"Earlier this year, a news release from the Rail Runner Express announced that a new station was opening at Santo Domingo Pueblo midway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
It would be called "Kewa Pueblo Station" since tribal officers had recently decided to abandon the name Santo Domingo and use the original native name, Kewa.
Actually, that is the word that the Santo Domingos have always used to identify themselves when speaking their Keresan language. It is also the word by which the six other Keresan-speaking pueblos know them.
The name Santo Domingo was bestowed upon this Native town by 16th-century Spaniards. Colonizer Juan de Oñate is generally credited with having done that soon after reaching New Mexico in 1598.
Truth to tell, however, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, who led an illegal colonizing expedition to the upper Rio Grande in 1590, called the pueblo where he briefly stayed Santo Domingo.
The fact remains, from that time to this, the place has been known in Spanish, and later in English, by that name only. It translates as St. Dominic, referring to the Spaniard Domingo de Guzmán who founded the Dominican Order in the early 13th century."
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