ÁCOMA, THE SKY CITY
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
[Illustration: ÁCOMA MAIDENS AT THE SPRING
_Copyright by E. S. Curtis_]
ÁCOMA, THE SKY CITY
_A STUDY IN PUEBLO-INDIAN HISTORY
AND CIVILIZATION_
BY
MRS. WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK
[Illustration]
CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1927
COPYRIGHT, 1926
BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
_Second Impression_
PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
IN GRATEFUL AND LOVING MEMORY OF
MRS. CHARLES ELIOT GUILD
AND
ELEANOR GUILD
[Illustration]
_But yet I treasure in my memory_
_Your gift of charity, your mellow ease,_
_And the dear honour of your amity,_
_For these once mine, my life is rich with these._
[Illustration]
_Because of your strong faith I kept the track_
_Whose sharp-set stones my strength had well-nigh spent._
_I could not meet your eyes if I turned back,_
_So on I went._
PREFACE
The attempt is here made to bring together, and put into a form for the
general reader, the story of that pueblo of the Keres people known as
Ácoma, so far as yet discovered in the records of Spanish diarists and in
those of more recent historical writers. It was one of the places visited
by the first white explorers of the region we know to-day as New Mexico.
From the very outset Ácoma excited the curiosity and even the fear of the
pioneers because of the strangeness of its position and the reputation of
its inhabitants for ferocity.
The early Spaniards made no prolonged stay there, but to “the marvellous
Crag” there are constant brief allusions from the time of Coronado’s
chronicler in 1540 onward to that of its conversion to Christianity after
1629.
Nor are there more vivid and thrilling tales told of any Southwestern
pueblo people than can be veraciously set forth of Ácoma, the City in the
Sky, built more than 6500 feet above sea-level.
The student of aboriginal legends and customs, after reading the many
monographs that have been printed about other Pueblo Indians, notably the
Hopi and Zuñi, is inclined at first to think himself fortunate to find
a field so little worked as Ácoma. Even Cochití and Laguna have opened
windows of understanding to the white investigator. One soon finds that
Ácoma has not been neglected, but that every one attempting to go beyond
the most superficial glance arrives at a wall as blank of entrance as
the ancient lower story of its own fortress dwellings. The ladders of
admission to its hatchways hardly give the stranger more than uncertain
glimpses here and there within the obscure interior, and these are so
fragmentary and elusive, often contradictory, that he can affirm little
about their ritual life—which is the core of tribal existence. Of all
Indians the Ácomas seem most resentful of intrusive questioning and most
unwilling to impart, even for purposes of record, any real knowledge
of themselves. Certain clans and rituals are already extinct. It has,
however, seemed worth while, before the old life has become something
less than a memory, overspun by all the vagueness of tradition, to bring
together into one small volume the substance of everything already
written about Ácoma. Such historical data as have come to light are
followed by a few legends and folk-tales—fairy tales perchance some of
them are—and then by the researches of scholars like Bandelier, Fewkes,
Parsons and Hodge.
It may be thought that the legitimate bounds of the subject as given in
the title have been too far exceeded. In explanation it is but fair to
state that since Ácoma is still well-nigh impenetrable to any foreigner,
the only way to apprehend its mental and spiritual development is to
use inferentially whatever seems permissible from related tribes. In
justification of this method I am happily supported by no less an
authority than the distinguished anthropologist, Dr. Kroeber, who writes:
“That the pueblo civilization was substantially the same in every town
has always been assumed; it begins to be evident that a great part of
it has been borrowed back and forth in the most outright and traceable
manner. The history of the cults and institutions of any one of these
people simply cannot be understood without a knowledge of the others. The
problem in its very nature is a comparative one, and until the pueblo
languages are more thoroughly understood there is no solution.”
Ácoma belongs to the most numerous of the six linguistic groups of the
Pueblo Indians, called the Keresan (Queresan), and shares with Laguna a
dialect differing somewhat from the rest of that “Nation.” Standing aloof
as these two do from the other Keresan villages, they nevertheless own
kinship with Sía, Santa Ana, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, and Cochití, who
all claim the famous Rito de los Frijoles for their ancestral home. The
researches of the best scholars find in the Ácoma ritual considerable
affiliation with the Zuñi, and rather less with that of the Tusayán
tribes of Arizona.
