"The most trivial commonplace of existence had, with the superstitious Pueblo, its religious significance; and it would seem to have been incumbent on him literally to 'pray without ceasing.' Hence the prayer-plume, or its substitute, was, with him, one of the necessities of life. Time would fail me to tell of the ancient elaborate religious rites and superstitions of the Mexican Indian; to recount his latter-day ceremonials, wherein Pagan dances, races, and sports are like the jumble of a crazy quilt, promiscuously mixed in with Christian festas and holy saint-days; and indeed the subject is too large for my sketchy handling. It may not, however, be amiss to notice the yearly celebration of the festival of San Estevan. It may be still witnessed, and seems to have been the original Harvest-home of the Mexican Indian, the observance of which has been handed down in various ways from all times, and among all peoples, and is probably the parent of our Thanksgiving holiday. "The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial. "It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful assertion of Cummings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of Washington; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was conceived.' "This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back of his steed, or the fierce Apache, murderous and cruel. "We must not," said Mr. Morehouse, "take leave of the Pueblo, without some reference to the great flat-topped, slop-sided chain of rock-tables that throughout the length and breadth of his territory rises from the sandy plains, the most famous and best explored of which is known as 'La Mesa Encantada,'--'the Enchanted Mesa.'