from the outside. In
time of danger the ladders are drawn up so that the walls cannot be
easily scaled. There are a number of groups of the Pueblo Indians,
but the Zuni and Moki are perhaps as interesting as any of them.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--GRINDING GRAIN, LAGUNA, NEW MEXICO]

Wonderful indeed are some of the pueblo villages which were still
occupied at the time of the coming of the Spanish, more than three
centuries and a half ago. As in the pueblos now occupied, there
were no separate family houses. The people of an entire pueblo
lived in one great building of many rooms. Some of the pueblos
were semi-circular, with a vertical wall upon the outside, while
upon the inside the successive stories formed a series of huge
steps similar to the tiers of seats in an ancient amphitheatre.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--THE ENCHANTED MESA

The summit was once the site of an Indian pueblo]

In the pueblo of Pecos were the largest buildings of this kind ever
discovered. One had three hundred and seventeen rooms, and another
five hundred and eighty-five. Taos is another of the large pueblos,
and is especially interesting because it is still inhabited. This
great building has from three to six stories with several hundred
rooms. In the foreground of the photograph (Fig. 76) appears one of
the ovens in which the baking is done. In some of these pueblos
the women still grind their corn by hand in stone _matates_, just
as their ancestors did for many hundreds and perhaps thousands
of years.

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--POTTERY OF THE ACOMA INDIANS, NEW MEXICO]

In northwestern New Mexico there is a remarkable flat-topped rock
known as the Enchanted Mesa, which rises with precipitous walls to
a height of four hundred feet above the valley in which it stands.
It was long believed that human beings had never been upon this rock,
although there were traditions to the effect that a village once
existed upon its summit. According to the tradition, the breaking
away of a great mass of rock left the summit inaccessible ever
afterward. The cliffs were scaled recently by the aid of ropes,
and evidences were found in the shape of pottery fragments, to
show that the Indians had once inhabited the mesa. Two or three
miles away, across the valley, is the large village of Acoma, where
a great deal of pottery is made for sale.

The pottery of the Pueblo Indians is very attractive, and their
religious festivals and peculiar dances draw many vi