The writer makes no claim to be more than a compiler, but she has
endeavored not to include in the following pages the customs and beliefs
of any group of Indians which the scholars have not shown to be more
or less interwoven with those of Ácoma. In assembling these fugitive
accounts of the Sky City from diaries and archaeological notes, as well
as from appreciations of sympathetic visitors, she has hoped to lay a
foundation for some scholar of the future to build upon. The writer
has followed in the footsteps of genuine research, and she desires to
offer these pages to be used, like the toe and finger holes of the mesa,
chiefly as a guide to others to go further and to do the real work that
must be done soon if it is not to be forever lost.
The opportunity to collect and study these materials in the Bancroft
Research Library at Berkeley has been most cordially given to the
writer by Professor Herbert E. Bolton of the University of California.
My thanks are due also to Dr. Leslie Spier for much helpful suggestion
and criticism on the chapters dealing with the anthropology and native
customs of the Southwest. To Professor Bolton, the master-mind, whose
scholarship and insight are joined to a rare power of kindling in others
something of his own enthusiasm for historical research, and of setting
before them ideals of work which have broadened and deepened the world’s
knowledge of early American history, I wish to express my deep gratitude
for his never-failing encouragement and guidance.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
I. Mesa Land 3
II. The Citadel of Ácoma 14
HISTORY
III. First Expeditions from New Spain 51
IV. The Battle in the Sky City 69
V. Ácoma Rebuilt 88
VI. Father Ramírez at Ácoma 97
VII. Ácoma in the Pueblo Revolt 106
VIII. The Wonder-Working San José 127
IX. Ácoma and the Federal Government 134
LEGENDS AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
X. Origins and Migrations 147
XI. The Tradition of Katzímo and Ácoma 166
XII. The Social Organization 176
XIII. Folk-Tales of Ácoma 194
XIV. Keresan Myths 209
XV. Religious Beliefs 225
XVI. Ceremonials and Rituals 245
XVII. Indian Games 262
XVIII. Pottery 272
Appendix 289
Bibliography 301
Index 311
ILLUSTRATIONS
All the illustrations but two are from photographs not hitherto
published. For the frontispiece, I am indebted to the well-known
photographer of Indian life, Mr. Edward S. Curtis. For the difficult
trail up Katzímo, to the courtesy of the Century Company of New York.
All the others were taken for this book by Professor Herbert E. Bolton
of the University of California, or were given him for my use by the
Reverend St. John O’Sullivan of San Juan Capistrano, California. To these
gentlemen the author extends her thanks for making the text more vivid.
The cover design is from a water-color done by Mr. Kenneth M. Chapman of
the Art Museum of Santa Fé, from an ancient jar of Ácoma potters, for
which the writer feels especial gratitude.
ÁCOMA MAIDENS AT THE SPRING _Frontispiece_
MESA-LAND 4
THE CARSON MONUMENT 6
WALPI IS UNIQUE. IT MUST BE PRESERVED 10
KATZÍMO, OR THE ENCHANTED MESA 16
THE SAND-RAMP, OR “NEW TRAIL” 18
ÁCOMA, NORTH ROW 20
ÁCOMA, MIDDLE ROW 20
ÁCOMA MAN IN EVERYDAY DRESS 24
ÁCOMA WOMAN ON HER HOUSE TERRACE 24
THE LADDER-TRAIL 28
ÁCOMA “DOORWAYS” 30
THE TWO UPPER STOREYS, ÁCOMA 30
GENERAL VIEW OF ÁCOMA PUEBLO 34
THE CHURCH, ÁCOMA 38
A KISI IN A RIO GRANDE PUEBLO 40
THE LONG LINE OF ÁCOMA, TWO MILES AWAY 44
MAP OF NEW MEXICO IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 52
HÁWIKUH TO-DAY. FIRST OF THE SEVEN CITIES OF CÍBOLA 56
THE RUINED CHURCH OF HÁWIKUH 56
THE STAIRCASE TRAIL AND THE CHURCH 60
TO-YA-LA-NE 66
MODERN ZUÑI 66
FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF VILLAGRÁ’S RHYMED HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO 70
THE FORTRESS HOUSE OF ÁCOMA 78
ÁCOMA, LOOKING NORTHWARD 88
EL MORRO, OR INSCRIPTION ROCK 118
INSCRIPTION OF DE VARGAS ON EL MORRO 118
A NAVAJO HOGAN 136
THE PUEBLO OVEN 140
ON THE OLD TRAIL TO ZUÑI 160
THE CLIFFS OF ÁCOMA; KATZÍMO IN THE DISTANCE 166
ASCENT OF THE GREAT CLEFT OF KATZÍMO, 1897 172
THE ILLIMITABLE DESERT 176
THE INHERITED DANCE COSTUME 250
ÁCOMA ON FEAST-DAY OF ST. STEPHEN, SEPTEMBER 2 256
PROCESSION OF THE DANCERS, ÁCOMA 260
ÁCOMA GIRL RETURNING FROM THE RESERVOIR 272
THE GUARDIAN CLIFFS OF ÁCOMA 284
MAP FROM NORDENSKIÖLD’S CLIFF-DWELLERS OF THE MESA VERDE (_End-papers_)
ÁCOMA, THE SKY CITY
Chapter I
MESA LAND
_The vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended_
_And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars._
The first effect of the desert upon any human being must be one of
surprise—surprise at the contrast between the preconceived idea which the
word suggests and its variety of beauty—a beauty which becomes for many
an irresistible fascination, a magnet that allures and brings its lovers
back again and again.
