{"id":3583,"date":"2013-09-26T02:55:09","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T02:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3583"},"modified":"2013-09-26T02:55:09","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T02:55:09","slug":"acoma-indians-defy-modernity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3583","title":{"rendered":"Acoma Indians defy modernity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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ACOMA SKY CITY, N.M. — <\/strong>Once in a while you hear and see stories that defy the imagination.<\/p>\n

My wife and I ran into one of those stories this week in the high desert west and a bit south of Albuquerque, N.M. <\/p>\n

We saw it atop a mesa named Acoma Sky City. It’s a pueblo that houses a little more than 100 families. It’s part of an overall Indian community of some 5,000 residents. The folks who live there do so without any of the creature comforts that others enjoy. By that I mean they have no electricity or plumbing.<\/p>\n

They collect water in cisterns scattered throughout their neighborhood. They have to sift the silt from the water and then boil it — over open fires — before drinking it. The water comes from rainfall. <\/p>\n

We took a ride in a car driven by a good friend of ours, Ed Chamblin, who lives in Albuquerque with his lovely wife, Caroline. Their son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons live nearby. We’d spent the previous day with Ed and Caroline touring some of the sights around the city. Ed wanted to show us the pueblo to give us a glimpse of some serious local history and color.<\/p>\n

The Acoma claim to have been in the region since 1150. Many of the pueblo’s dwellings date back to the 17th century. The centerpiece of the community is the church, named San Esteban. Its construction was begun in 1649. A good bit of it is original.<\/p>\n

The folks who live there do so to honor many of their traditions. They resist mightily any effort to bring anything resembling modernity to their lives. A young guide who took us around the top of the mesa told us the Acoma don’t even want wind or solar energy to light their homes. Doing so, she said, likely would enable young people to spend “too much time on their computers” and they wouldn’t appreciate the history and culture of their people.<\/p>\n

The Spanish fought the Acoma. They killed many of them — including women and children — trying to persuade them to adapt to the conquerors’ culture and religion. The Acoma still practice their own religion as well as worshiping Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

Next to the church is a cemetery, which is virtually full. The only people allowed to be buried in that plot are tribal elders and U.S. military veterans. “Other unlucky ones” are buried in cemeteries in the valley, our guide told us.<\/p>\n

The Acoma have survived.<\/p>\n

Still, I felt for a moment as if I’d fallen off the face of Planet Earth. Could I live as they do? No. Then again, I doubt some of them actually could live as I do.<\/p>\n

God bless the Acoma.<\/p>\n\n

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ACOMA SKY CITY, N.M. — Once in a while you hear and see stories that defy the imagination. My wife and I ran into one of those stories this week in the high desert west and a bit south of Albuquerque, N.M. We saw it atop a mesa named Acoma Sky City. It’s a pueblo … Continue reading Acoma Indians defy modernity<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[138,241,3265],"class_list":["post-3583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acoma","tag-albuquerque","tag-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}