The Days of a Man 1898 



F. W. Stephenson, a young business man of San 

 Francisco. 



Acoma, the oldest "continuing city" in America, 

 is one of a chain of ancient settlements, nineteen in 

 number, of varying size and importance, generically 

 Pueblo called pueblos. 1 Omitting Acoma, the most striking 

 iow e le and of the group, the best known are Zuni, Taos, Moqui, 

 Cochiti, and Isleta. All are peopled by the "Pueblo 

 Indians," to use the common term, a group com- 

 prising six branches of one sedentary, aboriginal 

 stock, each division having its own language or 

 dialect, but (according to Lummis) all probably 

 descended from, or more exactly identical with, cliff 

 dwellers of an earlier day, the different methods of 

 life being more or less bound up with differing local 

 conditions. "To the largest of these tribes, known 

 as the Queres, counting over 3000 souls and with 

 seven towns, Acoma and Cochiti belong." 

 Communal The characteristic Pueblo architecture was ob- 

 defense viously planned for defense against the roving and 

 predatory Apaches and Navajos frequenting the 

 region; the same factor also obviously determined 

 the location of most of the original settlements. 

 Taos, however, differs from the others in its two 

 six-storied dwellings, monstrous human hives as 

 it were, and Isleta lies on level ground conveniently 

 near the Rio Grande with its unlimited supply of 

 water. Some of the rest, less fortunate in the last 

 respect even though better protected, depend wholly 

 on summer rains to fill their tank-like excavations 

 in the rock. In modern times a few "daughter" 

 pueblos have arisen; Laguna on the Santa Fe 

 railway, for example, is an overflow mainly (though 



1 The Spanish noun pueblo is, of course, ordinarily applied to any town. 



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