The simplicity of great spaces and great masses is one of the supreme
influences of life. Together with limitless vistas of possibility, there
is in them a serenity that brings calm and meditative repose.
However far the eye is carried in the desert of the Southwest, one is
never wearied by monotony. Everywhere the undulating sands, hardly held
in place by scanty vegetation when the winds blow their wildest, are
driven into long rippling waves, or into hillocks, by the Spaniards
called _lomas_. Even while you watch, this shifting, drifting sand takes
on many hues. Sometimes it is grey, or pale buff, or almost white, more
rarely golden. Out of it grows, here and there, the pungent greasewood,
the stunted cedar and the thorny, freakish cacti unfurling gay flags of
color to catch the wandering bee.
Cutting the horizon, barrier mountain ranges appear, whose long, restful
lines lend a new note of titanic power to the harmony; and every now and
again, rock-islands, solitary, abrupt, imposing, tell of other forces
silently working through untold ages and leaving behind forms beautiful
or merely fantastic. Of all the magnetic elements of the landscape these
are the most manifest. But the supreme thing, the over-powering glory, is
the majesty of light and the splendor of color that is so all-pervading,
all-enfolding in the desert that, before we are aware of it, we become
sympathetic with the belief of the indigenous race in sorcery.
[Illustration: MESA-LAND
_Bolton_]
In some far foretime the whole of this vast area was an inland sea. Sand
and wind in the long interval since the waters receded have done their
part in the task of erosion as effectually as do ocean waves beating
upon coast-wise cliffs.[1] The work of these elemental forces is uneven.
The softer rock has given way. That which is harder is left sculptured
into forms that everywhere invite the imagination. To many of them
descriptive names have become permanently attached. Such is Locomotive
Rock, lifted high above the road between Casa Blanca and Ácoma in
astonishing realism. Most extraordinary is the line of heads and trunks
of eleven colossal elephants that may be seen two miles away from Ácoma
toward its farm-lands. By wind and sand-blast they have been eroded from
the oyster-grey stone to such lifelikeness that fancy grows almost into
conviction that here we have the work of forgotten sculptors such as once
were bred in Egypt or Chaldæa. Forms like these, in solitudes like these,
lead to quick recognition of the source of anthropomorphic worship by
the sensitively alert mind of primeval man. Such a portentous figure as
that called the Kit Carson monument near Fort Defiance arrests the gaze,
bizarre and unlovely though it is. Carved by no human hands, it must have
seemed to untutored minds a thing supernatural.
In these high altitudes the clear, thin air brings exhilaration of spirit
and an unwonted sense of physical well-being that “scorns laborious days”
and banishes fatigue. True, at times one may be almost blinded by the
shimmering brilliance of “the colored air.” But because the vast stretch
of almost treeless earth acts everywhere as a reflector, it is indirect
radiation and the lack of shade, rather than direct heat, from which one
occasionally needs to seek shelter.
With night there comes an indescribably awesome silence—an isolation, an
infinity of separation from all one has ever known; but soon the eyes,
uplifted to “the floor of heaven thick inlaid with patines of bright
gold,” are soothed and quieted out of all alarm, and blessed sleep brings
unconsciousness to human spirits which may not too long hold converse
with divinity.
