Acoma Pueblo

“ Acoma Indian Pueblo, the Sky City, is famous in both history and legend. Built on the top of a lofty, almost inaccessible, redrock mesa some 357 feet high, it is one of the most picturesque of all New Mexico Indian pueblos. No other pueblo gives one such a clear sense of living in ancestral times. The movements of the people up and down the steep trails, the untiring vistas, and the ancient homesites are reminiscent of the life and times of the cliff dwellers. Here the archeologists can search out the secrets of ancient life by direct observation. ”

“ I was told in 1922 that all children not at Acomita are sent to Albuquerque or Santa Fé, but it was fairly [140] obvious that a good many of the younger ones can get no regular teaching whatever, since their parents migrate too frequently between the mesa and the farm villages.
The long procession of the years has produced but little material change in Ácoma. Very few references to this pueblo occur in government reports and such alteration as one notes is in the increased hostility of the mental attitude of its people toward the white man. ”

“ When he is absent it is given to the man who represents him. On our second visit to Ácoma in 1922 we saw it hanging on the wall of our host’s living-room, since the governor was temporarily away from the pueblo. In a sense, therefore, the government of the United States is represented in the election ceremony each year at seven of the New Mexico pueblos, of which I have learned the names of only four, besides Ácoma—Isleta, Tesuque, Taos, and Zuñi. ”

“ For now, as then, the members of the tribe reside together in one immense community building. It is rather droll to find among these natives of the desert the idea of the modern apartment house; but, in this place, as in all the settlements of the Pueblo Indians, communal dwellings were in existence long before the discovery of America, and the mesa of Ácoma was inhabited as it now is, when the Pilgrims landed upon Plymouth Rock. ”

“ The family organization among all Pueblos tends toward a compound type, consisting of as many as three generations. The young children are much in the care of the old people, especially of grandparents, by which division of labor the parents are released for their active toil in the fields or at their crafts. One sees in such a village as Ácoma quite little girls carrying far too heavy babies in a blanket on their backs, but one is told that there the men frequently carry the little children, which is not a usual pueblo custom. ”

“ The Indians of Acoma participated in the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680. They killed their priest, Fray Lucas Maldonado, in the first frenzy of the rebellion. Because of their isolation and the inaccessibility of the village, they were spared the vengeance of the Spaniards under de Vargas during the reconquest in 1692. There was an attempt by the Spanish in 1696 to take Acoma, but they succeeded only in destroying the crops and in capturing five Acoma warriors. The Indians held out until July 6, 1699, when they submitted to the Spanish governor of New Mexico, Governor Cubero. ”

“ The wise men or governors of the pueblos are always old men elected out of respect for their superior wisdom, men used to having their slightest word implicitly obeyed. Whipped, shamed, disgraced, they dispersed from the Palace, down the Rio Grande to Isleta, west to the city on the impregnable rocks of Acoma, north to that whole group of pueblo cities from Jemez to Santa Fe and Pecos and Taos. ”

“ In some cases these farms would be actually overlooked, as at Walpi, by the mesa pueblo, or, as at Acomita, be a dozen miles distant from Ácoma.
Since most Pueblo Indian ceremonial exists to implore help for the increase of the fertility of all created things, including the increase of human beings, all important rites and dances take place either before the time of planting or after the harvest is gathered; consequently the summer settlements rarely, perhaps [153] never, had kivas or ceremonial chambers ”

“ This feature of pueblo architecture has survived to the present time, and is prominent in all modern pueblos that have come under the writer’s notice, including the villages of Acoma and Jemez, belonging to the Rio Grande group, as well as in the pueblos under discussion. In all the pueblos that have been examined, both ancient and modern, with the exception of those of Tusayan, these special rooms, used for ceremonial purposes, occupy marginal or semidetached positions in the house clusters. ”

