OF ACOMA, CITY OF THE MARVELLOUS ROCK, AND LAGUNA
The oldest occupied town in the United States, and in point of situation
perhaps the most poetic, is Acoma (_ah´co-ma_), occupying the flat
summit of a huge rock mass whose perpendicular sides rise 350 feet out
of a solitary New Mexican plain.[31] It is situated 15 miles southwest
of the Santa Fe Railway station of Laguna, where modest accommodations
are provided for travelers who stop over. The inhabitants of Acoma,
numbering about 700, are Pueblo Indians, whose ancestors founded this
rockborne town before the white history of the Southwest began. Coronado
found it here in 1540. _El Peñol Maravilloso_—the Rock Marvellous—the
old chroniclers called it. “A city the strangest and strongest,” says
Padre Benavides, writing of it in 1630, “that there can be in the
world.”
They will take you from Laguna to Acoma in an automobile over a road,
little better than a trail, whose traversability depends more or less on
weather conditions not only that day, but the day before.[32] It winds
through a characteristic bit of central New Mexico landscape, breezy,
sunlit and long-vistaed, treeless save for scattering piñon and juniper.
Wild flowers bespangle the ground in season; and mountains—red, purple,
amethystine, weather-worn into a hundred fantastic shapes—rise to view
on every hand. In July and August the afternoon sky customarily becomes
massed with cloud clusters, and local showers descend in long, wavering
bands of darkness—here one, there another. Traveling yourself in
sunshine beneath an island of clear turquoise in such a stormy sky, you
may count at one time eight or ten of these picturesque streamers of
rain on the horizon circle. Jagged lightnings play in one quarter of the
heavens while broken rainbows illumine others. Nowhere else in our
country is the sky so very much alive as in New Mexico and Arizona in
summer. Nowhere else, I think, as in this land of fantastic rock forms,
of deep blue skies, and of wide, golden, sunlit plains, do you feel so
much like an enchanted traveler in a Maxfield Parrish picture.
Though the cliffs of Acoma are visible for several miles before you
reach the Rock, you are almost at its base before you distinguish any
sign of the village—the color of its terraced houses being much the same
as that of the mesa upon which they are set. The soft rocky faces have
been cut into grotesque shapes by the sand of the plain which the winds
of ages have been picking up and hurling against them. There are strange
helmeted columns, slender minarets and spires that some day perhaps a
tempest will snap in two, dark, cool caverns which your fancy pictures
as dens of those ogreish divinities you have read of Indians’ believing
in.
Your first adventure at Acoma—and it is a joyous one—is climbing the
Rock to the village on top. There are several trails. One is broad and
easy, whereby the Pueblo flocks come up from the plains to be folded for
the night, and men ahorseback travel. Shorter is the one your Indian
guide will take you, by a gradual sandy ascent, to the base of the
cliff. There you are face to face with a crevice up which you ascend by
an all but perpendicular aboriginal stairway of stone blocks and
boulders piled upward in the crack. Handholes cut in the rock wall
support you over ticklish places, until finally you clamber out upon the
flat summit. In Coronado’s time you would have been confronted there by
a wall of loose stones which the Acomas had built to roll down on the
heads of the unwelcome. Today, instead, the visitor is apt to be greeted
by an official of the pueblo exacting a head-tax of a dollar for the
privilege of seeing the town, and picture-taking extra!
I think this precipitous trail is the one known as _El Camino del Padre_
(the Father’s Way), which is associated with a pretty bit of history.
