[26]Popular tradition persistently associates gold-hoarding with the Franciscan Missionaries throughout the Southwest, ignoring the fact that the members of the Seraphic Order were pledged to poverty, and had small interest in any wealth except the unsearchable riches of Christ, to share which with their humble Indian charges was their sole mission in the wilderness. As for the New Mexico Indians, they knew nothing of any mineral more precious than turquoise.
[27]Paul A. F. Walter, “The Cities That Died of Fear.”
[28]Apropos of these ruined Missions, it is interesting to know that the construction was undoubtedly the work of women—house-building being one of the immemorial duties and cherished privileges of Pueblo womankind.
[29]Paul A. P. Walter, “The Cities That Died of Fear.”
[30]The Manzano range reaches an elevation of 10,600 feet here.
[31]The formation is that known throughout New Mexico as a mesa (Spanish for table). Such flat-topped hills—high or low—have been brought into being by the washing away in ancient times of the surrounding earth.
[32]New Mexico rural roads are in a certain Mark Tapleyian sense ideal for motorists. Traversing unfenced plains, as they often do, if they develop bad spots the motorist turns aside and has little difficulty in scouting out a detour. After a rain, however, they are gummy and slippery in adobe country until the sun hardens the clay, which it does rather quickly.
[33]Some of the Acomas in despair, threw themselves from the cliffs and so died rather than surrender. A stirring account of the storming of Acoma will be found in “The Spanish Pioneers,” by Chas. F. Lummis.
[34]Remarkable for its light weight and ornamentation with conventionalized leaf forms, birds, etc. Unfortunately the education of the young Indians in Government schools is causing a decline at all the pueblos in this purely American art.
[35]The reader, curious to know what is on top of Katzimo, is referred to an article, “Ascent of the Enchanted Mesa,” by F. W. Hodge, in the Century Magazine, May, 1898.