Tigua Indian Cultural Center, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo

Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is a federally recognized, sovereign Native nation inside the city of El Paso, and its people are known as the Tigua. The Pueblo tells its beginning this way: Tigua families left their homelands at Quarai Pueblo because of drought and took refuge at Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico. During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 they were captured by the Spanish and forced to walk more than 400 miles south. In 1682 they established Ysleta del Sur, the Ysleta of the south, and soon after dug the acequia, the irrigation canal that made the valley a farming community.

The Pueblo's land base shrank through the nineteenth century. In 1751 the king of Spain granted the Pueblo thirty-six square miles around the mission, and Texas recognized the grant in 1854, but through state acts and land promoters the Pueblo lost almost all of it. Texas recognized the Tigua as a tribe in 1967, and the federal government did so the next year.

The Tigua Indian Cultural Center is the Pueblo's own place for its history and culture, and the Pueblo describes it as a collective site for centuries of tribal history. It stands on Yaya Lane in the old part of Ysleta, a short drive from the mission church the Tigua know as San Antonio. Visitors come as guests of a living community: check the Pueblo's site for hours and events, and ask before taking photographs.