[Illustration: THE CARSON MONUMENT
NEAR FORT DEFIANCE
_Bolton_]
Three of us had spent days of incomparable interest and pleasure visiting
the chief monuments of Mesa Land, Zuñi and Tusayán; Inscription Rock[2]
with its autograph record of heroic adventurers; the Cañon de Chelly
and the Cañon del Muerto, where prehistoric pueblos are built, on rocky
shelves or in natural caves, so high above the wet floor of the river
that they look like toy villages. From the limitless champaign we had
seen solitary mesas lifted up like no other mountain architecture on
earth. They varied in size from little islands to great table lands ten
miles long and more. To the traveller’s surprise some of these “islands”
prove to be peninsulas. This was the case at Hopi. A raised topographic
map disclosed the fact that the three mesas (table lands) whereon were
built the Seven Cities of Tusayán (Hopi) in the dateless centuries before
the coming of Columbus, are really long, irregular fingers pushing out
from a single enormous plateau. They are separated from one another by
miles of sage-grown plain through which run deep washes, torn by violent
streams in periodic seasons of storm, but now as dry and empty of life
as extinct craters. The highest point, from which these fabled cities
rise in picturesque dignity, is only seven or eight hundred feet above
the plain; but we are told that on its farthest rim to the north, this
plateau drops a sheer three thousand feet. Long rocky tongues such
as these, high and rugged, difficult of access and therefore easily
defended, and, moreover, commanding far views of the deep, wide valleys
stretching between the highlands, offered to the agricultural Indian
a natural fortress of defense from his hereditary foe, who roamed the
plains whithersoever the hunting of the buffalo willed that he should go.
Like all the semi-desert country, the valley land seems level until you
begin to traverse it. Then the roughness and the strange uplifts and
hollows suggest a world still in the making, an emergence from chaos,
left but never conquered. But not all is desert. Much beautiful wooded
country lies scattered through the Navajo reservation on the way to Hopi
Land. On the high plateaus, tall pines and cedars, interspersed with a
lower growth of oaks, give the nomad Navajo ample room for his wandering
flocks and a hidden shelter for his solitary hogan (hut) whether it be
of adobe or of brushwood. No undergrowth obscures the long vistas through
the forest, but a carpet of luxuriant grass dotted with brilliant flowers
gives pasturage for the woolly flock that provides both clothing and
food for the Navajo. One of our keenest memories will always be of the
deliciously aromatic scent of cedar burning in these hogans. Rising like
incense through the limpid air, it suggested ancient smokes from primeval
altars, kindled by the torch snatched from the Fire-God by Coyote.
More pervading and far more magical than the spicy odor of the cedars,
was our consciousness of color throughout the land. Color, translucent,
evanescent, mysteriously light-irradiated color, everywhere! From the
high vault of heaven it came flooding down over the soft greys and buffs
of the sandstone mesas, broken by every tone of red, beautiful and
varied, running the whole gamut of salmon-pink, rust-red, and vermilion
to deep mahogany and royal porphyry. The tones blend, contrast, or are
thrown into sharp relief, against backgrounds of dark fir, or foregrounds
of that elusive silver of the sage, which is neither grey nor green. Such
tapestry of silver-green, covering as it does long rolling valleys and
low foothills of the plains, makes a restful foil to the more brilliant
and more solemn elements of the earth-picture.
The supreme effect upon the eye of such a palette is dependent, after
all, upon the crystalline quality of the light and the ever-changeful
and mysterious movement of cloud-shadows. Here one rediscovers for
himself the truth the artists taught us long ago, that purple is the
complement of yellow. The gold and buff of the soil and the ranges are
suffused by the lavenders, violets and deep purples in every shaded
cavern, through the wizardry of the over-arching heavens.
Thinking backward through the historic years, it is no surprise to find
how unlike each other are the types of Indians in this country. Those
tribes who, since an immemorial age, have roved and fought and won their
way through alertness of eye and limb, must have acquired physical and
mental variations, even if once they were evolved from the same stock as
the Indian of fixed dwellings and sedentary habits.[3]
To us the Navajo embodied our preconceived idea of the Indian. He is
tall, powerfully built, often handsome, with high cheek bones and an
impassive face—mask-like in its haughty, sometimes brutal, stillness.
