For appointed ceremonials small conical structures called _kisi_ are built in the open plaza for the necessary offices of the ritual. These are made of cotton-wood boughs covered with leaves and supported by poles, each about fifteen feet long, driven into the ground and strapped together at the apex. The orifice for the Si-pa-pu is on the ground in front of an opening facing the south. Since prayer-smoke is the most nearly universal symbol of the Indian’s yearning toward the Unseen, I venture to quote here a song used in the ceremony of the Hako, by a tribe so remote from Ácoma as the Pawnee:[35] See the smoke ascend! Now the odor mounts, follows where his voice Sped, intent to reach Where the gods abide. There the odor pleads, Pleads to gain us help. Such are the most striking features of an Indian pueblo. At Ácoma certainly they have been but little altered since the sixteenth century. The political organization of the pueblos seems to have changed more, for, in respect to nomenclature, at any rate, it is an interesting mixture of Indian and Spanish. Chapter III FIRST EXPEDITIONS FROM NEW SPAIN In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Spain occupied perhaps the most prominent position on the theatre of Europe.... The Spaniard came over to the New World in the true spirit of a knight errant, courting adventure however perilous, wooing danger, as it would seem, for its own sake. With sword and lance, he was ever ready to do battle for the Faith, and as he raised his old war-cry of “Santiago,” he fancied himself fighting under the banner of the military apostle. It was the expiring age of chivalry and Spain, romantic Spain, was the land where its light lingered longest above the horizon. Arms ... was the only career which the high-mettled cavalier could tread with honor. The New World, with its strange and mysterious perils, afforded a noble theatre for the exercise of his calling, and the Spaniard entered on it with all the enthusiasm of a paladin.—W. H. PRESCOTT, _The Conquest of Mexico_.