ÁCOMA, THE SKY CITY LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS [Illustration: ÁCOMA MAIDENS AT THE SPRING _Copyright by E. S. Curtis_] ÁCOMA, THE SKY CITY _A STUDY IN PUEBLO-INDIAN HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION_ BY MRS. WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK [Illustration] CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1927 COPYRIGHT, 1926 BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS _Second Impression_ PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. IN GRATEFUL AND LOVING MEMORY OF MRS. CHARLES ELIOT GUILD AND ELEANOR GUILD [Illustration] _But yet I treasure in my memory_ _Your gift of charity, your mellow ease,_ _And the dear honour of your amity,_ _For these once mine, my life is rich with these._ [Illustration] _Because of your strong faith I kept the track_ _Whose sharp-set stones my strength had well-nigh spent._ _I could not meet your eyes if I turned back,_ _So on I went._ PREFACE The attempt is here made to bring together, and put into a form for the general reader, the story of that pueblo of the Keres people known as Ácoma, so far as yet discovered in the records of Spanish diarists and in those of more recent historical writers. It was one of the places visited by the first white explorers of the region we know to-day as New Mexico. From the very outset Ácoma excited the curiosity and even the fear of the pioneers because of the strangeness of its position and the reputation of its inhabitants for ferocity. The early Spaniards made no prolonged stay there, but to “the marvellous Crag” there are constant brief allusions from the time of Coronado’s chronicler in 1540 onward to that of its conversion to Christianity after 1629. Nor are there more vivid and thrilling tales told of any Southwestern pueblo people than can be veraciously set forth of Ácoma, the City in the Sky, built more than 6500 feet above sea-level.