Origin Story

The Tamaya people believe their ancestors originated from a subterranean world to the north. Assisted by their mother Iyatiko, they ascended through four worlds--the white, red, blue and yellow worlds--before emerging at Siapapu into this, the fifth world. These people, called Keresans, moved south to a place called White House where they lived with the gods who taught them what they needed to know about living in this hostile world.

The Keresans, however, eventually became quarrelsome, arguing with the kachinas, the gods primarily in control of the rain, and later amongst themselves. This angered Iyatiko, who altered the Keresan language so that each faction spoke a separate tongue. The Keresans abandoned White House and the various factions settled in different places. 

After traveling for some time, the Tamayame reached the eastern slope of the Sandia Mountains, northeast of present-day Albuquerque. Here the people settled in what is currently known as Paak’u. This location, surrounded by mountain peaks, was where the Tamayame built their village of buildings arranged around a central plaza.

The hunters, farmers, craftsmen, and potters of Paak’u were not isolated. To the east were the villages of the Galisteo basin. The settlements of the Rio Grande were also not far away. The people of Paak’u met these and more distant neighbors, with whom they established extensive trade networks. Although Paak’u was far from any ocean, the residents made beads and ornaments from the seashells that came from the West Coast of Mexico, and their trade networks extended onto the Great Plains.

The settlement at Paak’u prospered for more than a century. By the 1300s Paak’u featured storerooms, workrooms, and special rooms set aside for ceremonial use. Some leaders instructed residents to seek new fields and farmlands, as the region had a short growing season and undependable rainfall. These Tamayame explorers traveled from Paak’u first to the north, then west, and finally to the south and east. By the time they returned to Paak’u, the community had outgrown the area and the Tamayame decided to relocate to the rich lands along the Rio Grande, where some of the Tamayame had begun to build small farming villages. Paak’u was completely depopulated by the late 1300s or early 1400s.

For the Tamayame, the journey still had not come to an end. The people settled for a time in the farming villages along the Rio Grande but then, according to oral history, a group of Tamayame traveled west to the south bank of the Rio Jemez, where they founded a village known as Kwiiste Haa Tamaya. From this village, the people eventually crossed the Rio Jemez and traveled north to the place where, after centuries of traveling, the journey ended. There, beside the river and beneath a broad mesa, the Tamayame found their new homeland.