999; McGuire and Villalpando 2007). Both the iconography and style of these images greatly resemble the iconography and style of West México and Chalchihuites art (A. Johnson 1958). Shell jewelry manufacture (especially shell bracelets), the use of ball courts, and effigy vessels also connect the Hohokam with West México. Patricia Carot and Marie-Areti Hers (2008; Carot 2001) have proposed that the Hohokam migrated from Michoacán to Arizona. The dearth of these parallels from pre-900 Mogollon and Ancestral Pueblo traditions suggests that the Hohokam were related to West México in ways the other “southwestern traditions” were not (McGuire and Villalpando 2007). When viewed from the north, the Hohokam look like an island of Mesoamerican influence, but when viewed from the south they become the tip of a peninsula. In Sonora, recent research has documented Trincheras and Huatabampo traditions linking the Hohokam to West México (figure 2.1) (Carpenter 1996, 2008; McGuire and Villalpando 2007). Before 900, social relations in México and the southwestern United States did not break down into two parts—Mesoamerica and the Southwest/Northwest—but instead into three social webs (figure 2.1). These would include (1) an Early Classic Mesoamerican core developing in the highlands of central México, the Gulf coast lowlands, and the coast of Oaxaca; (2) a West México and Chalchihuites web that links cultures along the Gulf of California north of Michoacán, through the highlands of Durango, Zacatecas, and Jalisco, on to the Sonoran Desert of Sonora and Arizona; and (3) a Southwest/Northwest that included the Ancestral Pueblos of the Colorado Plateau with the Mogollon in the mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua (figure 2.1). Few, if any, of the things that make the Hohokam part of West México (iconography, ball courts, shell bracelets, etc.) ended up in the post-thirteenth-century Pueblo world. The linkages that connected 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 32 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 33 Mesoamerica to the Pueblos did not become apparent until the Mesoamerican Post-Classic Period. The Epiclassic, the Post-Classic and the Hohokam, Mimbres, and Chaco Canyon The Epiclassic, or Late Classic, Period of Mesoamerica spanned the time between the fall of Teotihuacan around 600/700 and the beginnings of the Post-Classic ca. 900 (Kowalski and Kristan-Grahm 2007; Smith and Berdan 2003). By the end of this period, Mesoamerican elements began to show up in Chaco Canyon, the Mimbres, and the Sedentary Period Hohokam. During the Epiclassic, Mesoamerica expanded, becoming more economically interconnected, more politically divided, and more cosmologically uniform. The Chalchihuites centers of La Quemada and Alta Vista in Zacatecas were the northernmost points of this expansion. Toward the conclusion of this period, the growth of the Azatlán tradition drew West México more firmly into the Mesoamerican economic, religious, and political orbit. The Azatlán tradition was part of a panMesoamerican Mixteca-Puebla horizon that marks the emergence of a reorganized Mesoamerica in the Post-Classic Period. Classic Period trade had focused on the great urban centers of Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, and the major Mayan cities. In the Epiclassic, trade became decentralized and it thrived in the peripheries (López Austin and López Luján 2001:22; Smith and Berdan 2003:4). In the Mesoamerican core, a merchant class developed commercialized marketplaces. The volume of trade increased with a greater diversity of trade goods, including more bulk commodities. Late in the Epiclassic, copper objects (mainly bells) from West México entered the trade networks of Mesoamerica and the Southwest/Northwest. Turquoise from the Chalchihuites region and the Southwest/Northwest also became a notable commodity that reached all the way to the Maya lowlands (Weigand 2008). A proliferation of small polities and city-states grew from the collapse of the urban centers (B. Nelson 2000, 2006). These centers of power were diverse and contained ethnically defined classes of rulers, merchants, priests, warriors, and commoners. Artisans migrated between these centers to serve the needs of the new elites and this move- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 33 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM 34 Randall H. McGuire ment produced a uniform set of prestige goods and symbols that identified and legitimated the elite. Nomadic peoples and agriculturalists from the north, the famed Chichimecs, entered core Mesoamerica. Increased levels of violence, warfare, and human sacrifice accompanied Epiclassic political instability and change. Epiclassic elites legitimated their position, power, and conquests through the worship of Quetzalcóatl. The cosmology of Quetzalcóatl employed metaphors of watery underworlds, rain, breath, wind, sacrifice, and regeneration to speak of transformation, regeneration, and fertility (Taube 2001). It incorporated militaristic symbols and its priests practiced human sacrifice. Quetzalcóatl conveyed leaders from the underworld to positions of power in this world and during the Epiclassic and Post-Classic; elites across Mesoamerica mobilized the Quetzalcóatl cult to provide mythological charters for the political order (Ringle 2004; Ringle et al. 1998; Sugiyama 2005). Elites used war, trade, and migration to spread the cult, and they adorned their cities with Quetzalcóatl shrines to establish pilgrimage routes. Many archaeologists argue that a Mixteca-Pueblo Horizon Style marks the transition from the Epiclassic to Post-Classic Periods (ca. 900). Some archaeologists contend that Mesoamerican traders brought this Horizon style to the Southwest/Northwest (Di Peso 1974; Foster 1999; J. Kelly 1966; Riley 2005). Scholars call the West Mexican regional manifestation of this style the Azatlán Tradition (Williams 2009) (see figure 2.2). Michael Smith (Smith and Heath-Smith 1980; M. Smith 2003, 2007) noted that the concept of a Mixteca-Pueblo Style lumps together several separate phenomena that overlap imperfectly in time and space. Boone and Smith (2003) distinguish between iconography and style. Iconography refers to symbols or icons that occurred together while style references how craftspeople produced that iconography. Within the Mixteca-Pueblo Horizon, they identify an Early PostClassic International Symbol Set that dates from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. This iconography occurs principally on polychrome ceramics exchanged in regional trade. The symbol set includes representations of Quetzalcóatl and the stepped-fret design (see figure 2.3). Boone and Smith identify the Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set as the iconography of the Quetzalcóatl cult. After the thirteenth 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 34 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 35 Figure .. Map of late Post-Classic polychrome traditions in the Southwest/ Northwest and Mesoamerica. century, a new Late Post-Classic International Symbol Set appeared with calendric and codex symbols. Mesoamerican artisans executed both of these symbol sets in the Post-Classic International Style. This style incorporated stocky, flat figures with stiff lines and almost geometric, crisp edges (figure 2.3). The Epiclassic witnessed the massive expansion and growth of the Chalchihuites centers of Alta Vista and La Quemada in Zacatecas (Hers 2001; B. Nelson 1997). These were Mesoamerican cities with ball courts, pyramids, human sacrifices, and ancestor veneration (Nelson et al. 1992; Pérez et al 2008). Hers (2001) argues that Post-Classic rituals of human sacrifice, skull racks, colonnades, and chacmools originated 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 35 8/11/2011 8:33:31 AM 36 Randall H. McGuire Feathered Serpent and Step Fret Design in Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set Figure .. Examples of the Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set and of the Late Post-Classic International Symbol Set. 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 36 8/11/2011 8:33:32 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 37 here and spread south; she also believes that when agriculturalists abandoned the region around 900, they traveled south into the core as invading Chichimecs. J. Charles Kelley (1976) maintained that the Chalchihuites Culture survived in Durango until the fourteenth century but more recent investigations suggest that the Chalchihuites red-on-buff sequence ends at 900 but that there is an Azatlán development (on a Chalchihuites base) that probably goes up to 1300. Clear evidence exists to connect the Chalchihuites regional centers with Mesoamerica, West México, and the Southwest/Northwest. The icon of the humpbacked flute player originated in the southwestern United States and spread to the Chalchihuites (Hers 2001). Southwest turquoise occurred in Chalchihuites along with West Mexican copper bells and scarlet macaws. Many archaeologists interpret the appearance of the Azatlán Tradition (ca. 900) along the west coast as the Mesoamericanization of West México (López Austin and López Luján 2001:86–88, 123). It first appeared south of Guadalajara at around 850. It spread north integrating previously unrelated areas in West México until reaching Gusave in northern Sinaloa by the tenth century. It persisted in northern Sinaloa until the abandonment of Gusave in 1350 (Carpenter 1996, 2008). Polychrome ceramics decorated with the Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set marked the appearance of the Azatlán Tradition. Tláloc and Quetzalcóatl appear on rock art (Mendiola 2006: 35–36). By the thirteenth century, craftspeople executed these symbols in a Post-Classic International Style. West Mexican artisans used the pseudo-cloisonné technique on pottery and on sandstone backs for iron pyrite mirrors. Copper objects (principally bells) and metallurgy spread from West México to other parts of Mesoamerica. The Azatlán Tradition did not spread into the Sonoran Desert, leaving what had been the West Mexican Huatabampo, Trincheras, and Hohokam Traditions un-Mesoamericanized (Carpenter 1996, 2008). These Sonoran traditions became more integrated into networks of cultural and economic relations extending north and west to the Pueblos and Casas Grandes. Thus, after 900, for the first time, two distinct cultural networks existed: the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica. The iconography and cosmology of the Mesoamerican Epiclassic reached the Southwest/Northwest by the end of the tenth century. 