A:Shiwi
Women balancing pots on their heads in an A:Shiwi ceremony in Gallup, New Mexico on July 21, 2016.
A:Shiwi
people
Also known as: Zuñi, Zuni
A:Shiwi, Indigenous North American group in what is now west-central New Mexico, on the Arizona border. The A:Shiwi are a Pueblo people and speak Shiwi’ma, an isolate language in the Penutian language grouping. They are believed to be descendants of the prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi). A:Shiwi traditions depict a past in which their ancestors emerged from underground and eventually settled at the tribe’s present location. When Pueblo groups first encountered Spanish colonizers in the 16th...