This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ... at one time without any doors, the people climbing ladders to the roofs, and then taking the ladder up after them, descending again to the interior through a hole in the roof. In later times, however, a few openings have been made below. This curious town is terraced so that half the occupations of life may be carried ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ... at one time without any doors, the people climbing ladders to the roofs, and then taking the ladder up after them, descending again to the interior through a hole in the roof. In later times, however, a few openings have been made below. This curious town is terraced so that half the occupations of life may be carried on on the roof. It is a kind of human ant hill. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this Pueblo idea of architecture was a fashion merely. Living time immemorial surrounded by enemies; Apaches, Navajoes, etc., all of them nomads and robbers by nature, the terraced house was a necessity. The Pueblos are farmers as totally unlike the North American Indian as possible. He can fight, and does upon occasion, or he would long since have become extinct. But he always had something eatable A Great-great-granddaughter of Castile. people work some arable and watered land not far away, and the children are usually out in the plain, herding sheep. The Pueblo of Acoma (c-o-mah) is about twelve miles from McCarty's station, twenty-seven miles west of Laguna. This curious place is a "City in the Sky." There is a wide canyon with precipitous sides only to be descended by zig-zag paths. Where this canyon widens out into a valley there is a A New Mexican Matron. mass of rock standing isolated, high and steep. There was until the last few years only one way of reaching the top of this; a perpendicular path with notches in it that would fit the toe of a moccason, and were worn to that exact shape. Up and down this path these Pueblos went daily for nobody knows how many years, and they do it yet. But they have now made a road on the opposite side, very steep and difficult, up which animals that are accustomed to it can go, one at a time. The...
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