mesa 



18983 Our Oldest Continuing City 



not entirely) from Acoma, and Acomita, over- 

 shadowed by the huge Mesa Prieta a few miles farther 

 west, serves in some sense as a summer resort. 



Acoma itself perches weirdly on a mighty, flat- 

 topped table or mesa of bright-red sandstone some 

 seventy acres in extent and edged by vertical cliffs 

 355 feet in height, deep-gashed and eroded into 

 fantastic buttresses and pinnacles. Moreover, to 

 add to the generally uncanny effect, the mesa con- 

 sists of two nearly equal parts joined by a narrow 

 rock isthmus, though only the northern and more 

 level section is inhabited. 



"The home of half a thousand quaint lives and 

 half a thousand years of romance," 1 Acoma was 

 already ancient when (in 1540) Coronado, the ex- 

 plorer, came upon it on his way westward from 

 Zuni in search of the mythical "Gran Quivira," 

 and before his discovery of the Grand Canyon. 

 With his intrepid but peaceable band he gave no 

 cause for resentment. Indeed, to the Acomas the 

 visitors seemed like " fair gods," and were allowed 

 to proceed unhindered. Spanish soldiers, arriving Revolt and 

 later, were not so fortunate; the history of Acoma 

 as a nominal vassal of Spain was marked by 

 bloody insurrections and fierce encounters, during 

 one of which (1599) the "eternal battlements" were 

 stormed by Onate, and the pueblo was temporarily 

 crushed. In 1680, however, the Queres tribes rose 

 as a body, killing all the Spaniards in what is now 

 New Mexico, - - upward of five hundred colonists 

 and missionaries, and it was not until 1700 that 

 Acoma reappeared in history, its church rebuilt 



1 See "A City in the Sky: The Land of Poco Tiempo"; Charles F. Lummis. 



C627 n 



massacre 



