FIG. 77.—GRINDING GRAIN, LAGUNA, NEW MEXICO
Wonderful indeed are some of the pueblo villages which were still occupied at the time of the coming of the Spanish, more than three centuries and a half ago. As in the pueblos now occupied, there were no separate family houses. The people of an entire pueblo lived in one great building of many rooms. Some of the pueblos were semi-circular, with a vertical wall upon the outside, while upon the inside the successive stories formed a series of huge steps similar to the tiers of seats in an ancient amphitheatre.
FIG. 78.—THE ENCHANTED MESA
The summit was once the site of an Indian pueblo
In the pueblo of Pecos were the largest buildings of this kind ever discovered. One had three hundred and seventeen rooms, and another five hundred and eighty-five. Taos is another of the large pueblos, and is especially interesting because it is still inhabited. This great building has from three to six stories with several hundred rooms. In the foreground of the photograph (Fig. 76) appears one of the ovens in which the baking is done. In some of these pueblos the women still grind their corn by hand in stone matates, just as their ancestors did for many hundreds and perhaps thousands of years.
FIG. 79.—POTTERY OF THE ACOMA INDIANS, NEW MEXICO
In northwestern New Mexico there is a remarkable flat-topped rock known as the Enchanted Mesa, which rises with precipitous walls to a height of four hundred feet above the valley in which it stands. It was long believed that human beings had never been upon this rock, although there were traditions to the effect that a village once existed upon its summit. According to the tradition, the breaking away of a great mass of rock left the summit inaccessible ever afterward. The cliffs were scaled recently by the aid of ropes, and evidences were found in the shape of pottery fragments, to show that the Indians had once inhabited the mesa. Two or three miles away, across the valley, is the large village of Acoma, where a great deal of pottery is made for sale.