“ The dangers of attack are no longer present, and the farmers find it more advantageous to live closer to their irrigated plots. The result is that the people of Acoma are now scattered throughout several villages. Their great culture, their traditions, their fierce pride, and their deep reverence for their spectacular history is visible in their faces and manners. Acoma, the Sky City, remains the eternal city of New Mexico.
Cochiti Pueblo
The Indians of Cochiti Pueblo claim the famed cave dwellings and ruins of the Rito de Frijoles (Bandelier National Monument) as their ancestral home. ”

“ Such races as those still run at Ácoma and at Zuñi are visible proof that the physical vigor characteristic of the Pueblo tribes in days of old has not vanished. The invading Spaniards were not seldom amazed by the indomitable courage of the Indians in facing hardships and their endurance of cruel suffering without blenching. The stoicism with which they bear wounds with no outcry is not achieved without much discipline, and the Indian from his childhood is no stranger to pain. ”

“ Two or three miles away, across the valley, is the large village of Acoma, where a great deal of pottery is made for sale.
The pottery of the Pueblo Indians is very attractive, and their religious festivals and peculiar dances draw many visitors. These Indians no longer fear attacks from the savage Apache or Navajo, but they have become so used to their rock fortresses that it is not likely they will soon. leave them. The Navajos now live in peace and raise large herds of sheep and goats; while the more savage Apaches have been gathered upon reservations, never more to go upon the war-path. ”

“ The whole policy of the community is rapidly changing, for instead of the age-long custom of the men going to Acomita only for the seasons of planting and of harvest, more and more the bulk of the people live there the year round. Why, say the younger generation, should we climb those weary heights when there are no Apaches to fear? Hence many of them [34] return to the pueblo on the Crag only for ceremonies at stated intervals. This makes the atmosphere more sacrosanct than ever, and consequently more difficult for white students to study and record the life story of the Peñol. ”

“ Morgan tells us that, at Taos, the special duty of this all-important instruction was given to three old men. Regarding Ácoma, we have no definite information.
At Isleta, in conversation with an educated and very reliable Indian, now federal judge of the pueblo, I was told it is still a regular thing through the winter evenings to assemble the boys, to whom the older men “tell the stories of our origin and our [48] beliefs. We begin about nine o’clock every night and talk till three in the morning, and it takes two weeks of such talks to complete the story.” ”

“ My father will never again let me leave Acoma. Tell him I shall never see him again, but I shall love him always."
"My poor child!" sobbed Mrs. Coolidge. "We must find some way to bring you back!"
"It is useless to try. I know my father, and I know it will be impossible for me ever again to leave the pueblo. ”

“ Returning, then, [once more] to the location of the Queres nation,— [after] proceeding twelve leagues to the westward of its last pueblo, Santa Ana, one arrives at the Peñol of Ácoma which has occasioned the loss of so many lives of Spaniards and Indian friends, both on account of its being a sheer impregnable rock cliff, and because of the valor of its inhabitants, who probably number two thousand souls. Last year, 1629, God [101] granted that we should convert them to peace, so that to-day they have a Religious who is instructing them in the Christian faith and baptizing them. ”

“ What is clear is, that there is in the Pueblo mind and has been for centuries past, a concept of a definite and characteristic scheme of clan organization which belongs to no one nation but is common to all. The whole nature of the existing clans in the Southwest is that of an organ in a body. ”

“ The pueblo proper lies about four miles out from the white man's town. Laguna, Acoma, Zuñi, the Three Mesas of the Tusayan Desert—all lie on hillsides, or on the very crest of high acclivities. Taos is the exception among purely Indian pueblos. It lies in the lap of the valley among the mountains, [Pg 203] two castellated, five story adobe structures, one on each side of a mountain stream. In other pueblo villages, while the houses may adjoin one another like stone fronts in our big cities, they are not like huge beehive apartment houses. ”

