When I was a kid it was very easy to get the impression from popular culture AND formal schooling, that the native people of North America were a bunch of nomads, living in teepees, wandering from place to place and not accomplishing much in the way of building a lasting "civilization."
Then in high school I did a paper on the Aztecs. And I thought, how come the native people up here didn't build huge cities and roads with governments and order and permanence and such?
Well, it turns out they did. Some of them hundreds of years before the Aztecs. Like these folks here, who lived over a couple of centuries in a massive 850-room settlement atop Morro Rock.
Or these ones here, who built a civilization atop a 367-foot mesa starting around 1100 AD. Acoma Pueblo (or "Sky City") is the oldest continuously occupied habitation in the United States.
Centuries before the conquistadors arrived they'd established trading networks all the way out to the sea and down to Central America.
Man, the stories I heard today. Heartbreaking, beautiful, tragic. How they suffered under Spanish rule, how they successfully rebelled in 1680 and gained 12 years of independence. The brutal reprisals in the re-conquest. And yet, once they were finally free, many kept their ties to Catholicism, creating an interesting hybrid of native and Western spirituality. For them it's all simply a path to finding meaning and connection.
The pueblos are fascinating. No pictures without a permit. No pictures in the church or cemetery. No video. No notetaking even. This is beautiful, beautiful country. Before today I had Utah as the prettiest state (at least in the lower 48). New Mexico's giving the Beehive State a run for its money.
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