Ácoma, the sky city

I. The Name Ácoma

Ako (of obscure ethnology). They call their own people Ákomi (mi = people). It is translated as People of the White Rock.

Hacus of Fray Marcos of Niza.

Ácuco of Coronado.

Hakukue in Zuñi language, meaning “drinkers of the dew.”

A-ko-kai-obi in Hopi language, meaning “the place of the ladle,” and referring to the two great natural reservoirs upon the summit.

Ácoma Clans extinct:

Clans still existent:[264]

Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, in 1918, adds to the clans: Chaparral, Cock, Tansy-Mustard, and Lizard (this last may be identical with Rattlesnake). She omits Road-runner and Ant. In 1922 we were told that the Snake was extinct.

Other pueblos occupied by Ácoma clans at various early periods were Heash-Koa, two miles southwest, by the Red-corn clan; and Kowina, fifteen miles west, by the Calabash clan. This was a mesa at the head of the Cebollita Valley.

Population

Castañeda (1541) wrote that “Ácoma could place on foot about 200 warriors and that there was not room on the Rock for much more than 1000 people.”

Espéjo (1581) speaks of more than 6000; Oñate (1595) estimated them at 3000; Villagrá says that there were 6000 at the time of the siege.

In 1680 Ácoma was credited with 1500 inhabitants.

In 1760 there were said to be 1052 inhabitants.

In 1780-81 a smallpox epidemic prevailed, so that ten years later there were but 820 persons.

In 1910 there were but 691 inhabitants; while Laguna had, in 1910, as many as 1441.

II. Ha-Chamoni

Ha-chamoni (prayer-sticks) are deposited by the oracle of the cult of the hunt to convey the messages of the people. The hunt may or may not take place directly after these offerings, its time being at the pleasure of the Ho-aanite (theurgist or oracle), who does not himself inform the pueblo but communicates with the war chief.—Mrs. M. C. Stevenson (of Sía Pueblo).

III. Salt

Early chroniclers mention the “salt-kernels” of the Cíbolans, and Cushing found “a trail brokenly traceable for hundreds of miles from the cliff-town to the inexhaustible Lake of Salt in central New Mexico.” This salt is superior to any other found in the Southwest and commanded such a price that Cushing found it often adulterated with other varieties. He goes on to say that the influence of such a salt supply upon the movements of large tribes is not confined to those of America, for “all the great historic trade-routes across Asia were first established along salt trails.”—Thirteenth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology and Anthropology, pp. 352-355.

Shrine of Salt Woman. Near, or in, the Grand Cañon, Cárdenas in 1540 used the same trail which the Hopi use to-day when they visit the Havasupai in Cataract Cañon, or part of the old route of the Hopi to get salt. The trail apparently crosses the Little Colorado not far from Moenkopi trail at Tanner Crossing, a few miles below Black Falls. Before gathering the salt, which hung from the cliffs in “icicles,” the Hopi laid one prayer-stick before the image of the salt goddess and the other before the god of war. The gatherer must be suspended over the edge of the cliff by ropes to reach the icicles.—Cushing, Bureau of Ethnology and Anthropology, Vol. VIII, pp. 352-358.

Salt Place (Zuñi Salt Lake) belongs to the Parrot clan. The substance of a folk-tale collected by Dr. Boas explaining how this happened is given in “Laguna Genealogies.” When Salt Woman and the Twin War Gods were on their wanderings they were hospitably entertained by the Parrot people, when everyone else had refused them admittance. Going farther southward, Salt Woman met Zuñi Parrot people, to whom she gave her house; but Laguna informants assert that until her people showed them how, neither Hopi nor Zuñi folk were able to get the salt out of the Place. The journey to Salt Place is made in September, and in company with collectors from Ácoma, a rare case of inter-pueblo coöperation. Parrot men lead the expedition, while those of the clan who remain at home are praying in their house. The salt-collector desires to get omens at the Place; hence he must offer prayer-sticks and then pray. Before putting the sticks and cigarettes and shell-meal into the water, he must rub himself with salt. Having taken off his clothes, and standing in the water, he feels for the salt with his feet and treads it out; then gathers it with his hands, using neither pick nor shovel. If you are to have good harvests of wheat or watermelon, or if you are going to kill a deer, you will see in the water the wheat or watermelon or deer. If you are going to die you will see yourself lying dead there. Besides the salt, medicine-water is brought back from Salt Place. On the return journey, the accompanying war captain sends forward one day before arrival a messenger to procure two donkeys from the Parrot people. As the expedition approaches, all the clans-women with the kurena-cheani come out to meet it, and they all sing together for the Salt Woman. Later these same women distribute the salt. “If an individual wants to go salt-collecting on his own account he will go to the Parrot clansman to ask him to make prayer-sticks. If your salt gives out you may ask the Parrot clan-mother to give you some.”—Elsie Clews Parsons, Laguna Genealogies.

IV. Towers and Great Houses

Were they observation points or granaries or ceremonial places? Or, did they combine all these with defence? No satisfactory answer yet found, nor the epoch in which they were constructed. Some have great trees growing in them, but none has a roof; their walls are so good that they do not suggest very great age; yet the builders of cliff-dwellings, and by inference their kindred, the Tower Builders, were far superior in their art to modern pueblos.