The first permanent Christian missionary at Acoma was the Franciscan
Juan Ramirez. Now the Acomas had never been friendly to the Spaniards,
and it was only after a three days’ hard battle in 1599, resulting in
the capture and burning of the town by the Spaniards, that the Indians
accepted vassalage to that inexplicable king beyond the sea.[33]
Naturally, no friendly feeling was engendered by this episode; so when
this Padre Ramirez, years afterward, was seen approaching the Rock one
day—it was in 1629—quite alone and unarmed save with cross and breviary
(having walked all the way from Santa Fe, a matter of 175 miles) the
Acomas decided to make short work of him. The unsuspecting father
started briskly up the rocky stairway, and when he came within easy
range, the watching Indians shot their arrows at him. Then a remarkable
thing happened. A little girl, one of a group looking over the edge of
the precipice, lost her balance and fell out of sight apparently to her
death. A few minutes later, the undaunted padre whom the shelter of the
cliff had saved from the arrows, appeared at the head of the trail
holding in his arms the little child smiling and quite unharmed. Unseen
by the Indians, she had lit on a shelving bit of rock from which the
priest had tenderly lifted her. So obvious a miracle completely changed
the Indians’ feelings towards the long-gowned stranger, and he remained
for many years, teaching his dusky wards Spanish and so much of
Christian doctrine as they would assimilate. It was this Fray Juan
Ramirez, it is said, who had built the animal trail which has been
mentioned.
[Illustration]
AN ACOMA INDIAN DANCE
The dances of the Pueblo Indians are not social diversions but
serious religious ceremonies.
[Illustration]
LAGUNA, THE MOTHER PUEBLO OF SEVEN
This pueblo, languishing while neighboring Acoma flourished,
borrowed the latter’s picture of St. Joseph to change her fortune,
prospered accordingly, and then refused to return the picture, thus
precipitating a lawsuit unique in our annals.
Most visitors spend a couple of hours at Acoma, and return the same day
to the railroad. This, at a pinch, suffices for a ramble about the
streets, and for looking into doorways for glimpses of the primitive
family life, chaffering with the women for the pretty pottery for which
Acoma is famed,[34] and for a visit to the natural rock cisterns whence
girls are continually coming with dripping ollas balanced on their
heads. And of course, there is the old adobe church with its balconied
_convento_, to be seen. It dates from about 1700. As the Rock was bare
of building material, this had all to be brought up from below on the
backs of Indian neophytes—the timbers from the mountains 20 miles away.
The graveyard is a remarkable piece of work founded on the sloping rock
by building retaining walls of stone (40 feet high, at the outer end)
and filling in with sandy earth lugged patiently up from the plain.
A conspicuous feature in the view from the Rock of Acoma is a solitary
mesa or rock-table, 3 miles to the northward, which the Acomas call
Katzímo, and the Spaniards named _La Mesa Encantada_ (the Enchanted
Mesa). Its flat top is 430 perpendicular feet above the plain, and can
now be reached only with scaling ladders and ropes. Formerly there was a
single trail up the side. The Indian tradition is that long, long ago,
before the coming of the white invaders, the village of the Acomas
occupied the summit. One day, while all the population except a few old
people were working in the fields below, a tempest completely swept away
the upper part of the trail; so that the inhabitants could never again
reach their homes. They began life over again by building a new pueblo
on the Rock of Acoma.[35]
The annual public fiesta of Acoma is held September 2, the day of San
Estéban Rey—that is, of St. Stephen the King, Acoma’s patron saint and
Hungary’s. It is attended by a picturesque crowd of Mexicans, Navajos
and Pueblos, besides a sprinkling of Americans. Among the visitors are
thrifty Isleteños, their farm wagons loaded with melons, grapes and
peaches for sale and barter. As on all such occasions in the Rio Grande
pueblos, there is first a great clanging of the church bells to get the
people to mass; after which, the saint’s statue beneath a canopy is
brought out from the church, and all the people march in procession
behind it, the cross, and the padre, while to the accompaniment of a
solemn chant the firing of guns and a wild clamor of discordant church
bells, the image is carried to a booth of green boughs in the plaza,
there to rest and receive the homage of the people. Throughout the day
baskets heaped with fruit, loaves of bread, vegetables and candles are
laid at the saint’s feet, and at intervals the edibles are handed out to
the crowd, or tossed in the air to be scrambled for amid much hilarity.
In the afternoon there is an Indian dance, participated in by men and
women in colorful costumes, the women’s heads adorned with _tablitas_
(curious, painted boards set upright and cut into shapes symbolic of
clouds and what not). A choir of men with a drum made of a section of
cottonwood log, supplies the music, chanting in unison the ancient songs
of thanksgiving efficacious long before St. Stephen was ever heard of in
Acoma, and not to be lightly abandoned. At sundown the saint is returned
to his place in the church, and the evening is given over to such
jollity as personal fancy dictates, usually including a _baile_, or
dance, by the Mexicans and such white folk as stay, and it must be
confessed, too often a surreptitious bout with John Barleycorn smuggled
in by bootleggers.
