Acomita Cibola New Mexico United States

Spaniards led by Coronado make contact with the Acoma people, a Pueblo people who speak a Western Keresan language.

Since at least 1100, they have lived atop their sandstone mesa in three-storied homes made of flat stones plastered with adobe and supported with wooden beams.

Their irrigated fields of maize, beans, and squash are located below the mesa approximately twelve miles (nineteen kilometers) away at Acomita.

Acoman tradition speaks of ancestors pushing their way up from the worlds below to the present world.

The Acoma credit their mother-creator, Latiku, with establishing their religious and social order, organized into matrilineal clans with animal and plant names.

The male head of the Antelope clan is traditionally regarded as the father of the kachinas (spirits who bring rain for the crops); he is also the village religious and political head.