V. Keres (Queres)

Concerning the origin of the word Keres (Castañeda’s Quirix) nothing can be learned from any of these people, who pronounce it in every conceivable way. But they all agree that “they have no ethnic name in Keresan language which sounds anything like it.” We have, therefore, a confusion of designations for Ácoma.

Sía (Tsía) is linguistically a part of the western branch of the Keres nation. According to fragments of Keres tradition this is the place on the Jémez River where the Ácomas separated from the other Keres.

The name Temá is applied to the Cochití and to all who talk like them. Among these are Sía, Ácoma, and Laguna. The two latter are so isolated from the rest of the Keres nation that frequently they are not listed with the other pueblos of their stock; when they are, they invariably are made a separate group by themselves.

The culture of the Keresan tribes is fundamentally similar to that of the others in the Southwestern area; namely, a dependence upon maize and other cultivated foods; the use of the metate instead of a mortar for grinding the maize; terraced houses of stone and adobe; tailored textile clothing, which involves cultivation of cotton and weaving on a loom; a pottery decorated in color; much less use of basketry than in non-Pueblo tribes; the domestication of the turkey; matrilinear descent; a mythology characterized by migration traditions; each pueblo a “republic” with governor and war chief elected annually, but the religious head, cacique, must give his sanction; very complex ritualism; numerous shrines before which sacred meal and pollen are constantly offered; purification rites by emetics and head washing; Kachina, or K’at’sina, ceremonies by masked impersonators; different priests for summer and for winter.

In most pueblos there are made extensive sand paintings for religious festivals. No writer mentions them at Ácoma. Is this because no strangers have seen their most sacred celebrations?[265]

The Queres Indians, to which nation Ácoma belongs, have always claimed the range of the Tanos Mountains and the valleys of the upper Rio Grande and the Jémez Rivers as their ancestral heritage. The prehistoric remains in the romantic gorge of the Rito de los Frijoles are said by the Queres to belong to their people and especially to those who later settled permanently at Cochití. The medicine men of Cochití paid frequent visits to holy shrines there as recently as 1890.

VI. Language

The ethnologists agree that there is no reason to suppose that only one language existed among the earliest dwellers in America. Certainly the Spaniards found the different languages, or dialects, a great source of confusion in their early expeditions from Mexico into the North. To know one well was no password to the next or to those beyond.

Dr. Franz Boas says that “at any rate when man began to increase, the number of languages was legion though sprung from the same root.” As some tribes grew more powerful and as inter-tribal wars did their fatal work, “many older stocks were eliminated, to be replaced by the dialects of a few groups.”[266]

The four pueblo linguistic stocks distinguishable to-day are:

(1) Shoshonean, to which belong all Hopi pueblos, except Hano; (2) Zuñian; (3) Tanoan; (4) Keresan or Queresan.

VII. Katzímo, A Disenchanted Mesa

Professor Libbey, of Princeton University, describes in Harper’s Weekly, August 28, 1897, the way in which he went, with two assistants and two heavily laden wagons which contained “among other things a small cannon, and miles and miles of rope.” After the cannon had been charged, a large shot was fired to which had been attached a projecting shaft and ring in the gun. By throwing the shot to the far side of the mesa, it was possible to construct a kind of bo’sun’s chair which, with pulleys, lifted Libbey to a point on the smaller end of the rock. A ladder was now sent up to him, on which the explorer climbed down the face of the cliff to a point from which he could jump across to the other side of the chasm. “A few grasses and plants common on the plains below, and these with one grey rat and some lizards were all the evidences of life to be seen.”

Libbey admits that “a small cairn-like structure of stones” might have been the work of human hands; but he was convinced not only that the mesa had never been a human habitation, but that no fragment of pottery or of implements of any sort could be found.

VIII. Medicine

According to Alexander, medicine has come to be applied to objects and practices controlling the animistic powers of Nature as the Indian conceives them. Medicine is, therefore, private magic and may “exist in the form of a song or spell known to the owner,” in some symbol upon his body or in some object that he carries in his “medicine bag.” It may appear in a ceremony or in a system of rites and practices known to the “medicine lodge.” “The essential idea varies from fetichism to symbolism.” When fetichistic, the objects are regarded as talismans. Disease comes from occult powers of wizards or from the anger of certain animals. Death is the result of necromancy practised by bad men or angry gods. Medicine ceremonials are quite unlike rain ceremonials.—H. B. Alexander, North American Mythology, p. 269.

IX. Smoke

Cigars and cigarettes are used by Navajo and Pueblo peoples even for ritualistic purposes. Smoke is an invocation to “those above” and, being always a preliminary to councils, came to be known to the white man as the Pipe of Peace. All Southwestern and California tribes used the straight tubular pipe of clay or stone. Elaborate pipes are found in prehistoric mounds, most often among the more northern tribes. However, in 1922 Dr. J. Walter Fewkes and his corps of archaeological assistants found on the Mesa Verde National Park a central Kiva unique there so far as we yet know. Among the objects found in it “were a full dozen decorated tobacco pipes made of clay, some blackened by use, others showing no signs that they had ever been smoked.... For many years it had been suspected that the ancient inhabitants of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were smokers, but these pipes are the first objective evidence to prove it, and the fact that these objects were found in the shrine of a sacred room would indicate that they were smoked ceremonially, as is customary in modern pueblo rites.” The Kiva is known as Pipe Shrine House.