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 37 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM 38 Randall H. McGuire With it came scarlet macaws, copper bells, pseudo-cloisonné mirror backs, and cocoa from a Mesoamericanized West México. Scarlet macaws live in the Gulf Coast lowlands of México but small populations survive today in West México (Wilcox 2008). The iconography and objects appeared most commonly among the Phoenix Basin Hohokam, in the Mimbres and at Chaco Canyon. The Hohokam remained linked to West México at the end of the tenth century. During the Santa Cruz Phase (550–900) the Hohokam looked like a West Mexican tradition with red-on-buff pottery, shell jewelry (especially bracelets), ball courts, platform mounds, bird and snake motifs, humped-back flute players, and thick-billed parrots. A Santa Cruz red-on-buff sherd from Snaketown has the earliest representation of a horned or feathered serpent in the Southwest/Northwest (Haury 1976:235). During the Sacaton Phase (900–1100), additional items from the now-Mesoamericanized West México, including copper bells, iron pyrite mirror backs, and ceramic vessels, appear. Zooarchaeologists have also identified the remains of dozens of scarlet macaws. Hohokam style, however, remained similar to pre-Azatlán West México and the Chalchihuites; it did not reflect the Post-Classic International Style. By 900, Mimbres people were building pueblos with open plazas and hundreds of rooms. Most of the evidence for Epiclassic Mesoamerican iconography comes from Mimbres Classic ceramics (dating 1000– 1150). These vessels displayed the first solid evidence for feathered serpents and masked dancers in the Southwest/Northwest. They also portrayed macaws or parrots, possible human sacrifice, twins, Tláloc, and other icons that may reference Mesoamerica. The presence of shell bracelets and fish imagery indicates that Mimbres people actually visited the west coast of México (Jett and Moyle 1986; Wilcox 2008). Ben Nelson (2006) summarizes the evidence for Mesoamerican contacts at Chaco Canyon. He suggests that Chacoan developments were synchronous with the broad outline of cycles of change in north México. Most of the parallels he identifies, including shell bracelets, roads, colonnades, and copper bells, originate from West México or Chalchihuites. Residue analysis indicates that Chacoan cylinder vessels contained cacao, a drink consumed by Mesoamerican elites (Crown and Hurst 2009). This cacao may have originated from the Gulf Coast 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 38 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 39 of México or more probably from Colima and Nayarit in West México. Nelson notes that archaeologists cannot trace any of these things to specific Mesoamerican empires or capitals. He suggests that Chacoan notions of power and legitimacy may have been cloaked in references to distant places, landscapes, and celestial phenomena. At the end of the tenth century, some elements of the Early PostClassic International Symbol Set, specifically the feathered serpent and step fret designs, appear in the Southwest/Northwest. We do not, however, see the Post-Classic International Style. Hohokam style most closely resembles that of pre-Azatlán West México and the Chalchihuites and the same might be said for the iconographic painting on Mimbres Classic pottery. Copper bells, pseudo-cloisonné mirror backs, parrots, and possibly bracelets indicate trade with West México. Scarlet macaws and cocoa may demonstrate connections that reach directly or indirectly to core Mesoamerica but these things also occurred in West México. It might be tempting to propose that these developments represent Chalchihuites rulers, priests, and artisans migrating to the Southwest/Northwest, even as some of their Chichimec brethren descend upon core Mesoamerica. I, however, find little proof for this. In each case, we have evidence of in situ development, no evidence of foreign intruders, and the parallels seem too generalized to result from a wholesale importation of cosmology, aesthetics, and artesian skills. Most noteworthy is the absence of the Post-Classic International Style. It seems more likely that emergent Southwest/Northwest elites exploited already existing connections to West México to draw on