“ Acoma is indeed situated on a rock, the shape of which resembles that of a spider. The walls of the rock fall perpendicularly down for nearly three hundred feet, while four winding paths lead to the pueblo, none of which has been cut out by human hands. Slight improvements in the shape of implanted posts and notches for the hands and feet have been made in a very few places. At the summit is the pueblo, with its great church of adobe and stone, and the churchyard, the soil of which has all been brought up on the backs of the inhabitants. ”

“ A word meaning “person in authority.” One informant told the writer that any officer may be called hócheni.
[152] Because of the scarcity of game all through the pueblo region, save only in the mountains behind Taos, the rabbit hunt is now the only one pursued.
[153] A very holy shrine of the war captains of Laguna is southeast of Ácoma, an entirely detached mound, and Dr. Parsons was told by the sister of the Osach cheani (Sun medicine man) that it would be visited by men of Ácoma, Zuñi, and other towns. This is described in figures in American Anthropologist, Vol. ”

“ As a prelude to this legend, let me state that the Pueblo cliff-dwellers often perched their habitations on lofty, sheer-walled, and not easily accessible mesas, a natural vantage-ground from which they might successfully resist their enemies, the nomadic and predatory tribes formerly over-running the country.
"The steep wall of the Acoma Mesa, with its solitary trail, surmounted by means of hand and foot holes pecked in the solid rock, was so well defended that a single man might keep an army at bay. ”

“ All the missions now in ruins were active then, each had its resident priest, who lived for the people or upon the people, according to his nature. Friar Baltazar was one of the most ambitious and exacting. It was his belief that the pueblo of Ácoma existed chiefly to support its fine church, and that this should be the pride of the Indians as it was his. ”

“ Jaramillo, pp. 370 and 371.
[42] Acoma is always described with particular care by the older Spanish authors. Antonio de Espejo, Carta, 23 April, 1584, in Documentos Inéditos del Archivo de Indias, vol. xv. p. 179: "Y hallamos un pueblo que se llama, Acoma, donde nos pareció, habria mas de seis mil ánimas, el cual está asentado sobre una peña alta que tiene mas de cincuenta estados en alto," etc. Juan de Oñate, Discurso de las Jornadas que hizo el Campo de Su Magestad desde la Nueva-España á la Provincia de la Nueva-México, Documentos Inéditos, vol. ”

“ Our choice is therefore limited between Zuñi and the Moqui towns themselves; for there can be no doubt as to the identity of the rock of Acuco or Tutahaco, east of Cibola, with the pueblo of Acoma, whose remarkable situation, on the top of a high, isolated rock, has made it the most conspicuous object in New Mexico for nearly three centuries. ”

“ Thence came their timber vigas or whatever other wood might be needed by the pueblo, all to be brought by human labor across thirty miles of desert. [14] On the slopes of San Mateo, we are told, are the most holy and hidden places of prayer and ritual, which the uninitiated may never find or penetrate. Well-worn trails run from Laguna and Zuñi as well as from Ácoma to the summit, and I have been told by a resident of Albuquerque of an altar and prayer sticks found there in recent days. ”

“ We know of three important ritual celebrations at Ácoma: namely, the Fiesta of San Estévan, patron saint of the mission and now of the pueblo, on September 2; that of All Souls’ Day; and the winter solstice rites, commingled with Christmas. A fourth that occurs at the time of the summer solstice, on San Juan’s Day, June 24, is in most pueblos an occasion of serious and elaborate ritual, but at Ácoma it is so much more like a madcap race and game that it is described in the chapter on games. All festivities are announced by the town crier some days in advance. ”

“ He genuinely loves to listen to a good story. The absorbing interest which primitive people take in stories as stories is one of the picturesque features of primitive life.... Explanations are decidedly less important than the novelistic elements of the plot. [161]
Ácoma on its craggy height, haughtily indifferent or inimical to its neighbors, has imparted little of itself to outsiders even in the way of folk-lore or of music. Espinosa considers that the “Pueblo Indians have given very little to the great traditional treasure of Spanish folk-lore of New Mexico.... ”