The name "Keres" refers to seven present-day Keresan-speaking Pueblo Indian tribes of New Mexico. Acoma and Laguna are commonly designated as Western Keresans as contrasted with the Eastern Keresan villages, or pueblos, of Santa Ana, Zia (Sia), San Felipe, Santo Domingo, and Cochiti. Each pueblo, together with its satellites, constitutes an independent tribe with its own political, Ceremonial, and social structures.

Location. The Western Keresan villages, Acoma and Laguna, lie, respectively, some sixty and forty miles west of Albuquerque, in west-central New Mexico. Santa Ana and Zia are located on the Jemez River some miles above its confluence with the Rio Grande and twenty-seven and thirty miles north of Albuquerque. Cochiti, Santo Domingo, and San Felipe are on the Rio Grande and lie, Respectively, twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five miles southwest of Santa Fe.

Keresan Family, Keresan People, Keresan Pueblos (adapted from K’eres, the aboriginal name). A linguistic family of Pueblo Indians including the inhabitants of several villages on the Rio Grande, in north central New Mexico, between the Rito de los Frijoles (where, before being confined to reservations, they joined the Tewaon the north) and the Rio Jemez, as well as on the latter stream from the pueblo of Sia to its month. The west division, comprising Acoma and Laguna pueblos, are situated westward from the Rio Grande, the latter on the Rio San Jose. Like the other Pueblo tribes of New Mexico, the Keresan Indians maintain that they had their origin at the mythical Shipapu and that they slowly drifted southward to the Rio Grande, taking up their abode in the Rito de los Frijoles, or Tyuonyi, and constructing there the cliff-dwellings found to-day excavated in the friable volcanic tufa. Long before the coming of the Spaniards they had abandoned the Rito, and, moving farther southward, separated into a number of autonomous village communities. According to Coronado, who visited the “Quirix” province in 1540, these Indians occupied 7 pueblos; 40 years later Espejo found 5; while in 1630 Benavides described the stock as numbering 4,000 people, in 7 towns extending 10 leagues along the Rio Grande.