1898;] Acoma Today 



forty years to fill, all the earth having been labori- 

 ously brought up in baskets from the plain below. 

 While we were there, I noticed a man digging a grave 

 and occasionally throwing out an old bone. The 

 Indian boy looking on said: "He been there long 

 enough; get out, give other fellow a chance." 



Acoma is now reached by three accessible trails, 

 two of them ancient, ladder-like, and most pre- trails 

 cipitous, the third a recent broad, curving road of 

 easy grade. Down this last, hundreds of community 

 ponies, burros, and cattle are driven every morn- 

 ing, with much clatter of hoofs, to graze on the plain 

 below, and up it they return each night to shelter. 



The Acoma holdings, confirmed by federal patent, 

 comprise 96,000 acres mostly mountainous and very 

 scantily timbered with dwarf pine (pinon) and red 

 cedar. But great patches of arable land bordering 

 the little rivers, the Agua Azul and the San Jose, 

 yield abundant crops of maize, besides wheat, 

 beans, chili (red pepper), and muskmelons, and 

 bear small orchards of peaches. The handsome Acoma 

 Acoma terra cotta pottery, decorated with red, pottery 

 black, and white, is well known to collectors, the 

 use of white earth being peculiar to this one pueblo. 



Lummis being persona grata in the home of Martin Fine 

 Valle, the former "governor general," his grandson, courtesy 

 Juan Jose Valle, extended his hospitality to the 

 ladies and myself, while the others retreated by 

 night to the old monastery. It was also courte- 

 ously arranged that I should have first chance at 

 the kitchen stove so that we might prepare and eat 

 our breakfast before the household was astir. We 

 had, of course, brought our own provisions, but 



C 629:1 