goods, beliefs, iconographies, and rituals that would legitimate their status. In the Southwest/Northwest, the Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set becomes more apparent and widespread in subsequent developments (Nelson 2006, 2007). Polychromes, Elites, Migrants, and Cults in the Southwest/Northwest By the early twelfth century, the regional centers of the Hohokam, Mimbres, and Chaco Canyon were in decline or had been deserted (Wilcox 2008). Over the next 50 to 100 years, the social networks of the Southwest/Northwest reorganized in ways that erased the boundaries between the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Pueblo and estab- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 39 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM 40 Randall H. McGuire lished new webs of social relations. Archaeologists struggled for years to understand these new webs in terms of cultures or traditions such as the Salado, Casas Grandes, Western Pueblo, or Pueblo IV period but these new networks do not fit easily within such categories (Clark et al. 2008; Gregory and Wilcox 2007; J. Hill et al. 2004; Lekson 2009). In the late pre-Hispanic period, several polychrome ceramic wares developed that crosscut the black-on-white, red-on-brown, and red-onbuff traditions that had defined the Ancestral Pueblos, Mogollon, and Hohokam (figure 2.2). Chihuahuan Polychromes appeared south of the old Mimbres region. Salado Polychromes occurred in an arc anchored in the Phoenix Basin on the west and rising easterly to the Mogollon Rim and down through the Mimbres area of southern New Mexico. White Mountain Red Ware occurred along the Mogollon Rim. North of the rim, Jeddito Yellow Wares extended from the Little Colorado River to the Hopi mesas. Glaze-ware traditions developed at Zuni and along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. All of these new wares express a rich iconography replete with parrots and other birds, horned serpents, water imagery, butterflies, flowers, the sun, stars, and masked dancers. Numerous authors link the polychrome traditions to new religions (Adams 1991; Crown 1994; Di Peso 1974; Mathiowetz 2009a, 2009b; Rakita 2009; VanPool and VanPool 2007). Minimally, these religions would include one centered on Casas Grandes, a Salado religion, and the Katsina religion that originated along the upper Little Colorado River and then spread to the Rio Grande. All of these religions incorporated icons from the Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set, most notably feathered or horned serpents. The iconography does not, however, manifest the wholesale adoption of the Post-Classic Quetzalcóatl cult. Rather, it exhibits a convergence of select elements from it, from older Mesoamerican beliefs such as Tláloc, from earlier Southwest/Northwest beliefs, and probably from West Mexican cosmologies as well. Several common factors mark the reorganization of the Southwest/ Northwest at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Trade expanded with a shared set of prestige goods that included turquoise on shell mosaics, conch trumpets, parrots and macaws and their feathers, and copper bells. Whole communities migrated and merged with others to 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 40 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 41 form multiethnic towns that would break apart and lead to more migrations (Bernardini, this volume). Pueblo peoples describe this time in their stories of emergence and the migrations they undertook to find the center place (Lekson 2009). There is evidence for increased violence and warfare, including marks of violence on human bones, fortified communities, vacant buffer zones, icons of warriors, and cruciforms representing Venus (LeBlanc 1999; Nichols and Crown 2008; Schaafsma 2000; M. Thompson 2007). The Mesoamerican elements of post-thirteenth-century Pueblo religion arrived in the region via many routes, from many sources, and over a time span of more than a millennium. Archaeologists see these movements in the Mesoamerican objects traded north such as copper bells and macaws, and in the turquoise traded south. People seldom trade for goods based solely on their rarity or aesthetic appeal. They develop ritual contexts for the display of these goods and apply formal mechanisms for absorbing new symbols. The Pueblos did this in the creation of the Katsina religion. They did not, however, simply import a Mesoamerican religion but instead created something unique to Pueblo culture. As Beals (1944:248) noted, no ethnographic evidence exists for a Katsina-like religion between the valley of Mexico and the Pueblos. Making Sense of the Mesoamerican Connection and Regional Transformations Archaeologists have tried to explain the changes of the late thirteenthcentury Southwest/Northwest in terms of migrations, or elite interactions, or the spread of cults or intrusions from Mesoamerica. The resemblance of these changes to transformations in Mesoamerica from the