The age-long mistrust of the white men at Ácoma had apparently reached a critical moment at the time of our second visit. The hócheni (war captain) was in full authority and the kindly host of our first visit was helpless to make our stay rewardful. Apparently they were the only men still on the Crag and they were not in agreement about the reception to be given visitors. Consequently we could see nothing new, and I was even warned not to make notes within sight of the hócheni. The number and position of the kivas (ceremonial chambers)[27] were details about which we were especially keen to learn, but, alas, we were entirely baffled. I must therefore resort to a statement of Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons that at Ácoma there are two estufas (Spanish for stoves), which she calls, “A, east end, north side of Middle Row, and B, west end of North Row.” It is altogether probable that Ácoma does not greatly differ from other pueblos, either in its arrangement or its use of ceremonial chambers. Hence I venture to describe them as given elsewhere, and apply this knowledge inferentially to Ácoma.

The number of kivas in the pueblos is very variable, and because at Ácoma they are almost necessarily embodied in the community house-block, instead of being isolated structures as is true of most villages, we have no visible token of their positions. Bandelier says[28] that in his time there were six at Ácoma, but Dr. Parsons found no one willing to tell her either the names or number of them in her visits there in 1917 and 1918.

Though we never discovered the Ácoma kivas, at Walpi, where no ceremonial was in progress, we were allowed freely to enter those of the Antelope and of the Snake Clan. The sacred chamber was in each case a simple, unadorned room, with a bare hearth, its entrance ladder resting on a low platform. There were niches in the walls for ceremonial objects, and hanging from nails or poles were some undistinguishable small ornaments and a few masks.

A stringent requirement of the kiva form is that it should be at least partly subterranean, so it is of necessity entered only by a ladder thrust down from the top through a hatchway. The more primitive form of the kiva is circular, but at Ácoma it is described as rectangular, because, owing to the conditions enforced by a rocky table land, the kiva here became a part of the lowest storey of the house-block, hollowed somewhat deeper into the rock to meet the religious requirement. The curious orifice in the kiva, called Si-pa-pu, represents the place from which human beings originally emerged, and the peculiar arrangement of the floor within the kiva suggested to Mr. Mindeleff that it perhaps typified the four worlds of the genesis-myth, and the “four houses” of the creation myths. The Si-pa-pu with its cavity beneath the floor indicates the lowest house under the earth—the abode of the Creator, Myuinga. The main or lower floor represents the second stage where Light came; the elevated section of the floor, the third stage where animals were created. Upon this platform animal-fetiches are set in groups at New Year festivals. It is also to be noted that the ladder to the surface is always of pine and always rests on the platform, never on the lower floor. In their traditional genesis, the people climbed from the third house by means of a tree or a ladder of pine through such an opening as the kiva hatchway to the outer air, or the fourth world.[29]

The kiva has also been called the nearest approach that the Indian had to a school-house for the boys of the tribe. There, during the long winter evenings, the old men—tellers of tales—would sit wrapped in their many-colored blankets and recite their legends; it might be the story of their origin and their wanderings, or the blood-curdling relation of how their peaceful life was broken in upon by the dreaded Comanches or the Navajos; and then, again, by the invading white men, who came on strange four-footed beasts, filling the souls of the Ancients with terror and awe. Out of such long-spun tales, from the poetry of nature to the massacre of their “nations,” the wondering boys would gradually learn the tribal lore of their people and the mystery of their religious traditions, which could be transmitted only word by word from the elders to the growing generation. Morgan tells us that, at Taos, the special duty of this all-important instruction was given to three old men. Regarding Ácoma, we have no definite information.

At Isleta, in conversation with an educated and very reliable Indian, now federal judge of the pueblo, I was told it is still a regular thing through the winter evenings to assemble the boys, to whom the older men “tell the stories of our origin and our beliefs. We begin about nine o’clock every night and talk till three in the morning, and it takes two weeks of such talks to complete the story.” This suggests that in Isleta, at any rate, there still exists the ancient custom of the boys sleeping in the estufa, going home only for their meals, just as Spartan boys were taken from the homes of their parents to receive the arduous Spartan training.

Not only were the estufas or kivas used for clan and pueblo councils and for the education of the boys, but nearly all the early Spanish chroniclers write as if the men used them also as a sort of club-house where they could keep warm on cold winter days. Coronado speaks of “very good rooms underground and paved at Granada (or Háwikuh) which are made for winter and are something like hot baths,” and again “places where the men gather for consultation. The young men live in the estufas, which are underground, square or round.” Father Escobar writes, “There are many good estufas in each pueblo, which, with little fire, are very warm and wherein they pass the snow and cold of winter.”[30] In some tribes there was certainly a discrimination made between kivas, or purely ceremonial chambers, and estufas for more commonplace purposes, where even the sweat baths[31] were sometimes given. It is said that Keresan tribes always have two kivas. We have no reason to think that more than a single form existed at Ácoma.

The kiva was reserved for the business of the clan, which included the training for the rituals, to be announced to the pueblo in due season by the town crier. Here also are celebrated the secret rites of the fraternities and priesthoods, in many of which there are grades of promotion through which only may an individual slowly attain the goal of his ambition and become a power in his tribe.

In times of council meeting, not even the Indian women may approach the kivas save to place food within reach of the entrance.[32] If need arises to summon forth a member, prearranged signals are used. The fire on the hearth may sometimes point out the position of a hidden kiva to a wise-eyed stranger, such as the one who wrote that at Ácoma “far into the night the watcher is aware of a spiral of smoke curling above the dark hatchway from the sacred fire that never dies nor ever shall.”[33] It is desirable to correct a popular misconception that the kiva was ever in any sense a temple. The only temple the Indian knew, or would think worthy, was the great outdoors. Forest aisles or mountain shrines alone served for the place of communion with Divinity.[34]

For appointed ceremonials small conical structures called kisi are built in the open plaza for the necessary offices of the ritual. These are made of cotton-wood boughs covered with leaves and supported by poles, each about fifteen feet long, driven into the ground and strapped together at the apex. The orifice for the Si-pa-pu is on the ground in front of an opening facing the south.

Since prayer-smoke is the most nearly universal symbol of the Indian’s yearning toward the Unseen, I venture to quote here a song used in the ceremony of the Hako, by a tribe so remote from Ácoma as the Pawnee:[35]

Such are the most striking features of an Indian pueblo. At Ácoma certainly they have been but little altered since the sixteenth century. The political organization of the pueblos seems to have changed more, for, in respect to nomenclature, at any rate, it is an interesting mixture of Indian and Spanish.