hy they did not move their city
down now that all danger of raid had passed, "You go up an' see!" Now I
understood. The water pools were but glints of silver on the yellow
sands. The flocks of sheep and goats looked like ants. The rampart rocks
that engirt the valley were yellow rims below; and across the tops of
the far mesas could be seen scrub forests and snowy peaks. Have
generations--generations on generations--of life amid such color had
anything to do with the handicrafts of these people--pottery, basketry,
weaving, becoming almost an art? Certainly, their work is the most
artistic handicraft done by Indians in America to-day.

Boys and girls, babies and dogs, rush to salute us as we come up; but my
little guide only takes tighter hold of my hand and "shoos" them off. We
pass a deep pool of waste water from the houses, lying in the rocks, and
on across the square to the twin-towered church in front of which is a
rudely fenced graveyard. The whole mesa is solid, hard rock; and to make
this graveyard for their people, the women have carried up on their
backs sand and soil enough to fill in a depression for a burying place.
The bones lie thick on the surface soil. The graveyard is now literally
a bank of human limestone.

[Illustration: At the water hole on the outskirts of Laguna, one of the
pueblos in New Mexico]

I have asked my little guide to take me to Marie Iteye, the only Acoma
who speaks English; and I meet her now stepping smartly across the
square, feet encased in boots at least four sizes smaller than mine, red
skirt to knee, fine stockings, red shawl and a profusion of turquoise
ornaments. We shake hands, and when I ask her where she learned to speak
such good English, she tells me of her seven years' life at Carlisle. It
is the one wish of her heart that she may some day go back: another
shattered delusion that Indians hate white schools.

She takes me across to the far edge of the Mesa, where her sisters, the
finest pottery makers of Acoma, are burning their fine gray jars above
sheep manure. For fifty cents I can buy here a huge fern jar with finest
gray-black decorations, which would cost me $5 to $10 down at the
railroad or $15 in the East; but there is the question of taking it out
in my camp kit; and I content myself with a little black-brown basin at
the same price, which Marie has used in her own house as meal jar for
ten years. As a memento to me, she writes her name in the bottom.

Her h