Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/480

470[April 17, 1869] found little difficulty in teaching those natives to read and write, but since the decay of religious establishments education has been arrested, and now not a single school exists in any of the pueblos.

In religion they are, to outward appearance, devoted Roman Catholics; the few priests who still work amongst them are Frenchmen, and are much respected and beloved. The rites of baptism, marriage, and burial take place in the village church, and they keep the feast-day of their patron saint with great festivities.

The isolated pueblos, which lie at considerable distances from the main valley, are very different in appearance from those simpler one-storied villages which once dotted the banks of the Rio Grande del Norte in very considerable numbers. In these the distinctive peculiarities of the native fortifications are very striking. Laguna, on the Rio de San José, is built on the summit of a limestone cliff, some forty feet high, possessing considerable natural advantages for defence. The houses are mostly of stone plastered over with mud, and two stories high. Neither windows nor doors are to be found on the outer wall of the first story; the second rises a little back from the roof of the first, leaving a ledge in front of it. Ladders are used to mount to this ledge; they are then drawn up, and the rooms are entered either by openings in the roof leading to the ground-floor, or doors giving entrance from the ledge to the second suite of rooms; the latter story alone is used for sleeping. Store-rooms occupy the ground-floor.

In 1858 there was a Baptist minister at Laguna; in one of his reports to the Indian department of the Secretary of the Interior, he says that the amount of real Christianity amongst the Indians is very small; they cling to the religion of their forefathers, and can only be induced to attend the service of the Roman Catholic Church by threats, promises, and even, blows, whereas they perform their own religious duties with the utmost regularity. He also joins in the universal eulogium on the honesty and sobriety of the men, and the virtue of the women.

Acoma, some twenty miles west of Laguna, is a large and very interesting pueblo. It rests on the summit of a flat mesa, whose perpendicular cliffs rise to a height of from three hundred to four hundred feet above the valley. The houses here are three stories high, built on the usual principle, each successive story being smaller than that on which it rests. Ladders are also used to reach the first ledge. The flat top of the mesa covers about fifty acres of land; it is reached by a steep winding path cut in the rock, and so placed as to be easily defended. It is a very wealthy pueblo; the Indians owe abundance of cattle, and grow large quantities of corn, peaches, pumpkins, and other produce. The houses of San Domingo, Sandria, and others, although only built of one story, have no doors or windows on the outside, but are entered by ladders from the roof.

The ancient pueblo of Toas consists of one compact fortress, formed of terraces seven stories high, and built on a rock overlooking the stream; so strong was it as a place of defence, that, in 1847, when the Mexicans of the village of Toas could no longer defend themselves against the Americans, they betook themselves to the Indian pueblo a few miles distant, and they sustained a protracted siege, yielding at last, but only when provisions had utterly failed. This pueblo, moreover, was never taken by the Spaniards, although it was many times attacked. Venegas, Caronado, and, in fact, all the early Spanish explorers and writers upon New Mexico, describe many seven-storied fortresses now no more, and give many instances of the great bravery shown by the Indians in their defence. Those I have mentioned, however, with the exception of Zuñi and the seven Moqui pueblos, are the only native fortresses which now remain inhabited.

In the valley through which the Zuñi river (a tributary of the Colorado Chiquito) flows, are to be seen orchards—chiefly of peach-trees—vineyards, fine corn plots, and vegetable gardens, producing onions, beans, melons, chili colorado (red pepper), pumpkins, &c. Formerly cotton was cultivated; probably by Indians, further south; but now, I believe, they obtain what stuffs they require from the Mexicans in exchange for farm produce. They do not raise their crops by irrigation, but depend entirely upon the rainfall; hence all their traditions relate more or less to the production of water. Not far from the town is a sacred spring about eight feet in diameter, walled round with stones, of which neither cattle nor man may drink. The animals sacred to water—frogs, tortoises, and snakes—alone must enter the pool. Once a year the cacique and his attendants perform certain religious rites at the spring; it is thoroughly cleared out; water-pots are brought as an offering to the Spirit of Montezuma, and are placed bottom upwards on the top of the wall of stones. Many of these have been removed, but