Indians Keep Past Alive Atop N.M. Mesa : Heritage: The Acomas’ pottery and festivals recall a centuries-old way of life. Sky City, their home, has a rich, sometimes violent history.

An autumn chill hangs over Sky City, a sun-hardened citadel of clay and rock that is said to be the oldest continuously occupied community in the United States.

On a recent day, hundreds of Indian dancers and potters displayed their talents as the Acoma Pueblo community observed the 350th annual San Esteban Feast Day with sprinklings of cornmeal to bless the Earth.

Afterward, most Acomas returned to their homes in the valley below. But a few, mostly potters, are staying on for the windy winter atop this sandstone stronghold 7,000 feet above sea level.

“Up here on top of the mesa, there are 12 to 15 families that live all year long,” said Camille Pasquale, a potter who helps guide tourists through the ancient fortress, which survived a 16th-Century Spanish invasion.

Survival cost dearly--100 men killed, scores enslaved and many others punished by having a foot severed.

It’s quiet now. The stillness soaks up sound. Voices 10 feet away vanish like steam. A little boy, following his dog down narrow lanes, shyly sneaks glances at strangers. Every other doorway displays pottery.

Every year, the tribe chooses “field chiefs” who live here with their families, each generally representing one of the Acomas’ 14 clans.

The Acomas say they have been here more than 1,000 years. They first settled on neighboring Enchanted Mesa, which was later abandoned, and then 800 years ago moved to Sky City, a 367-foot-high mesa that was declared a national landmark in 1960.

Water is still carried in, not piped. No wires bring in phone calls or electricity. No gas lines here.

Like the ancient timbers used in the village’s 17th-Century San Esteban Mission Church, the firewood for heating and cooking is hauled here from as far away as Mt. Taylor, 40 miles to the north.

San Esteban Feast Day, the Acomas’ big fall celebration, marked the end of the hot weather and the summer tourist season that brought in 200 to 300 visitors a day.

On Sept. 2, a procession carried the carved wooden statue of St. Stephen from his church on the southwest corner of the mesa to a shrine on the central plaza. The shrine, as always, was decorated with cuttings of corn, aspen and wild daisies, flanked by guards bearing muskets dating back more than a century.

Inside the shrine, tribal leaders formally accepted the Acomas’ offerings of food to the saint.

Then the white-buffalo dancers, each carrying a multicolored lightning bolt, began their celebration, their bells and silver jewelry jangling. Three men in white animal skins, skirts and brown leather leggings and three women in wrapped white buckskin leggings and floral print shifts, black skirts and white sash vests danced to the beat of a single drummer.

Following them, a succession of other troupes entered in turn from different corners of the square, two by two, each performing in front of the shrine--the women with large red dots on their cheekbones, the men with rust-colored swabs, for protection. Fox pelts dangled from their belts. Fir boughs adorned their sleeves.

The church dominates the southwest corner of the mesa. The Acoma women helped Franciscan missionaries complete it from 1629 to 1640, just as they prepare it every year for the fiesta.

“The women and children brought the sand from the valley up in baskets,” said Fran Torivio, a Sky City guide and cashier at the Acoma office below.

The walled courtyard in front of the church is a cemetery. The wall is topped with weathered adobe busts of warriors.

“These are the soldiers that guard the cemetery,” Pasquale said.

The soldiers are restored annually before the fiesta with new potsherds for their eyes, and new smiles carved into the clay.

Acomas would lock themselves in the church when under attack by Navajos or Apaches, usually around harvest time, Torivio said.

Tourists still can climb down the ancient stairway carved in the mesa’s northwest face, or they can ride a tour bus.

Acomas say their ancestors arrived here from Mesa Verde in what is now southern Colorado. According to legend, they were told by Iatiku, mother of all Indians, to seek a mesa resembling the tip of an ear of corn, which symbolizes Iatiku.

When they saw Enchanted Mesa, they believed they had arrived at the center of the Earth.

By various accounts, Enchanted Mesa was abandoned after earthquakes or rainstorms destroyed its ancient staircase, stranding a few residents on top. Some died jumping or falling, others starved. Most were already down on the valley floor, farming. They began anew at Sky City, leaving ruins on Enchanted Mesa.

Acomas say they’ve been at Sky City since about 1200.

In 1540, Spaniards came looking vainly for gold in the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. It is said that the golden glint of mica window panes reflecting the sunset attracted the Spaniards here.

“They thought this was the seven cities of gold, and they could see shining stuff in the rocks, but it’s all sandstone,” Torivio said.

Juan de Onate, Spanish governor of New Mexico, claimed the area for the king. The affable Acomas greeted him warmly in 1598, but eventually decided to resist.

When Onate’s nephew, Juan de Zaldivar, stopped here shortly afterward for provisions, he and 12 of his men were massacred. Zaldivar’s brother, Vicente, with a force of 70 men, quickly avenged their deaths.

Besides the 100 Acoma men slain, 60 young girls were taken to Mexico as slaves, and the young men and women who remained here also were kept in servitude. Each adult man had a foot severed.

In the succeeding century, the Indians sometimes took their frustrations out on priests, throwing a couple of clerics off the cliff behind the church. But the area has been peaceful since 1690.

Spanish is not a language the Acomas generally speak, although many have Spanish surnames. They speak Keresan, an ancient Pueblo tongue, and English.

Most Acomas today live in villages such as Acomita and McCartys in the 30 miles between Sky City and Interstate 40, about 50 miles west of Albuquerque.

“Our total population is about 4,000 people, but they live in other villages because our other villages have electricity and running water,” Torivio said. “That’s where we have all the modern homes. That’s where we have the TV, the shower and the microwave.”

In the old days, Acoma potters got their clay from the mountains and mixed in ground-up shards from old pots. They made their pots by hand and fired them in wood-fueled adobe kilns.

Though many potters today use ready-made ware fired in electric kilns, the designs are still authentic Acoma. The Acoma style is known for its fine-line designs, painted with yucca-stem brushes.

The yucca stem is chewed so that a few fibers form a primitive brush. The fewer the fibers, the finer the brush line. The thin, repetitive lines represent rain--until recently the Acomas’ only source of water, collected in natural rock cisterns around the mesa.

During the peak tourism periods of summer, 20 to 30 potters sell their wares here, including Sky City’s oldest resident, Concepcion Faustine, who is at least 80.

“I’ve been here since 1909,” she said in halting English. Mostly, she speaks Keresan. This day, she is selling Indian fry bread and small handmade pots painted with brown and black designs.

Potters still pray to Clay Woman before starting a pot.

Jackie Torivio, no relation to Fran Torivio, majored in business administration at the College of Santa Fe and now she and husband Mike run the family pottery-making business.

“He makes the pots for me, and I do the design,” she said.

But being a field chief, a clan representative chosen to live for a year at Sky City, has cut into Mike’s pottery-making, she said.

Jackie and Mike Torivio have a house in McCartys.

“I go down weekly to check my answering machine and get the mail and do laundry, all the things that we don’t have up here,” she said.