The youth of today

We (the lady Diane and i) have a young lady come in once a week to help The Lady Diane with some house-cleaning chores, she is from the Acoma (Ack-oma) pueblo.

Known as Sky City, Acoma Pueblo was strategically built on top of a 357-foot sandstone mesa many hundreds of years ago for effective defense against raiders. Spanish conquerors learned of this defensive stronghold when they entered New Mexico in the 1500s. Acomans claim that their 70-acre village is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the U.S.
Acoma was nearly destroyed when Gov. Juan de Oñate and 70 of his men retaliated for the killing of 13 Spanish soldiers by the Acomas when they tried to take grain from the pueblo storehouses in 1598. The, then Spanish govenor, housed in Santa Fe ordered that every male have one foot and one hand chopped off for resisting slavery and the women were sent to Mexico City as slaves and sexual property of the Conquistadors. As a restitution of peace, the San Estéban del Rey Mission was built in 1629 and completed in 1640 under the guidance of Friar Juan Ramírez. Both the mission and the pueblo have been designated as Registered National Historical Landmarks.

Today, fewer than 50 Acomans live in Sky City year-round and the remaining residents live in nearby villages. Only on feast days do all the Acomans gather on the mesatop. Census 2000 figures indicate a total of 2,802 Acoma villagers.
This young lady, a student at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, a National Indian Community College and Land Grant Institution serving American Indian and Alaskan Native students.

This young lady we call Maria (we can't pronouce or spell her actual name) has a baby brother we call "William" aged 15; we asked him if he was interested in doing some work around our house and he gladly agreed so yesterday he showed up with his sister to do whatever we needed done. I had him help with cleaning out the garage and when I returned to the back yard/patio he, on his own initive, found a trash bag and went around the front yard picking of the cigarette butts and other trash the workman had left in the yard when they were working here last week. Maria's grand-mother (being the youngest daughter) still resides at the Acoma pueblo.