Of all the features of the great lonely stretches of country that one passes under the burning sky of the Southwest, most characteristic are the mesas, those level-topped tables that rise abruptly from the sandy plains, many-colored, and of irregular outline, catching the late afternoon sunlight in such fashion as to bring into view mysterious caverns that often were the early homes of cliff-dwellers. None, of all the mesas, is more striking than Katzímo, rising isolated and abrupt four hundred and thirty feet from a waste of sand. Here, says the long-revered tradition of the Ácomas, their ancestors dwelt after their slow progress from the north[136] until driven forth by disaster, whence comes the appellation of the “Enchanted” Mesa, to build a final home upon the great white rock where we find them to-day.

The first impression of Katzímo as one approaches it by the sandy road is of its extraordinary beauty of color. Buff blended with rose is delicately veiled by the haze which almost everywhere softens severe outlines in the desert, so that the gazer from afar finds one more reason for its baptism of the Enchanted. Nearly circular in form, Katzímo seems to be composed of sheer perpendicular walls fantastically pinnacled and turreted, but on nearer scrutiny a sort of amphitheatre or cave hollowed out by long erosion is found both on the northern and on the western sides; yet so glassy are the walls that there is little encouragement to attempt their conquest.

The legend of Katzímo relates that then as now the inhabitants were an agricultural people, cultivating their crops in the plain below. Once, in the timeless yesterday of their race when the season of planting had arrived, the Sun Priest issued a proclamation that all the people must descend the mesa to their fields.[137] There were left on the top only three women, too ill for the work, and one boy to care for them. At night he was directed to stand watch, lest the dreaded Apaches might raid the pueblo in the absence of its warriors. A fearful storm of rain and thunder such as had never been known made his task dangerous the second night, but he stayed at his post till called by his mother, upon whom a portion of her house had fallen. She told him to go down and bring back some of the men to help.... The boy with infinite peril reached the plain and started for the fields.

Thus are we led to think that some portentous convulsion of nature had toppled off the pueblo, destroyed the ladder trail, and left the colony homeless. No effort is recorded of any attempt to save the hapless women, and the chapter is abruptly closed. It was apparently after this terrible disaster that the mesa was called Katzímo, the “accursed” or “enchanted,” and many is the spot that has earned such title for less cause. How the mesa top looked before it was accursed we can never know, but a few piñons and cedars on its top suggest the probability of its having been sparsely wooded. This is a land of tempestuous thunder-storms and heavy rains, when the water falls in cataracts over the mesa summit, carrying fresh detritus to the heaps of talus below. Since this has been going on for centuries, it is of course almost hopeless to find much genuine record on the cliff itself of the origin and development of its people. Nevertheless a few faint traces do exist, and because the legends and the folk-lore of Katzímo and of Ácoma are so closely intertwined, we cannot envisage the story of Ácoma without including Katzímo, however slight the hope of disentangling solid fact from poetic legend.

We have good reason to believe that there are still shrines in the recesses of Katzímo, and that in all probability there takes place either in these clefts or on the summit periodic performance of rituals by the Ácoma people. One clue to such use of the mesa is given by Miss McLain of the Indian Service. She reported that an Indian family told her that, when an Ácoma youth is being instructed in the kiva into the mysteries of the faith, the last step in his initiatory discipline before giving him full freedom as a man, is to blindfold him and send him to the top of the Mesa Encantada for a night’s lonely vigil, bearing a jar of water as oblation to the spirits. It was explained to her that a boy could climb blindfolded where he could not go open-eyed, “a fact all mountain engineers will substantiate.”[139] There is also reason to think that these novices as well as the worshippers at other ceremonies on Katzímo have their own undivulged means of reaching the summit.

The desire to solve the mystery of Katzímo has impelled several students of ethnology to scale its fearful cliffs and to gather whatever fragmentary tales the Indians of the tribe can be induced to impart. Here it may be well to note certain things that it is necessary to have in mind when questioning an Indian. He is more likely to tell you the facts or the legends of some other tribe than of his own, and even when he does not exactly prevaricate, he is willing to embroider upon the truth in the hope that he may mislead the foreign visitor, whose questions seem to him an unwarranted intrusion upon his own particular preserves. Very little from any source is to be learned of Katzímo. Bandelier, the distinguished student of the history of the Southwest, has only this to say:

The men who have written the most about Ácoma and Katzímo are Bandelier, Lummis, Hodge, and James. They all lived for considerable periods among the Indians of this region, winning their friendship and confidence, so that if any Indian traditions are trustworthy it would seem that this must be so. But the fact is that the Ácomas are more secretive to-day, probably, than any other Indian tribe.