Classic to the Post-Classic suggests a more complex scenario. Before the change, cultural developments centered on large regional centers (in the Southwest, these include Chaco, Sedentary Hohokam and Mimbres; in Classic Period Mesoamerica, they include Teotihuacan and Monte Alban). A period of dislocation, change, and shifting boundaries followed that reorganized social networks. The new sets of relations propagated new political centers and elites, along with new commodities and cults to link and legitimate these power centers and 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 41 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM 42 Randall H. McGuire form a greater uniformity across the culture area (B. Nelson 2006). This process in Mesoamerica does not reduce to migration, elites, cults, or long-distance intrusions but rather it arose from the relations among migrations, commerce, conquest, religion, and elites through time and across space. Mesoamerican-derived rituals, cosmologies, and iconographies provided common threads that ran through Casas Grandes religion, the Salado religion, and the Katsina religion. The three movements, however, wove these threads into different designs and patterns that varied in how much they resembled the patterns of Mesoamerica. They also differed in how these threads wove together other aspects of society and culture in lived experience. Casas Grandes Casas Grandes (1250–1450) is the most Mesoamerican of all the archaeological sites in the Southwest/Northwest (Dean and Ravesloot 1993; Di Peso 1974). The community included effigy mounds, elaborate elite burials, two I-shaped ball courts, and many other Mesoamerican architectural features. Chihuahuan Polychromes exhibit a rich and complex iconography that includes many elements of the Early PostClassic International Symbol Set (Di Peso 1974; Mathiowetz 2009a, 2009b; Rakita 2009; VanPool and VanPool 2007). Moreover, archaeologists have found more Mesoamerican objects, including copper bells, macaws, shells, and ceramics, here than anywhere else in the cultural area. Di Peso (1974) also found evidence of human sacrifice and the ritual use of human bones. Charles Di Peso (1974) initially proposed that pochteca traders from a Mesoamerican sovereignty established Casas Grandes as a trade outpost in the Southwest/Northwest. Other researchers (McGuire 1980; Whalen and Minnis 2001, 2003) have dismissed this interpretation and argued instead that Casas Grandes was a regional center in its own right. I would expect that a Post-Classic outpost of a Mesoamerican polity would directly reflect the symbols and styles of its homeland. Thus, an outpost at Casas Grandes should have the Late Post-Classic International Symbol Set of post-thirteenth-century Mesoamerica executed in the contemporary Post-Classic religious style. Casas Grandes iconography exhibits neither of these things. Mathiowetz (2009a, 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 42 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 43 2009b) has proposed that elites from the Chalchihuites Culture in northern México established Casas Grandes and introduced the Mesoamerican cosmology of the Flower World, Flower Mountain, and the complex of the sun youth to legitimate their rule. Chalchihuites elites are more plausible as founders of Casas Grandes than as agents of a core Mesoamerican polity. Alternatively, a Southwest/Northwest elite at Casas Grandes may have used Mesoamerican beliefs to legitimate their power by references to distant places, landscapes, and celestial phenomena. Of the three Southwest/Northwest religions, the Casas Grandes religion most closely resembled the Mesoamerican Post-Classic Quetzalcóatl cult. The horned serpent is common in Casas Grandes iconography. The use of this iconography in the context of elite burials connects the Casas Grandes rulers to the horned serpent (VanPool et al. 2006b: 241). VanPool and VanPool (2007) hypothesize that Casas Grandes priests embodied the horned serpent to undertake shamanistic journeys between worlds. In Mesoamerica, the Quetzalcóatl cult emphasized the transformation between worlds and the deity conveyed leaders from the underworld to positions of power in this world. Mathiowetz (2009a, 2009b) argues that Casas Grandes cosmology, like that of the Quetzalcóatl cult, incorporated notions of fertility and regeneration, the legitimation of political power, waters of the underworld, earth and sky, militarism, and control of the winds that bring water. Finally, archaeologists have found the clearest evidence of human sacrifice in the Southwest/Northwest at Casas Grandes. Several analysts suggest that all things Mesoamerican did not enter the Southwest/Northwest through Casas Grandes and that the Salado had their own connections to the south. Ronna Bradley’s (1993) analysis of shell jewelry from Casas Grandes indicates that the raw materials originated from West México, while Salado shells came from the coast of Sonora. Victoria Vargas (1995) found that Casas Grandes copper bells differed morphologically from Salado copper bells and suggested that each area got its bells from a different source. VanPool et al. (2006b) argue that the Casas Grandes religion and the Salado religion represented distinct but overlapping developments. Each emphasized different aspects of Mesoamerican cosmology, and practiced different rituals: for example, the horned serpent played a lesser role in the Salado reli- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 43 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM 44 Randall H. McGuire gion than at Casas Grandes. They see masked dancers as the core ritual of the Salado religion in contrast to shamanic journeys within the Casas Grandes. The Salado Religion Crown (1994) defined the Salado religion based on her analysis of Salado Polychromes. Kayenta migrants living in settlements along the Mogollon Rim apparently created this polychrome ceramic ware in the 1270s (Clark et al. 2008:3–4). The ceramic ware and Kayenta migrants spread from this area to much of southern Arizona, including the Phoenix and Tonto basins, and to southwest New Mexico. Salado Polychromes incorporate symbols from the Mesoamerican Early PostClassic International Symbol Set, including horned serpents, the sun and stars, and parrots or macaws. Crown (1994) interprets many designs as indicating masked dancers and suggests that people practiced the religion to ensure fertility and to control the weather. In these ways, the religion resembles the Mesoamerican Post-Classic Quetzalcóatl cult and the Katsina religion. The largest concentrations of people producing and using Salado Polychromes lived in the Phoenix Basin, the Tonto Basin, the San Pedro River Valley, the upper Gila, the Safford Basin and in the Cliff Phase towns and villages of southwest New Mexico (Clark et al. 2008:14). These people laid out their communities in courtyards that were defined by rooms and walls. In Arizona, they built platform mounds in the largest settlements. In these communities, archaeologists find evidence for elite residences and burials (Clark et al. 2008; McGuire 1991; Wilcox 1987:172, 2008). These community plans more closely resemble Casas Grandes than they do pueblos. Some researchers have suggested that since Kayenta migrants first made Salado Polychromes along the Mogollon Rim that they also introduced the Salado religion (Clark et al. 2008). Kayenta migrants may well have created the Salado ceramic tradition, but the Mesoamerican Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set elements that they added to their Cibola-style decorations did not originate in northern Arizona. They also did not introduce the rituals, beliefs, and cosmology that these symbols embodied to the Southwest/Northwest. I find it equally unlikely that this religion originated from Casas Grandes. Salado Poly- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 44 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 45 chromes either predated or were coeval with the founding of Casa Grandes. In the Southwest/Northwest we see the earliest evidence of the Mesoamerican Early Post-Classic International Symbol Set among the Hohokam and the Mimbres peoples. Their descendants lived in the Phoenix Basin, the Tonto Basin, the San Pedro River Valley, the upper Gila, the Safford Basin, and in the Cliff Phase towns and villages of southwest New Mexico where Salado Polychromes were produced or more importantly used. Thus, the Hohokam and Mimbres, instead of Kayenta potters, would appear to be the most likely origin points for the Salado religion. Researchers have suggested four models to account for the distribution of Salado Polychromes: They were (1) elite symbols of authority or items of exchange, (2) indicators of participation in an economic alliance/regional system, (3) objects associated with the spread of a religious ideology, or (4) markers of a migrant group (Crown 1994:vi). These explanations for the Salado set up a series of oppositions and mutually exclusive propositions (politics versus ritual versus migration). Yet archaeologists find good evidence for all four models. This suggests that, rather than asking which of the four possibilities account for the Salado, we should instead ask how all four were interrelated in the lived experiences of people. The relational question reveals that the Salado and their religion looked a lot like the religion practiced in the Mesoamerican Epiclassic. In the Salado region, a large area became more economically interconnected, more politically divided, more ethnically diverse, and more cosmologically uniform. Trade became more decentralized and the volume of goods increased. Artisans (Kayenta potters at least and maybe others) moved from community to community in order to set up separate villages or barrios to practice their craft. In Epiclassic Mesoamerica, the movement of goods and artisans produced a uniform set of prestige goods and symbols that identified and