Tewa

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A Tewa Indian maiden (signified by the squash-blossom hair style) named Chaiwa, photographed by Edward S. Curtis in 1922

The Tewa are lingustic group of Pueblo American Indians 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. They comprise the following communities:

Nambé Pueblo
Pojoaque Pueblo
San Ildefonso Pueblo
Ohkay Owingeh (formerly known as San Juan Pueblo)
Santa Clara Pueblo
Tesuque Pueblo

The Arizona Tewa, descendants of those who fled the Second Pueblo Revolt of 1680-1692, live on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona on the First Mesa.

Tewa (also known as Tano) is one of five Kiowa-Tanoan languages spoken by the Pueblo people of New Mexico. Though these five languages are closely related, speakers of one cannot fully understand speakers of another (similar to German and English speakers). The six Tewa-speaking pueblos are Nambe, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, San Juan, Santa Clara, and Tesuque.

As with Tiwa, Towa and Keres, there is some disagreement among the Tewa people as to whether Tewa should be a written language or not. Some Pueblo elders feel that their languages should be preserved by oral traditions alone. However, many Tewa speakers have decided that Tewa literacy is important for passing the language on to the children. The Tewa pueblos developed their own orthography (spelling system) for their language, San Juan Pueblo has published a dictionary of Tewa, and today there are Tewa language programs teaching children to read and write in most of the Tewa-speaking pueblos. see Esther Martinez