The Keres village of Acoma is the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the United States. Perched on the top of a mesa some three hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding valley, accessible by difficult trails partly cut in the solid rock of its precipices, it is no less picturesquely placed than Walpi.  

Under the name Acus it was first mentioned by Friar Marcos de Niza, discoverer of the Zuñi towns.  He did not visit the place, but in the following year, 1540, Coronado sent one of his officers from Cibola to explore the country eastward…   

Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian, Text XVI, 169-170, 1926.

A Feast Day at Acoma, 1904

Franciscan missionaries early in the seventeenth century introduced certain public Christian rites among the Pueblos, which ever since have been performed, with an intermingling of native ceremonial practices, especially on the days of the saints of whose protection the villages were respectively assigned.  The day of San Estevan, patron saint of Acoma, is September second.

Print caption by Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian, Portfolio XVI, Plate no. 565, 1926.