X. Shaman

A word corrupted from the Sanskrit, meaning “ascetic.” A term more or less interchangeable with “medicine man,” “doctor,” or even “priest.” Many tribes give Shaman and priest not merely distinct, but antagonistic functions. The priest is keeper and demonstrator of rituals. The Shaman mystifies by jugglery, pretends to foretell events and control them by incantations, and by fetish-practice prevents the evil spirits to whom all mishaps are attributed from working harm. Since disease is mischief done by evil spirits, Shamans treat the sick. They are the workers of “good magic,” and preside over ceremonies peculiar to their healing powers. When they fail they become wizards and practisers of “bad magic,” and are feared and if possible are put out of the way.

XI. Serpent

The great mythic serpent is as much a sky-being as one of earth. The lightning and the Milky Way are his sky attributes. He is the emblem of healing and of fertility in our Southwest.

The writer is indebted to a California friend for the following examples of hypnosis by rattlesnakes.

“When I was a young girl visiting on a ranch in Napa County, California, I had the following interesting experience, which was unusual, in fact, unique. Napa County is infested with rattlesnakes; subconsciously we were never unaware of the danger and, as children, killed many of them. The country was a particularly well-favored spot for the raising of turkeys and as we often drove them into the stubble fields where the grasshoppers were to be found we became accustomed to the ways of these very sensitive domesticated birds. Their usual mournful whine would give way to an alert cry if a hawk or buzzard began to circle over us in the sky and we also noticed a very peculiar and distinct cry when a rattlesnake was seen by them: Brrrup, Brrrup, in a very high piercing key.

“One day we were in the house when we heard this peculiar snake cry from the throats of about one hundred young birds. They were only about four weeks old and were in a small, well-protected snake-proof enclosure. Two of us ran out to see what could have happened, and this is what we saw—a rattlesnake the size of a lead pencil coiled in one corner and surrounding him all the turkeys in a semi-circle with heads stretched to the fullest, slowly but surely hypnotized and moving towards the swaying head of the snake. So absorbed were they that neither the snake nor the turkeys heard us. We watched the performance long enough to be sure of what was happening and then, with the never forgotten stick, killed the snake. The little turkeys, released from the spell, shook themselves, blinked, yawned and stood around confused until their little brains registered safety.

“I was talking with a friend of mine about Lower California one day and he was telling me of the fascinating beauty of it. ‘However,’ he said, ‘it has one great drawback and that is the size and number of the rattlesnakes.’ He said that it was not at all unusual to see them five feet long with bodies the size of a quart bottle and heads that would cover the palm of his hand.

“One day while hunting he saw a thrush behaving in a most peculiar manner under a bush. It was jumping up and down in one spot, feathers ruffled and fairly crying in a terrified manner. He crawled under the bush and there he saw one of these huge rattlers hypnotizing the bird. As soon as the snake saw him and turned his head towards him the bird flew away unharmed. He had his gun and shot from the hip, killing the snake.

“Another experience he had that was interesting. A boy jumped down on to a ledge and failed to see a huge snake almost red in color that was coiled on rocks of the same color. A companion, afraid that he might hurt the boy, shot the snake near the tail. The snake writhed for some time and then, apparently realizing it could not move, turned and stung itself, dying within a few minutes.”

XII. Lightning

Mrs. Stevenson records of the Queres people that the “lightning-people shoot their arrows to make it rain harder, the smaller flashes coming from the bows of the children. Thunder-people by making a great noise frighten the lightning and cloud-peoples to work harder.” The rainbow people were created to make the sky more beautiful for the earth people.

XIII. The Swastika and Primitive Cross-Symbols

The swastika, a symbol in the form of a Greek Cross with the end of the arms bent at right angles all in the same direction, and each prolonged to the height of the parallel arm of the cross. Full discussion of the swastika is found in Mrs. Zelia Nuttall’s “Old and New World Civilizations.” She finds these symbols universally accompanied by vestiges of a certain set of cosmical concepts and a scheme of organization which can be traced back to an original pole-star worship. The calendar swastika or cross of ancient Mexico gives absolute proof of native association with ideas of rotary motion and progress of time, and furnishes an indication that it may have been used by primitive races as a sign for a year or a cycle. Cushing found almost precisely the same thing among the Zuñi priesthood.

XIV. Religious Import of the Dance

“Not the epic song, but the dance, accompanied by a monotonous and often meaningless song constitutes everywhere the most primitive, and in spite of that primitiveness, the most highly developed art. Whether as a ritual dance, or as a purely emotional expression of the joy in rhythmic bodily movement, it rules the life of primitive man to such a degree that all other forms of art are subordinate to it.”—Wundt, Völker Psychologie, 3rd ed. Bd. 1 Teil 1, p. 277.