VISIT AN A COMA PUEBLO. 491 
a height of 200, to much larger and higher ones. They look like sentinels stand- 
ing guard over the grandest rock, which is 800 to 1,000 feet high and contains 
perhaps a thousand acres. It is on the top of this rock that the tribe of Acoma 
Indians live. The accent is on the first syllable, ^^. The last "a" has the 
broad sound as pronounced in maw. I can only compare it to an island in a 
small lake, and the other smaller rocks to other islands. 
All around the base of this island, or rock, are deep beds of sand, looking 
for all the world like sand washed up from the bed of the ocean. There is no 
way of getting up upon the rock but from the side we approached, and then only 
■by wading through a bed of sand to the foot of the rock, and then by steps cut 
in the side of the rock, zig-zagging up to the top, which is nearly 1,000 feet above 
the park. At one place there is a natural opening about six feet wide, where a 
balf dozen men could defend themsilves against the approach of a small army. 
Up these steps the people and visitors have to go to reach the top, and up the 
same steps went the burros, on whose backs are carried up the wood to supply 
the 800 people who live on the rock, the wheat and corn which are raised on the 
plains below, and in fact everything that is consumed by the whole population. 
Nearly the whole 1,000 acres is nothing but bare, ragged rocks, with hardly a 
•vestige of vegetation. Occasionally a few tufts of grass are seen, and I saw one 
large pifion tree, the only one on the rock. 
There is in one ravine a large peach tree. I don't believe there is another 
so desolate a place inhabited by human beings, on the face of the globe. 
Tradition has it that about 1569 this tribe and ihe Lagunasgot into a quarrel 
over a right to the water and the Lagunas whipped the Acomas, who betook them- 
selves to this rock as a place of security and finally settled on it, going out into 
the plain below to cultivate their crops, well arme^ and prepared to defend them- 
selves against their enemies. 
There are three rows of houses, each row about as long as a block in the 
city of Topeka. They are of adobe, three stories high. One side has no open- 
enings whatever, being a bare wall some thirty feet high. The first story is about 
thirty-six feet wide; the second story say twenty-six feet wide, leaving an open 
space in fj-ont of it, and on the top of the first story, which is used to sit or squat 
on and, I guess, sleep on in hot weather. On the top of the second story is a 
third story about sixteen feet wide, leaving another open space on the top of the 
second story, which is used for the same purposes as the one below it, to sleep 
on. There are no openings on the lower story from the ground. The house is 
entered by going up the first story on a ladder, stepping upon the flat roof of the 
first story, entering the second story by a door and then going down some steps 
into the first story. The third story is reached by a ladder from the second 
story. The inside of the houses are clean, freshly whitewashed, and nearly 
everything has a tidy appearance. 
There is a church, said to be over two hundred years old, which is almost 
indescribable. In the center is a placita, or hollow square, uncovered. Around 
this is what might be called a court or hall with small windows, out of which the 
