Acoma Pueblo – The City in the Sky
By Lisandra Collazo

SUNDAY, April 30 -- Acoma pueblo about an hour’s drive west of Albuquerque was built on top of a mesa which rises 7,000 feet above sea level and 367 feet above the desert below. That means the pueblo where the people live is about the same height as the PP&L building in Allentown and rises from the ground just as suddenly! The people built the city in about 980 A.D., long before Europeans explored the lands of North America. The pueblo is the longest continuously inhabited city in North America.

We rode up to the top in a bus. The paved road was built in the 1940s by a movie company which got permission to make a movie there. When we stepped off the bus at the top of the sandstone mesa, it was as if we had traveled back in time. According to Carl, our tour guide, it was unusually cold. He shivered as an estimated 25-mile-an hour wind blew through the pueblo. The Acoma Indian, who was in his 20s, had not worn his jacket and had on only a T-shirt.

The mostly one- and two-story houses of the pueblo are made of stone and adobe bricks and are traditionally covered with adobe clay. No one has electricity or plumbing. The residents originally got their water from three cisterns that look like ponds on the pueblo. Many of the houses have to be repaired frequently because of the strong winds and the rain which colllects on flat roofs. Some people use store-bought stucco instead of traditional building materials for the sides of their houses, but it does not hold up, Carl said. "It costs a pretty penny and you constantly find yourself coming up here to do maintenance," he said.

As Carl walked us through the pueblo, some of us took pictures. Before our tour we bought permits for our cameras because no one is allowed to take pictures without a permit. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the cemetery walls or in the church that was the first stop, or of people without getting their permission first. We don’t have any photos on the site because no digital cameras are allowed. Neither are video cameras.

Inside the four-foot high walls of the cemetery, there were rows of simple white crosses with names and dates. Carl told us the Acoma people buried their dead one on top of another in four layers. Carl pointed out that the names on the crosses were mostly Spanish, but the Acoma people had two names, the name they were given and the name given to them by the Spanish when they arrived to Christianize them. The ends of each cross were painted black to symbolize the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The same black is used to paint traditional pottery and symbolizes clouds and rain, which is important to the Acomas because it gives life.

Around the cemetery is built a wall. The wall was built to scare off the Spanish. How this was done was the Acoma people shaped the stones at the top into human figures with facial features. When the Spanish looked to the top of the mesa, the Acoma thought ,the Spanish would see the figures and think they were giants who defended the pueblo and be so afraid they would not attack. Also, the wall has a hole in it. The hole was put there because the Acoma believe that the spirits of their dead ancestors would use it to come to visit them.

Carl unlocked the doors of the church and we walked inside. The church was built from 1628 to 1641 and is the largest building on the pueblo. The church was built not only as a place to worship, but also as a fortress in case the Acoma were attacked. Inside, the floor was dirt. We walked up to the altar. On either side of us there were about five rows of benches. On the altar, besides figures of Jesus and saints and a burning candle, there were two pillars. They were made of wood that the ancestors, whom Carl referred to as "our grandfathers," carried many miles from a forest on Mt. Taylor without having the wood touch the ground. The pillars were painted with alternating red and white horizontal stripes. The stripes represented important symbolic elements of the traditional religion and Christianity. They were parallel because the Acoma do not see conflict between the two religions, Carl said.

There are other examples of the two cultures interacting. The white walls inside the church are painted with colorful drawings of traditional elements of Acoma culture, including representations of corn with a rainbow overhead. They share wall space with European-style paintings of the Stations of the Cross.

The two religions didn’t always coexist peacefully. Probably the most important part of the pueblo is the kiva, located in the middle of the town. Kivas are usually built underground and round, but this one is above ground and was built in a square-like shape like a house so the people could have their ceremonies without the Spanish friars and priests knowing. The only way to get inside is to climb up a ladder to the roof and then climb down another ladder. No women are allowed in the kiva. Only men do the ceremonies. They would post a lookout outside the kiva who would scatter the men if the priests came by, because if you were caught practicing the native ceremonies you could be forced into servitude or killed, Carl said. Carl said the nature of the religious ceremonies is "something which we do not talk about."

As we moved on through the pueblo, Carl explained why the doors to the houses are so small. "Our people were a small people,’’ he said, adding they are thought to have ranged in height to about four feet tall. Often the doors weren’t built at street level but were on the second floor. In order to get inside, people climb ladders. Some were pointed on the ends to symbolize piercing the clouds so there would be rain. Water is very important in Acoma culture because the canyon is so dry.

Originally there were 21 clans in the town, but now there are only 14, with one of them on the verge of extinction, Carl said. About 450 people have houses in Acoma, but only 55 live there full time. The rest live in villages nearby, including McCartys, his home. Because there are no modern conveniences, life on the pueblo is hard, he said. Next to many houses are portable toilets.

People who live there now make a living making and selling pottery. Carl took us to a house where a woman, his aunt, and her two sons were setting up tables full of beautiful hand-made pottery she and her brother made. Her pottery is mostly traditional and includes water vessels and seed scatterers, but there are also other items, including Christmas balls and representations of turtles and cats. She uses the traditional colors of white, orange, black and turquoise, which symbolizes the sky, and makes brushes by chewing the fibers of a yucca plant which grows outside her door.

After our tour, Carl gave us the option of waiting for the bus or taking stairs down the side of the mesa to the road and hiking back to the Visitors Center. We decided to climb down because it was too cold to wait. It was steep, and Paul Kantzaridis kept saying, "This is crazy,’’ and Mr. Becker couldn’t resist taking pictures. We all made it to the bottom safely, and when we looked up, it was like we had defeated a giant obstacle.

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