They renamed pueblos with saints' names, and the first church was built in Nambé Pueblo in the early 1600s. Catholic missionaries also came into the area, threatening native religious beliefs.

He forced Nambé Pueblo, as was the case with other pueblos, to start paying him taxes with cotton, crops and labor. The Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate arrived with armed forces in the area in 1598. Eventually the Nambé emerged as a culture in their new homeland in present-day New Mexico. As the Ancestral Puebloans abandoned their canyon homeland due to social upheaval and climate change, they migrated to other areas. Contemporary Puebloans do not want this term to be used. In contemporary times, the people and their archaeological culture were referred to as Anasazi for historical purposes - a Navajo term loosely translated as 'Enemy Ancestors' as some Navajo clans are descendants of the Anasazi.

Scholars believe that all Pueblo peoples are descended from the Ancestral Pueblo people, possibly from the Mogollón, and other ancient peoples. The Nambé language is a dialect of the Tewa language, also called Tano, which belongs to the Kiowa-Tanoan language family. The 2010 census found that 1,818 people lived in the CDP, while 568 people in the United States reported being exclusively Nambé and 723 people reported being Nambé exclusively or in combination with another group. Please help improve this article, possibly by splitting the article and/or by introducing a disambiguation page, or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article may lack focus or may be about more than one topic.

Nambé is the Spanish version of a similar-sounding Tewa word, which can be interpreted loosely as meaning 'rounded earth.' The word 'pueblo' stems from the Spanish word for 'village.' Pueblo refers both to the Southwestern style architecture and the people themselves. The community of Nambe, New Mexico, is separate from the pueblo. Nambé was one of the Pueblos that organized and participated in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, trying to expel the Spanish from the area.

It was a primary cultural, economic, and religious center at the time of the arrival of Spanish colonists in the very early 17th century. The Pueblo of Nambé has existed since the 14th century and is a member of the Eight Northern Pueblos. Nambé Oweenge Pueblo ( / n ɑː m ˈ b eɪ/ nahm/BAY Tewa: Nambé Oweengé / Nąngbeʼe Ôwîngeh, IPA: ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, and is also a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people.

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