black christmas

COMA, N.M. - Christmas Eve. Thousands of luminarias - candles in paper bags weighted with sand - line the road leading to the Acoma mesa.

The air is cool and so clear that stars fill the sky in the millions and seem to touch the earth. It's hard to tell where the luminarias stop and the stars begin. Ghostly shapes of mountains and dark mountain crags are silhouetted against the Milky Way, which is like a white highway across the sky.

I am among those standing on a cliff overlooking the Acoma valley, about 45 miles west of Albuquerque. A long time ago, a scout came to this cliff and called "Haak'u!" He heard an echo telling him that this was the appointed place where his people should settle. "Haak'u" in Keresan, the Acoma language, means "a place prepared."

This may have happened a thousand years ago - or two thousand years ago. The Acoma, one of 19 pueblo tribes in New Mexico, say that their mesa-top village is the longest continually occupied settlement in the United States.

This night, there are a hundred of us lucky enough to be on our way to the top of the mesa. Starting at the Sky City Casino Hotel, some 18 miles away, we arrive at the Acoma Cultural Center at the foot of the 367-foot-high mesa in buses and then transfer to mini-vans for the trip to the top. A woman from Santa Fe sitting across from me says that she wanted to do something that would get back to the true spirit of Christmas and had found this.

We don't know exactly

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what to expect.
The old Acoma settlement has neither electricity nor running water. On top of the mesa, with a cold wind blowing, people are standing in darkness, waiting to go to the plaza in front of the church of San Esteban del Rey, built between 1629 and 1641 under the direction of Friar Juan Ramirez. The church, with its twin bell towers, looms in the darkness against the brilliant background of stars.

We silently make our way to the front, where luminarias burn along the wall and on the steps.

On the other side of the small plaza is a cemetery with white wooden crosses tipped in black. It is about 200 feet square and 40 feet deep. Hundreds of years ago, Acoma women carried baskets of earth for the cemetery from the valley below. Until the 1950s, there was no road - only a steep path chiseled in the rocks. The cemetery took 40 years to build. Around it is an adobe wall topped with faces fashioned from mud - sentinels guarding the dead. It is a very sacred place. Now the only people who are buried here are veterans and those who have lived on the mesa all their lives.

Midnight looms

Tonight, candles burn in front of the crosses and one is decked out in Christmas lights. There are small offerings of food.

At exactly midnight, the ancient bells of the church begin to peal and the old wooden doors creak open. Somewhere inside, men are singing. Later, I learn they are Acoma holy men sitting in the church balcony, singing and praying.

The crowd files into the church, which has a few benches around the edge of the room, but no seats in the middle. The only light is from candles placed along the sides and the candles that people hold.

Some have baskets with offerings - food, flowers, a few precious items such as turquoise stones, small, white, wooden crosses with black tips like those in the cemetery, and candles. They carry them toward the altar, where they leave them.

In front of the altar is an arch decked with pine boughs, with deer heads affixed to either side.

Ninety feet above our heads, the ceiling of the adobe structure is dimly visible in the candlelight. Its 46 beams of ponderosa pine came from Mount Taylor, about 30 miles away. The Spanish padres forced the Acoma men to transport the beams without touching the ground. If one did touch, it had to be abandoned and the men forced to start the trip again.

The procession surges forward, with candles lighting solemn faces. I turn to see that a bonfire has been lit on the plaza, opposite the open church door.

Then I hear drumming and singing. I push my way back through the crowd to see dancers enter the church - a man and a boy with buffalo headdresses and women with black fringe covering their eyes and bells on their hands. The church vibrates to the drummers and the rhythmic stamping of their feet.

This group of dancers is followed by many others. A small boy with a spiky headdress holding a bow and arrows is accompanied by four drummers. I wonder if the young hunter is also a representation of the Christ child.

The dancing goes on for hours. As each group finishes in the church, the dancers circle the bonfire in the plaza, where the sparks leap up toward the stars. In the final dance, two men with antlers strapped to their heads and pine boughs covering their faces mimic the gait of deer, leaning on sticks as they dance.

It's 2 a.m. Time to go back down to the valley.

It's now Christmas. We have welcomed the child.

Christmas Day dawns clear and cold. Christmas is a private day on the mesa with more dancing in the church, gift exchanges and visits from family and friends.

Only about 30 people live on the mesa full time. Most Acoma live in the nearby communities of McCartys, Acomita, Anzac and Sky Line, but families maintain a home on the mesa that is passed on from generation to generation, always to the youngest daughter.

Feast day celebrations

On feast days everyone returns. Tables are laden with food, including bread baked in a "horno" - a clay oven fired with wood - and posole, a mutton and hominy stew flavored with chiles and garlic. People go from house to house and there is always room for one more person around the table.

The next day, the public is again welcome to share in the festivities. In the church, I watch dancers doing a traditional Comanche dance as Santa Claus gives out presents and two men stand guard over Baby Jesus on the altar. There are toys and candy canes for the children and oranges for the elders. Everyone gets a present, including Baby Jesus.

That day, Dale Vallo Sanchez gives me a tour of the mesa. She is a member of the Eagle clan, one of 13 clans in the Acoma tribe, and as the youngest girl in her generation, inherited the family house. She points it out to me and says that it is almost 800 years old.

"We can give our houses away, but we can't rent or sell them," she says. "They weren't ours to start with. They belong to Mother Nature."

We go into the church and Dale approaches the altar, takes a pinch of cornmeal and sprinkles it as she prays.

"We always use cornmeal when we pray," she explains. "I guess it would be like having rosaries in our hands and saying hello to Baby Jesus and telling Baby Jesus to have a good day."

I wonder how the Acoma people can accept Catholicism since the Spaniards, when they conquered the Acoma in the 17th century, cut off one foot of all males over 25 years old, and consigned them and all women and children to servitude.

Dale says that she once asked her grandfather, a cacique (chief) of the tribe and a sheepherder, the same thing. "Whatever happened was many years ago," he said. "You weren't here. The first thing you have to learn to be a good person is how to forgive. Once you learn how to forgive, then you can have a better life.

"Ninety-seven percent of us are Catholics," Dale adds. "One hundred percent of us still celebrate our native religion."

A public pueblo

Acoma is one of two New Mexican pueblos (the other is Taos) that welcomes visitors. In 2006, the Acoma opened a stunning new Cultural Center at the foot of the mesa. It incorporates architectural elements derived from the historical route of the Acoma people, beginning in Mesa Verde, Colo., and then going to Chaco Canyon and then to Acoma.

Tours of the mesa are offered daily (except for 10 days in the year when Acoma is closed to the public). Acoma potters set up tables outside their homes so visitors can buy directly some of the wares for which the pueblo is justly famous.

Feast days, which occur throughout the year, are particularly joyful, especially the Feast of San Esteban on Sept. 2. As part of the celebration, tribal members go up on the roofs of their houses and throw gifts to the crowd below.

"There's no other Acoma in this state, in this country, in this world," says Marvis J. Aragon Jr., CEO of Acoma Business Enterprises, which include the Sky City Casino Hotel and other non-gaming businesses. "We believe that it's special. We believe that it finds its place in the balance of the world.

"Mother Nature has an awesome energy, as does the human race - probably enough to destroy each other. Grandma always encouraged, 'take care of the people, the animals and the land and they'll take care of you.'

"At Acoma, we were always encouraged to acknowledge the greater world around us and that there are many peoples of different colors and cultures that are going about their day as we are, and to hope and pray - we are a praying people - that they find balance in their lives."