Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/216

202 "The word "Cicuye" is "Tshi-quite," the aboriginal name of the Pecos Indians. I will here mention that Casteñeda says that Pecos is the last village to the east, and that the great plains are only thirty leagues, or eighty miles, distant from it. I have already shown in my earlier work, "A Visit to the Aboriginal Ruins in the Valley of the Rio Pecos," that Cicuyé is identical with Pecos. It is not necessary to repeat the demonstration here.

Alvarado and his company reached the first village in five days. It was built on a rock, and was called "Acuco." This is the "Ha-cu-qua" of the Zuñi, the pueblo of Acoma, so famous for its situation. Casteñeda very appropriately describes it as being upon "a perpendicular rock ... so high that a bullet could hardly reach the top"; but with less accuracy he speaks of a "stairway" of three hundred steps hewn in the rock as being the only way to the highest story. Acoma is indeed situated on a rock, the shape of which resembles that of a spider. The walls of the rock fall perpendicularly down for nearly three hundred feet, while four winding paths lead to the pueblo, none of which has been cut out by human hands. Slight improvements in the shape of implanted posts and notches for the hands and feet have been made in a very few places. At the summit is the pueblo, with its great church of adobe and stone, and the churchyard, the soil of which has all been brought up on the backs of the inhabitants. Not a foot of other loose ground can be found on the gigantic cliff; the ten houses stand on the bare rock,