The historic descendants of the prehistoric Anasazi peoples who live in several locations in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico in compact, permanent settlements known as pueblos (Spanish pueblo, "village" or "town"). Just as there was considerable regional diversity among the prehistoric Anasazi, there is similar diversity, both cultural and linguistic, among their Pueblo descendants. The contemporary Pueblos are divided into eastern and western. The eastern Pueblos include all the New Mexico Pueblos along the Rio Grande, while the western Pueblos include the Hopi villages of northern Arizona and the Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna villages, all in western New Mexico. Linguistically, the Pueblos are quite diverse, falling into four distinct families, with several subfamilies. The eastern Pueblos are divided into speakers of Tewa languages and Keresan languages. Tewa is distantly related to Uto-Aztecan, but Keresan has no known affinities. Of the western Pueblos, Acoma and Laguna speak Keresan; the Zuni speak Zuni, a language of Penutian affiliation, and the Hopi Pueblos, with one exception, speak Hopi, a Uto-Aztecan language. The exception is the village of Hano, composed of Tewa refugees from the Rio Grande.

Both eastern and western Pueblos are primarily farmers, but the type of farming and the ownership of property have varied. In the Rio Grande area farming of maize and cotton is done in irrigated fields in river bottoms. Today men do all the cultivation, but formerly, when hunting was also important, women shared in the farming. Many of the Rio Grande Pueblos had special hunting societies that hunted deer and antelope in the mountains, and easterly Pueblos such as the Taos and Picuris sometimes sent hunters to the Plains for bison. Among all Pueblos communal rabbit hunts were held, and women gathered wild plants to eat. Among the western Pueblos, especially the Hopi, farming was less certain because the climate was much drier.

Prior to Spanish contact, each pueblo was politically autonomous, governed by a council composed of the heads of religious societies. These societies were centred in the kivas, subterranean ceremonial chambers, which also functioned as private clubs or lounging rooms for males. The Spanish introduced new political forms, such as the pueblo governor, an official elected for one year as village head. The number of pueblos diminished greatly after European contact from more than 80 to about 25 or 30. As a rule Pueblo Indians were peaceful and kept much to themselves. In 1680, however, led by Popé, a Tewa of San Juan, all Pueblo--Rio Grande, Hopi, and Zuni--rose against the Spanish and drove them out of their territory for 12 years. No other American Indians matched this feat.

Modern Pueblo social life centres on the village (which is also the political unit), though the pueblos are essentially theocracies. The western Pueblos are organized into clans and lineages, and secret societies, each owned or controlled by a particular clan, perform calendrical rituals for rain and tribal welfare. A tribal-wide kachina (katcina) cult is concerned with ancestors, and men's societies are responsible for protection and fertility ritual. In the Rio Grande region there is a dual village division into so-called Summer and Winter people, alternately responsible for pueblo activities; secret societies there deal primarily with curing rituals, and the kachina cult is less developed than it is in the other pueblos.

Native arts and crafts are especially active among the Hopi, where weaving and basketry are practiced and where the Hopi-Tewa revived pottery making in the 1890s. Silver and turquoise jewelry is produced in most pueblos, but silver working is not aboriginal.

Modern Pueblo Indians have retained the pre-Spanish way of life to a surprising degree. They have added to their material inventory such items as livestock, metal tools, new crops (such as wheat, aches, and chili peppers), modern clothing, automobiles, radios, and television. These changes necessarily have affected ideas, attitudes, and general outlook. Even in the Rio Grande pueblos near Santa Fe and Albuquerque, however, the basic fabric of Pueblo social system, community of organization, and native religion, with modifications only of detail, has survived.