Although the mesa is called inaccessible, Lummis made its ascent in 1883, the earliest by a white man in our time. He published his account in 1885. A decade later (1895) Hodge, then of the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, attempted the ascent but was stopped sixty feet below the actual top by a sheer wall of rock. He did, however, examine the talus, piled high at the southwestern corner, and found many fragments of very ancient pottery, which it is easy to distinguish from the modern ware because decorated with a vitreous glaze, an art no longer practised by the pueblo potters. Hodge also found unmistakable toe and finger holes in the walls of the cliffs by which he climbed, which apparently justified the tradition that it was up this part of the mesa that the ancient trail had gone. A verbal account of the tradition was given Hodge at this time by Tsiki, a chief and famous medicine man, of Ácoma.

In July, 1897, Professor William Libbey, of Princeton University, made the ascent of the mesa with what he describes as almost superhuman effort. He remained for two hours on the summit and was of the opinion that there was “not the slightest indication that the top of the Mesa had ever been the prehistoric home of the Ácomas or had ever been inhabited at all,” since no bits of pottery or traces of construction of any sort were visible. Consequently he named it “The Disenchanted Mesa.”[140] Libbey admitted, however, that he made no exploration of the southwest cove up which the ancient trail was reputed to have passed, nor of the talus at its foot. As soon as Libbey published his account a new interest was aroused in its history, and the Bureau of Ethnology requested Hodge, who was at work in Arizona, to go to Katzímo and see what he could find. Accordingly, in September of that year Hodge made his second ascent, and since then George Wharton James has made further explorations. Setting aside, then, the slight allusions of Bandelier and Libbey, let us look at the experiences of the other three, who, on the whole, agree in their deductions, though with some inevitable minor variations of detail.

James says very reasonably that, if the whole Katzímo tradition is discredited, all Indian tradition is discredited and more obstacles added to the unravelling of the obscurities of prehistoric Indian life. But he also makes the good point that evidences of human presence and of human occupation of any place are quite separate and diverse things.

Hodge’s first experience had taught him that light extension ladders and some half-inch rope would suffice to enable him to scale the sixty feet of cliff which unaided he had been obliged to forego in 1895. Accordingly, when he reached Laguna, he secured as companions a United States surveyor of long residence in the region, Major G. H. Pradt, A. C. Vroman, a well-known photographer of Pasadena, Mr. H. C. Hayt of Chicago, and two Laguna Indian boys. They made their camp in some cedars at the base of the cleft on the southwest, and while the ladder and other equipment were got into position for the climb, Major Pradt determined “that the elevation of the foot of the talus is 33 feet above the plain; the apex of the talus 224 feet, and the top of the highest pinnacle on the summit of the mesa overlooking the great cleft is 431 feet above the same level.” [141]

Their climb, achieved with heroic effort and some danger, convinced them that the toe and finger holes, without question originally chipped out by human hands, had lost their first form by reason of the erosion during the long lapse of years. Near the place where Hodge had been stopped two years before was a great boulder in the corner of a terrace, to which their ropes were now secured. Just below it ran a long crack through the thirty-foot wall, and while resting on the boulder Hodge suddenly saw four oak sticks about two and a half feet long and one inch thick, pointed at both ends by some sharp tool. Soon afterward a potsherd of modern make and an unfeathered prayer-stick were discovered, and by digging in the sand the rest of the broken jar was found—evident proof of some recent sacrificial offering. A few moments’ search on the summit revealed a potsherd of very ancient type. A rude stone “monument” was examined which Libbey had dismissed as being a natural phenomenon, but which Hodge regards as indubitably a work of man. A slab thirty inches long of vertical stratification is held erect by smaller slabs or boulders of horizontal stratification—a variation that could hardly be fantastic erosion.

Next morning the party was surprised by the appearance of three Ácoma Indians, who had seen the fire built by the explorers for warmth on the summit, and who were at first in no friendly mood. These men were two principales and a medicine man of their tribe. They had threatened the Laguna Indians left in the camp below with cutting the ladder-rope and compelling the descent of the invading white man. They were soon pacified when told the visitors were only searching for curios and not prospecting for territory. Luciano, the lieutenant-governor, said their “Ancients” had once occupied the mesa, but that the destructive storms, to which the region is subject, would prevent any relics of their time ever being found. Then the ancient potsherd was produced and the Indians showed excitement about it, as well as great “surprise” at the cairn, which they did not explain. Whether or not their attitude might have come from a desire to conceal their sacred treasures, Hodge does not intimate. At all events, they helped in the search for more potsherds, and a number were found in the scattered débris, as well as portions of a shell bracelet and a blade-end of a white stone axe. This seemed important, as the upper side was bleached by exposure, while the lower was soiled and damp.

After they had all descended the mesa, one of these Indians showed Hodge another axe-blade notched similarly to the one they had found on top, and admitted it had come from the ledge just below the summit and that he was keeping it for ceremonial purposes. Thus the proofs of human occupation of Katzímo seem well established, but whether permanent or only periodic may perhaps never be known. In a personal letter to the writer in February, 1922, Dr. J. W. Fewkes says: