Acoma

We didn't make it to La Fonda.  We got to Santa Fe on Saturday evening, and it was so crowded that we decided we will try back on Monday.

We did go to Acoma.  We took the guided tour, which is the only way to see the pueblo up close.  The pueblo is really set up for tourists - the tour largely takes you from one vendor table to another one.  The church is very interesting, and I have never seen another one like it.  It is very sparse with the pews along the walls, leaving the adobe floors wide open.  There are rainbows, which lack the color red, with corn painted at intervals along the wall. The altar itself is not unusual, although not nearly as elaborate as in most Spanish mission churches I have been to.

The guide said that the floor is open because they do dances to honor Jesus during the Christmas Eve mass.  I don't know why the floors are so uneven, I hope nobody twists an ankle.  He told us that the rainbows lack red because the Acoma see red as a color of war and violence.  The walls were white and pink.  The guide said that white represents purity, so it is OK for them to mix red with white to paint the walls to protect the Acoma people.  My understanding is that the white tones down the violence of the red and makes it a protective color rather than a warlike one.  The corn, of course, represents fertility.

The guide said that 50% of the residents of Acoma practice only the native religion, 40% practice native religion and Roman Catholicism, and 10% practice only Catholicism.  I wanted to ask him what effect the Native American Church ("Peyotism") has had on religion in the pueblo, but I didn't get a chance.  Actually, I expected to look it up online, but I haven't been able to find much information yet.

The one thing that I wanted to find but didn't is information about Willa Cather.  They had descriptions of quite a few famous visitors in the small museum, most notably Billy "the Kid" Bonney.  But none of the guides had heard anything about her visit.  Cather was apparently impressed by her visit, and in Death Comes for the Archbishop, she mentions a painting of St. Joseph that the pueblo has which has the ability to bring rain.  We saw this painting on our tour; it is hanging near the altar of the church.

Our guide told us an interesting story about the painting, which was claimed by both Acoma and Laguna pueblos.  Here is a link that describes the story in detail.

They don't have indoor plumbing in the pueblo itself, so thee are portable outhouses pretty much throughout the city.  I tried to avoid photographing them, but will include one of the church with a small city of outhouses.