THE SANTA FE ROUTE. 95 
tradition they are of mixed stock from the older pueblos. Their town 
is a relatively new settlement, dating back to about 1697, when it 
was established with the name San Jose de la Laguna, by Gov. Cubero. 
The village is built on ledges of buff sandstone on the north bank of 
San Jose River, which the Indians at that time called the Cubero. 
This stream affords water for domestic use as well as for the irriga- 
tion of small areas of various kinds of crops on which the natives 
subsist. The Indians had a Spanish grant of over a quarter of a 
million acres, most of which, however, was desert land. Around 
their principal pueblo, Laguna, they had many small villages, in 
which they lived during the summer. Of late years they have occu- 
pied some of these villages (Paquate, Negra, Encino, and Casa Blanca) 
permanently. About 1,800 Indians live in or near Laguna. 
On both sides of the valley of San Jose River at Laguna, and along 
the branch canyons from the north and south, are high mesas with 
cliffs of sandstone. The beds lie nearly horizontal. The mesas are 
capped by gray to buff sandstones (Dakota and younger), while the 
FIGURE 19,—Sketch section through Acoma, N. Mex., looking south. 
lower cliffs are of massive buff Zuni sandstone. In the intermediate 
slopes there are extensive exposures of the pale greenish-gray clays, - 
as in other sections east, which extend along the sides of the valley 
for some distance west beyond Cubero (koo-bay’ro) siding. 
A short distance southwest of Laguna there comes in from the 
south a large valley, which heads in the vicinity of Acoma, one of 
the most remarkable Indian pueblos in the Southwest. As shown 
in Plate XV (p. 97), this place is built on top of a high, isolated mesa 
with precipitous walls of gray sandstone (see fig. 19) and has been 
an object of great interest to travelers ever since the first visit of 
Coronado. It is notable as the oldest continuously inhabited settle- 
ment in the United States. Unlike most of the other pueblo villages, 
Acoma is recorded in the early chronicles as the home of a people 
- feared by the residents of the whole country around as robbers and 
warriors. Its location upon a precipitous white rock (Akome, 
“people of the white rock”) rendered it_well-nigh impregnable to 
native enemies as well as to Spanish conquerors, for the only means 
of approaching it was by climbing up an easily guarded cleft in the 
rock. However, one of the Spanish expeditions, with 70 men, suc- 
ceeded in killing 1,500 of these Indians—half their total number— 
in a three-day battle in 1599. The entrance and stairway In use 
