ACOMA, i-kema, N. Mex. (the old Span ish Acufia or Acuco), in Valencia County, 60 miles southwest of Albuquerque and 15 miles southwest of Lagun. It is an Indian pueblo of 830 people, famed especially for its original site, the "Enchanted Mesa,x' a rock table 430 feet high, accessible now only by scaling, and of old (traditionally) by spiral stairs cut in the stone, in a deep cleft of the upper portion and along a huge detached fragment leaning against it from the bottom, itself reached by a tall tree or a ladder, furnishing a secure fortress against enemies. The Indian tradition is that a long storm washed the loose earth away from the foot of the lower rock while all the tribe except two women were away in the fields, and it fell over into the plain, leaving the upper portion inaccessible; the women perished, but the re mainder of the tribe built a new place on the present site, which is the same as when the Spaniards found it. The essence of the tradi
tion is verified by the finding of an old trail, and of shards, etc., in the talus high around the base. Acoma was visited in 1540 by Alvarado, of Coronado's command, and in 1582 by Es pejo, who estimated the population at about 5,000. The Indians under Zutucapan stubbornly resisted the Spaniards, and in 1599 defeated a band of them. from Onate's force; later in the same year Zaldivar captured Acoma 'and slew five-sixths of the inhabitants. A Spanish mis sion was afterward set up for the small rem nant. Consult H. H. Bancroft's and New Mexico' (San Francisco 1889) • F. W. Hodge, The Enchanted Mesa,' (in National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 8, Washington 1897).