326 PUEBLO OF ACOMA. 



rolled up. Most of the houses are clean and orderly, and some of them 

 are whitewashed inside. There is no spring on the mesa, and the water is 

 obtained from a large tank on the top of the mesa, which is filled with snow 

 in winter, and in which the rain-water collects during the rainy season. 

 This tank is about 150 feet long, 20 feet broad, and 4 to 5 feet deep. 



The antiquity of the pueblo is unknown. The archives of the Mexi- 

 can Government show that a Spanish Jesuit Mission was established in the 

 place as early as 1687. The description of the topograph)' answers to 

 this locality, although no particular name is mentioned. The Jesuits' regime, 

 however, has ceased, probably within the last forty or fifty years. In but 

 very few of the pueblos have the Jesuits held their power up to the present 

 day. The church is still there, but there is no use for it, and the surround- 

 ing yard is occupied by sheep and goats. The church is about 150 feet 

 long-, 30 feet wide at one end and 40 at the other. It has a tower about 

 40 feet high, and has two church bells, one of which bears the inscription 

 "San Pedro, A. D. 1710." There is a grave-yard on the sandy portion of 

 the mesa. The sand may have been carried up and placed in a depression 

 at this point. 



[The date, 1687, given above as the time when the Jesuit Mission was established 

 at Acoma is not justified by the annals of the order, as shown by the following note, for 

 which I am indebted to Mr. Ad. F. Bandelier : — " Not long, after 1628, Fray Juan 

 Bauiirez, a Franciscan monk, founded the mission of San Estevan de Acoma, naming 

 the place after Saint Sebastian on account of its rocky sides and the large number of 

 pebbles accumulated on and about it {por lo pedragoso). Fray Bamirez returned to 

 Mexico, and died there in 1664. His successor was Fray Lucas Maldonado, from Tri- 

 bujona, Mexico, also a Franciscan. In fact, up to the uprising of the Indians of New 

 Mexico, under Pope and Catite, in 1680, the Franciscan order controlled all the mis- 

 sions among the pueblos. On August 10, 1680, twenty-one Franciscan friars were 

 murdered in various parts of New Mexico, and among them Fray Meldonado of Acoma. 

 About twelve years later Vargas reconquered the territory, but for several years after- 

 wards there were occasional disturbances and bloodshed. In 1687 there were no 

 priests of any order among the pueblos. — Compare, Fray Augustin de Vetancurt 

 (Teatro mexicano, Mexico, 1698, part 4, Cronica de la Prov. d. Sto. Ev. de Mexico, p. 101 ; 

 also, Menologio franciscano, p. 86). — Also, P. Joseph Stocklein (JDer neue Weltbott, 1726, 

 vol i)."— F. W. P.] 