There are no accommodations for visitors at Acoma, but if you have a
taste for mild adventure you will enjoy—in retrospect anyhow—lodging a
night or two with some family in the village, if you have brought your
own provisions. This gives you a leisurely opportunity to watch the
people at their daily tasks, and to enjoy the exquisite outlook at
evening and early morning from the Rock. A night on an Acoma housetop
beneath the brilliant stars is like being transported to Syria. Take it
as a rule that if you desire to learn anything worth while of Indian
life, you must abandon hurry; and the more you pump an Indian, the less
he will tell you. The best things in the Southwest come to the waiting
traveler, not to the hustler. As to the language, in every pueblo there
is someone who talks English enough to act as interpreter, but if you
know a little Spanish, you may do without any intermediary in the Rio
Grande villages.
The natural pendant to a visit to Acoma is one to Laguna pueblo, 2 miles
from the station of the same name.[36] Like Acoma, it is built upon a
rock, but Laguna’s is merely a low outcropping little above the level of
the ground. The pueblo is full of picturesque bits, and the fall and
rise of the streets continually give you skyey silhouettes, the delight
of artists who like liberal foregrounds. The mature coloring of the
houses in time-mellowed, pearly tones, coupled with the fact that the
old trail leading from the outskirts of the pueblo to the spring is worn
deep in the rock floor by the wear of generations of moccasined feet,
gives one the impression that Laguna is of great antiquity.
Nevertheless, it is not, having been founded about 1697. In 1699 it
received its name San José de la Laguna—Saint Joseph of the Lake—the
appropriateness of which is not now apparent as there is no lake there.
In those days, however, there was a lagoon nearby, due largely to the
damming of the little River San José by beavers. English is very
generally spoken in this pueblo.
Some 60 years ago Laguna was the defendant in a curious lawsuit brought
against it by Acoma. Fray Juan Ramirez—he of the _Camino del Padre_—had
put Acoma under the patronage of Saint Joseph, spouse of Our Lady and
patron of the Church Universal, and in the Acoma church the saint’s
picture hung for many years, a source of local blessing as the Acomas
firmly believed. Now while Acoma prospered Laguna had many
misfortunes—crop failures, sickness and so on; and with a view to
bettering matters Laguna asked Acoma for the loan of Saint Joseph. This
request was granted with the understanding that the loan should be for
one month only. But alas, recreant Laguna, once in possession, refused
to give back the picture, which was proving as “good medicine” there as
had been the case at Acoma. At last the padre was called on to settle
the dispute and he suggested that lots be drawn for it. This was done
and the picture fell to Acoma. The Lagunas proved poor losers, however,
and made off with the painting by force—which enraged the Acomas to the
fighting point, and war was only averted by the padre’s persuading them
to do what a Pueblo Indian is very loth to do, submit the case to the
white man’s courts. Lawyers were engaged by both pueblos, and after a
hot wrangle involving an appeal to the Supreme Court of New Mexico, the
picture was awarded to Acoma. Evidently the saint himself approved the
judgment, for tradition has it that when the Acoma delegation appointed
to fetch the picture back were half way to Laguna, their astonished eyes
were greeted by the sight of it reposing under a mesquite bush.
Evidently, upon receipt of the news, it had set out of its own accord
for home!
In proof of which the traveler today may see the painting in the old
church at Acoma.[37]
Laguna’s principal public fiesta is held annually on September 18, and
adds to the usual ceremonies of the saint’s day at a pueblo the features
of a country fair, for the Lagunas are notable agriculturists. The
Mission church interior at Laguna, by the way, possesses features of
interest in the way of Indian decoration and ancient Spanish paintings,
particularly those of the altar done on stretched hide. Visitors may be
accommodated in Indian houses, if they court that experience, or at the
residence of a Protestant missionary near by. The National Old Trails
transcontinental highway passes the pueblo.