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Updated: June 25, 2025
These words he accompanied with a knowing wink at the young man. It amused Okoya to see that his uncle came so decidedly post festum in the matter, but he at once rose and went out. In the court-yard it was still very damp, and hardly anybody was outside of the dwellings; but from the estufas there sounded merry talking, singing, and the beating of drums.
But apart from these innovations, there is little difference at Taos between 1912 and 1540. The whitewashed Mission church stands in the center of the pueblo; but the old estufas, or kivas, are still used for religious ceremony, and election of rulers, and maintenance of Indian law.
The tenets of the old religion are preserved by tradition, which the old men communicate to the young in the estufas. At church worship the Pueblo Indians pray to God, and also to Montezuma and the Sun; but at the dances they pray to Montezuma and the Sun only. During an actual or threatened calamity the dances are called by the cacique.
Though there is a new Mission church dating from the uprising in the forties, and an old Mission church dating almost from 1540, you can see from the roof dozens of estufas, where the men are practicing for their dances and masked theatricals.
This is shown by the amount of fallen material, which is larger than a wall would require, and from pits or depressions which plainly marked the outline of apartments. There are two circular estufas in the main building, one twenty-three feet and the other twenty-eight feet in diameter. A part of the wall of the first estufa is still standing.
The war captain has twelve subordinates under his command to police the pueblo, and supervise the public grounds, such as grazing lands, the cemetery, estufas, &c. The lieutenant war captain executes the orders of his principal, and officiates for him during his absence, or in case of his disability. The six fiscals are a kind of town police.
It may be suggested as probable that the Mound-Builders were organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes. If this were the case, the phratries would need separate places for holding their councils and for performing their religious observances. These ring embankments suggest the circular estufas found in connection with the New Mexican pueblos, two, four, and sometimes five at one pueblo.
They built kivas and estufas, under and above ground ceremonial chambers, where they regularly and decorously met to worship by dance, recitation of ancient songs, telling of divine leadings and interpositions on their behalf, smoking, singing, prayer, and the observance of other ritual.
Before the altars the swan-white mother-souls glisten and flutter. The estufas are without human occupants, their entrances alone are watched by old men or women outside to prevent the work of invocation and gratitude performed inside by symbolic advocates from being desecrated by rude or thoughtless intruders.
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