Sky City is the oldest part of Acoma Pueblo, and is today the oldest continuously inhabited village in North America. The Acoma Pueblo people date it to the middle of the 1100’s CE. Besides its antiquity, Sky City has the distinction of being situated on a small mesa on top of a 365-foot (106 meter) cliff in the lonely high deserts of central New Mexico.
The past is ever-present in Sky City: the Catholic Church you see here with straw-and-adobe walls was built in 1641, about 42 years after the Spanish had attacked, massacred and enslaved most of the population. Amazingly, the Acoma Pueblos here survived, and managed to preserve their spiritual customs in spite of the brutal forced Christianization. (Our tour guide told us about how their people were made to carry logs from Mount Taylor 40 miles away to build the church, and the workers were executed if they allowed any of the beams to touch the ground.)
You can see the kivas where sacred ceremonies have been held for generations. The ladders point to the north from the direction the Acoma believe their ancestors came. Most water and food had to be carried up to the mesa. Today, there aren’t many full-time inhabitants, but the Acoma Pueblo people from the area still gather for ceremonies. (In fact, it is a no-fly zone at those times!)
