Mimbreños

Mimbreños were creative in their artwork and often worked in adobe.[1] They created and decorated intricate adobe pottery, including bowls used in burial ceremonies.[1] The pottery used different colors to represent different things.[1][2] The Mimbreños worked in stone to create weapons and tools such as axes, hammers, and spades.[3] Mimbreños also used clay and metal materials; clay tablets were used to inscribe messages or create game boards. Bones from the animals they hunted were used as decoration around their home or fashioned as weapons.

Their houses were mostly made out of adobe and stone.[1] They would level off the ground and build the walls up around the leveled ground. Their houses were usually in groups near the river. Their adobe houses are also known as Pueblos.[4] The roofs of the house were typically something heavy like metal.[1] They contained stone or adobe fireplaces in the middle.[1]

Mimbreños celebrated burials and would commonly place the deceased in a seated position.[5] Notable people would be buried with utensils to take with them into the next life.[1] Decorated bowls would often be buried with the dead. Mimbreños believed that what they placed with the dead would be carried with them into the afterlife for them to use.

The designs on the pottery the Mimbreños created represented their religious beliefs.[2] Scholars believe the intricate geometric shapes on Mimbreño pottery represent certain emotions.[2] Zoomorphic decorations were popular designs.[6]

The Mimbreños developed an irrigation system in the Mimbres Valley which made it possible for the band to stay in one place.[7] This was different from other, more nomadic, Apache groups; however, the irrigation system ultimately failed.[7]