legitimated the elite. Salado elites used a common set of objects and symbols (including conch trumpets, turquoise on shell mosaics, copper bells, and macaws) to legitimate their power (Clark et al. 2008:14; McGuire 1991; Wilcox 1987, 2008). Similarly the Salado religion provided a shared ideology that both unified diversity and legitimated social differentiation and inequality. This cult incorporated many Mesoamerican elements but 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 45 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM 46 Randall H. McGuire lacked others, such as the Post-Classic International Style, the Late Post-Classic International Symbol Set, extensive human sacrifice, and common ritual uses of human bone. Katsina Religion Pueblo IV period religion developed on the margins of the Mesoamerican connection to the late pre-Hispanic Southwest/Northwest. Its iconography appears on Pueblo Glaze Wares, White Mountain Red Ware, and Jeddito Yellow Ware (Adams 1991; Van Keuren, this volume). Archaeologists find more evidence of Mesoamerican connections among the Salado (including the Classic Period Hohokam) and Casas Grandes than in the Pueblo IV period pueblos. Salado and Casas Grandes sites with their compounds, platform mounds, elite residences, and elite tombs are more similar to Mesoamerican communities than are Pueblo IV period and Late Mogollon pueblos, and they contain more Mesoamerican goods than the pueblos. It appears that both the Salado religion and the Casas Grandes religion more greatly resembled Mesoamerican religion than did the Katsina religion. These resemblances included cosmology, ritual, belief, and, most important, the relationship of religion to other aspects of society, especially the legitimation of elite rulers and, in the case of Casas Grandes, human sacrifice. I would suggest that the Katsina religion was not simply an offshoot or variant of the Salado religion. Some scholars have asserted that Mesoamerica connected to the Pueblo IV period world through the Salado religion (Crown 1994). E. Charles Adams (1991; Adams and LaMotta 2006) argues that the Katsina religion developed in the upper Little Colorado River drainage area and was based directly on the Salado religion. The Mesoamerican components that are key to the religion, however, existed first among the Hohokam and the Mimbres, and the earliest representations of masks occur within Jornada Mogollon rock art in southeast New Mexico (figure 2.1). Lekson (2009) claims that Katsinas originated with the Mimbres, and Schaafsma (2000) places their origin among the Jornada Mogollon. The ethnographically known Katsina religion probably also incorporated Mesoamerican features via Casas Grandes. Mathiowetz (2009a, 2009b), for example, has proposed that the Mesoamerican cosmology of the Flower Mountain and the complex 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 46 8/11/2011 8:33:36 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 47 of the sun youth passed from Casas Grandes to the Pueblos. He also contends that the Pueblos transformed the complex of the sun youth into the post-conquest hero Montezuma who remains a part of Pueblo ritual and belief today. Pueblo IV period religion clearly has a more complex origin than simply being the Pueblo version of a Salado religion. Why the Pueblos were not Mesoamerican societies, and why the Katsina religion was not a Mesoamerican religion can be summarized in a single observation. The Katsina religion was (or is) a form of asceticism. It advocates a communal life of hardship, humility, and hardiness. Individuals are expected to subordinate themselves to the interests of the group in order to maintain the balance and cycle of the world (Parsons 1939). A hierarchical body of esoteric knowledge and ritual lies at the core of the religion. Control of the esoteric sets a few priests off from the mass of the people. Yet the priests manifest their sacred position and power by living modestly and by not standing out from others in the material world. People sacrifice their individuality, possessions, food, and individual desires to feed the Katsinas and advance the common good. Post-Classic Mesoamerican cosmology also prescribed ongoing sacrifice to maintain the universe. Individuals committed many ritual sacrifices on a daily basis. In popular rituals, people would break or bury objects, discard food and drink, slaughter animals, and kill butterflies as sacrifices to the gods (Aguilar-Moreno 2007:172–174). The sacrifices of objects, food, and even of animals have parallels in Pueblo religion but at least two important differences exist. Mesoamerican religions believed that soil, crops, the moon, stars, and people sprang from the severed or buried bodies, fingers, limbs, heads, and (most importantly) blood of sacrificed gods (AguilarMoreno 2007:172–174). Thus, people had to maintain the earth, the sky, and fertility through blood sacrifice. Individuals, both commoners and elites, let blood from their