Even in a dance that we watched, nothing stirred his expression. The
Navajo is to-day, just as in the elder time, a roamer, pre-eminently the
herdsman, so that it is rare to find even as many as two or three of his
hogans clustered near a watering place.[4]
The dweller in the pueblos seems almost like a being of a different race
from the man of the plains. Shorter of stature, he is more delicate of
frame. His hands and feet are noticeably small, as if adapted to the
prehensile method of scaling his precipitous cliffs by toe and finger
holes. Likewise he is gentler mannered, and his dignified reception of
the stranger suggests a hospitable response that at first raises hopes
of some genuine mutual confidence. But alas for hopes like these! All
too soon one realizes that he will impart no slightest inkling of the
meaning to him of his inherited tradition, his religious beliefs or his
present-day customs. One wonders whether, even if one could speak his
language, there would be any great gain, for the Indian is past-master
in adroit and civil dissembling, in the use of words and gestures that
beguile, but do not reveal the inner workings of his mind. Under “the
bitter lessons of contact with exploiting white” civilization, he has
become more secretive, so that his legends, his traditional ritual, and
his ancestral customs are fast disappearing. Swift must be the salvage if
all is not to be forever lost.
[Illustration: WALPI IS UNIQUE. IT MUST BE PRESERVED
_Bolton_]
An impressive example of such inevitable change may be seen at Walpi,
where there is in process of construction in the valley a new system of
irrigation and water supply which will abolish the painfully toilsome
task of carrying water from the foot of the mesa to the dwellings on its
summit. Inevitably the younger generation will abandon the no longer
needed rock of safety for a comfortable and easy existence in the valley
near their crops and herds.
Walpi must become a National Monument under federal protection. It is
unique. In situation it reminds the traveller of Castrogiovanni above the
Vale of Enna in Sicily or of Segovia in Spain, and it is no less worthy
of admiration.
Such is the strong and abiding contrast between the Indian of fixed
settlements, and the wanderer of the plains who at any day and hour may
strike his tent and silently take his way far afield leading his flocks
to greener pastures. A homeless gipsying life? Yet he sets up as easily
as if it were for always his little forge on which he beats out the
silver bracelets he knows the white man covets, or his loom whereon he
weaves the blankets that often bring large sums.
One thing the two types of Indian have in common. It is their belief that
after all these generations the white man has never proved that he has
a remedy for the ills of life half so good as that which their forbears
practised and have handed on for use to-day. They are unconvinced that
a rule of conduct more honest or more wise has been shown them even by
the religious teachers of the ruling people. Whether in medicine or in
morals, their ancients still are their guides and resolutely do they keep
inviolate the old prescription.
Sometimes our way crossed or followed ancient trails marked out by the
invading Spanish pioneers, who must have been amazed at the similarity
of this country to their mother land of Spain, and more particularly of
Aragón. Between Zuñi and Ácoma we were actually on the first path ever
trodden by the feet of white men in this Southwestern country. Then
were brought forth from the master’s brief-case precious, and as yet
unpublished, translations of old diaries.
Great was our excitement to learn that on these trails may still be
found the water holes so accurately described three centuries ago for
the guidance of those who should come after. Distances were so carefully
measured and noted that to-day they are affirmed to be correct by men
living in the region. Experiences such as these kept us all in an
enchanted atmosphere. We seemed like actors in an ancient story of
exploration rather than people surrounded by present-day events. As we
read these diaries upon the very route they detail, there seemed to
pass before our eyes in its integrity that strange company of soldiers
and priests, well armed and well mounted, followed by the crowd of
half-hypnotized, half-terrified natives. Little the Spaniards recked
of the hardships of the way; what they saw was Opportunity, Fortune,
denied them in the old world they had left. We felt again how, in the
virginal wilderness, lured forward by a vision of that “Beyond” where
lay a treasure of unstinted gold—gold of the field, gold of the unplumbed
rock, gold of souls saved from everlasting death—each man had been led
by his individual imagination and by the great general Hope, on and on,
undaunted, “to seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.” Caught by the
glamour of the buoyant air, we, far-away inheritors of those “dreamers,
dreaming greatly,” realized how much our country owes to them, men of
an alien race and breed, in that along with their pursuit of material
gain, great ideals were held aloft. Lines of Kipling’s verse were borne
hauntingly on the breeze: “came the whisper, came the vision, came the
Power with the Need”.... “It’s God’s present to our nation. Anybody might
have found it, but His whisper came to”—Spain.