Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/303



HE Indian village—or, as it is usually called in New Mexico, the pueblo—of Santa Clara lies thirty miles north of the city of Santa Fé, on the Texas, Santa Fé & Northern Railroad. It is inhabited by about four hundred agricultural Indians of the Tehua tribe, whose one-and two-storied houses form two irregular quadrangles, surrounding two open places, called plazas. A large church of adobe, now in decay, stands at the northeastern end of the village. It dates from the middle of the last century (1760). The priests' houses have fallen to ruins, the interior of the temple is strikingly bare and bald, and the few paintings are either unrecognizable on account of the dirt and the advanced decay of the canvas, or they are specimens of the unskilful works of the domestic art industry so often met with in New Mexico. The best kept of the appurtenances are two wooden side-altars, marked with the date of 1782. The bell bears the year-mark of 1710. Everything savors of neglect; only a few dwellings are outwardly new, but within the habitations are comparatively clean; while the population, through frequent mixture with wandering Indians the Utes, Apaches, and Navajos are taller and more slenderly built, if not stronger, than the ordinary pueblo Indians of New Mexico.

Santa Clara is situated on a sandy prominence