fingers, tongues, and earlobes as personal sacrifices. In elaborate state rituals, priests killed, beheaded, skinned, dismembered, and cut the hearts out of sacrificial victims. Similar sacrifices as well as the use of trophy heads and human femur rasps appear at Casas Grandes, but not among the Salado. The Pueblos lacked this fascination with blood and slaughter (Par- 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 47 8/11/2011 8:33:37 AM 48 Randall H. McGuire sons 1939). Instead of spilling blood on altars and offering still-beating human hearts to the gods, they put out prayer feathers and offered pollen and corn meal to the Katsinas. A common Pueblo legend tells of the sacrifice of twin children to appease the feathered serpent and to stop a great flood (Tyler 1964:111). In the Pueblo legend, priests do not dismember, behead, or skin the children, or they do not cut the children’s hearts out. Rather, the twins disappear into the waters as the serpent sucks the flood back into the underworld. Some researchers have interpreted this story to indicate that the Pueblos did practice human sacrifice during their history (Riley 1995:110), but archaeologists have found no evidence of human sacrifice in the Pueblo IV period world. Also, the Spanish reported no occurrences of human sacrifice among the sixteenth-century Pueblos (Riley 1995:110). Susan James (2002) has argued that Hopi Powamu rituals have parallels with and mimic Aztec rituals of child sacrifice but she also notes that there is no evidence that the Hopi ever killed their children in these rituals. Second, state rituals of Post-Classic Mesoamerican religion did not promote asceticism (Aguilar-Moreno 2007; Ringle 2004). Religious beliefs did not mandate that elites live close to the common people and that they should reward reciprocity and humility. With great pomp and spectacle, Post-Classic ritual glorified the elite. The Post-Classic cosmology provided mythological charters for a hierarchical political order. This also seems to have been the case at Casas Grandes and within the Salado religion where religion legitimated explicit expressions of elite power and privilege. Numerous researchers (Adams 1991; Lekson 2009; Schaafsma 1999) have noted that in contrast the Katsina religion leveled social distinctions, included all people, punished hubris, and redistributed food and other resources between households. This leads me to wonder if perhaps this social leveling had something to do with why the Pueblos survived into the sixteenth century while the Salado and Casas Grandes declined and disappeared by 1450 (Clark et al. 2008). Pueblo IV period and modern Katsina religion incorporated many aspects of Mesoamerican cosmology, belief, and metaphor. However, the practice of this religion in its ritual, its proscriptions for daily behavior, and its role in social relations differed from Mesoamerica in significant and important ways. This means that Pueblo priests may 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 48 8/11/2011 8:33:37 AM Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection 49 have been able to argue theology with Aztec priests but that the lived experiences of their religions would have been profoundly different for them and their peoples. A Pueblo man dancing in the plaza as the masked embodiment of a Katsina experiences his religion in a very different way than an Aztec war captive who is draped over a stone and waiting for his heart to be cut out. By the same token, the experience of the Pueblo priest laying corn-pollen blessings on the masked dancer is very different than that of the Aztec priest who wielded the obsidian blade. I have suggested that the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica were both more connected and less connected than many archaeologists have maintained. From a relational perspective, we understand how Pueblo religion developed by setting aside bounded units like the Southwest/Northwest or Mesoamerica. Instead we need to historically examine how relations and networks between different groups of peoples formed and changed over time. In this examination, we would do well to examine the historical contingencies that affected these relationships and how they were realized in the lived experiences of people. In this way, we may come to better understand why Aztec priests wielded knives while Pueblo priests scattered corn pollen. Acknowledgments I want to thank Donna Glowacki and Scott Van Keuren for inviting me to participate in the Amerind Foundation seminar and in this volume. I gained much from the seminar and from the other participants in it. John Ware and the staff of the Amerind have created an intellectual oasis in the desert that enabled our engagements. Several individuals reviewed earlier versions of this chapter and helped me greatly in writing it. They include Ruth Van Dyke, Ben Nelson, Donna Glowacki, and Scott Van Keuren. Ann Hull drafted the figures for this chapter. 02Glowacki Ch2.indd 49 8/11/2011 8:33:37 AM