Hillary Clinton Tours Ancient Indian Village

Hillary Rodham Clinton, decked out in a cowboy hat and turquoise, toured an ancient Indian village atop a sandstone mesa Friday to promote the preservation of America’s past, including a 360-year-old mission church.

“After all, at the time of the first millennium, you were the only Americans here,” Mrs. Clinton said, drawing enthusiastic applause from a crowd of 800 people at the Acoma Pueblo. “And when we talk about saving America’s treasures, we have to begin by saving the first Americans’ treasures.”

Mrs. Clinton visited Acoma, Santa Fe and Albuquerque on Friday on a tour of the Southwest. She visited Arizona on Wednesday and then headed later in the day to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado for a Saturday tour of Cliff Palace.

At Sky City, the Acomas’ ancient village atop a 367-foot mesa, she toured the water-damaged San Esteban del Rey, a massive adobe Roman Catholic mission built in the 17th century. She collected handmade pottery from more than a dozen Acoma artists and watched two traditional dances.

A 93-year-old potter, Concepcion Faustine, is among 30 people who live year-round atop the mesa, which has no electricity and only three cisterns to collect water. Most residents haul water from a pool 14 miles away.

Mrs. Clinton and the tiny, bent-over woman embraced, and the potter, tears in her eyes, kissed Mrs. Clinton on the cheek.

“No other first lady or president has ever come to our sacred place,” former pueblo Gov. Ron Shutiva said.

Mrs. Clinton was in the Southwest to promote the Save America’s Treasures program, a public-private partnership between the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the White House Millennium Council.

It has raised more than $60 million, including $30 million in federal funds, to protect threatened cultural treasures, including documents, maps, art, journals and historic structures.