Finding the Worth While in the Southwest

by Charles Francis Saunders

The dances of the Pueblo Indians are not social diversions but serious religious ceremonies.

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!