Stories

Blue Corn Maiden and the Coming of Winter

Creation of Summer and Winter

Emerging into the upper world

Fetishes

The oldest tradition of the Acoma and Laguna peoples indicates they lived on an island off the California Coast. Their homes were destroyed by high waves, earthquakes, and red-hot stones from the sky. They escaped and landed on a swampy part of the coast. From there they migrated inland to the north. Wherever they made a longer stay, they built a traditional White City, made of whitewashed mud and straw adobe brick, surrounded by white-washed adobe walls. Their fifth White City was built in southern Colorado, near northern New Mexico. The people are finally obliged to leave
there on account of cold, drought, and famine.

Laguna, Spanish for "lake," refers to a large pond near the pueblo. The word "pueblo" comes from the Spanish for "village." It refers both to a certain style of Southwest Indian architecture, characterized by multistory, apartmentlike buildings made of adobe, and to the people themselves. The Pueblos along the Rio Grande are known as eastern Pueblos; Zuni, Hopi, and sometimes Acoma and Laguna are known as western Pueblos. The Lagunas call their pueblo Kawaika, "lake."

Laguna and Acoma Pueblo Indians organized and instituted a general revolt against the Spanish in 1680. For years, the Spaniards had routinely tortured Indians for practicing traditional religion. They also forced the Indians to labor for them, sold Indians into slavery, and let their cattle overgraze Indian land, a situation that eventually led to drought, erosion, and famine. Pope of San Juan Pueblo and other Pueblo religious leaders planned the revolt, sending runners carrying cords of maguey fibers to mark the day of rebellion. On August 10, 1680, a virtually united stand on the part of the Pueblos drove the Spanish from the region. The Indians killed many Spaniards but refrained from mass slaughter,
allowing them to leave Santa Fe for El Paso.