found little difficulty in teaching those
natives to read and write, but since the
decay of religious establishments education
has been arrested, and now not a single
school exists in any of the pueblos.

In religion they are, to outward appearance,
devoted Roman Catholics; the few
priests who still work amongst them are
Frenchmen, and are much respected and
beloved. The rites of baptism, marriage,
and burial take place in the village church,
and they keep the feast-day of their patron
saint with great festivities.

The isolated pueblos, which lie at
considerable distances from, the main valley,
are very different in appearance from those
simpler one-storied villages which once
dotted the banks of the Rio Grande del
Norte in very considerable numbers. In
these the distinctive peculiarities of the
native fortifications are very striking.
Laguna, on the Rio de San José, is built
on the summit of a limestone cliff, some forty
feet high, possessing considerable natural
advantages for defence. The houses are
mostly of stone plastered over with mud,
and two stories high. Neither windows nor
doors are to be found on the outer wall of
the first story; the second rises a little
back from the roof of the first, leaving a
ledge in front of it. Ladders are used to
mount to this ledge; they are then drawn
up, and the rooms are entered either by
openings in the roof leading to the ground-
floor, or doors giving entrance from the
ledge to the second suite of rooms; the
latter story alone is used for sleeping.
Store-rooms occupy the ground-floor.

In 1858 there was a Baptist minister at
Laguna; in one of his reports to the Indian
department of the Secretary of the Interior,
he says that the amount of real Christianity
amongst the Indians is very small; they
cling to the religion of their forefathers, and
can only be induced to attend the service of
the Roman Catholic Church by threats,
promises, and even, blows, whereas they perform
their own religious duties with the utmost
regularity. He also joins in the universal
eulogium on the honesty and sobriety of the
men, and the virtue of the women.

Acoma, some twenty miles west of
Laguna, is a large and very interesting
pueblo. It rests on the summit of a flat
mesa, whose perpendicular cliffs rise to a
height of from three hundred to four
hundred feet above the valley. The houses here
are three stories high, built on the usual
principle, each successive story being smaller
than that on which it rests. Ladders are also
used to reach the first ledge. The flat top of
the mesa covers about fifty acres of land; it
is reached by a steep winding path cut in the
rock, and so placed as to be easily defended.
It is a very wealthy pueblo; the Indians own
abundance of cattle, and grow large
quantities of corn, peaches, pumpkins, and other
produce. The houses of San Domingo,
Sandria, and others, although only built of
one story, have no doors or windows on
the outside, but are entered by ladders from
the roof.

The ancient pueblo of Toas consists of
one compact fortress, formed of terraces
seven stories high, and built on a rock
overlooking the stream; so strong was it as a
place of defence, that, in 1847, when the
Mexicans of the village of Toas could no
longer defend themselves against the Americans,
they betook themselves to the Indian
pueblo a few miles distant, and they
sustained a protracted siege, yielding at last,
but only when provisions had utterly failed.
This pueblo, moreover, was never taken by
the Spaniards, although it was many times
attacked. Venegas, Caronado, and, in fact,
all the early Spanish explorers and writers
upon New Mexico, describe many seven-
storied fortresses now no more, and give
many instances of the great bravery shown
by the Indians in their defence. Those I
have mentioned, however, with the exception
of Zuñi and the seven Moqui pueblos,
are the only native fortresses which now
remain inhabited.

In the valley through which the Zuñi
river (a tributary of the Colorado Chiquito)
flows, are to be seen orchards chiefly of
peach-trees—vineyards, fine corn plots, and
vegetable gardens, producing onions, beans,
melons, chili Colorado (red pepper), pumpkins,
&c. Formerly cotton was cultivated;
probably by Indians, further south; but
now, I believe, they obtain what stuffs they
require from the Mexicans in exchange for
farm produce. They do not raise their
crops by irrigation, but depend entirely
upon the rainfall; hence all their traditions
relate more or less to the production of
water. Not far from the town is a sacred
spring about eight feet in diameter, walled
round with stones, of which neither cattle
nor man may drink. The animals sacred
to water—frogs, tortoises, and snakes—
alone must enter the pool. Once a year
the cacique and his attendants perform
certain religious rites at the spring; it is
thoroughly cleared out; water-pots are
brought as an offering to the Spirit of
Montezuma, and are placed bottom
upwards on the top of the wall of stones.
Many of these have been removed, but