Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1916 — FOUNDED VILLAGE ON ROCK [ARTICLE]

FOUNDED VILLAGE ON ROCK

Acoma Indians Have Probably the Strangest Settlement in the United States. Perched on the top of a great rock In the neighborhood of 300 feet high stands Acoma, in some respects the strangest village In this country. Acoma is an Indian settlement of some 600 people, and means “ThePebJple of the Rock.” Though the founding of the village is lost in the mist of antiquity, it is supposed the Acoma Indians chose this site as a measure of safety against the warlike Apaches and Navajos of their day. Their selection was niade with admirable judgment, for the walls of the rock are almost perpendicular. The earliest Spanish explorers found the tribe settled securely in their natural fortalice. Acoma has remained delightfully un« touched by the influences of Spanish and American civilization. These Indians'“are cattle, which are pastured on the grazing lands of the valley, where summer villages are located, and where the minimum of effort is required to care for the flocks and herds. Although less

than twenty miles from a railroad, the village is comparatively unknown. The natives do not care for curious visitors. They do not wish to be stared at and photographed. Nevertheless, the irrepressible tourist with his camera occasionally scales the steeps that baffled the Navalo. Nowadays, it is no longer practicable to suppress him' with a tomahawk, so the Acoma are! philosophically making the best of a bad job by collecting two dollars a day for a camera license. The gray adobe village peers from its eyrie over miles of gray plain, dancing in the glare of a burning sun, broken only by the sheer outlines of buttes and mesas.

New Method of Soldering. An electric soldering iron of radically new design has recently made its appearance in the United States. Instead of employing the usual form of electric heating unit to heat the soldering iron, two carbon or carborundum high-resistance points are mounted a fraction of an inch apart, and so placed that the article to be soldered is bridged across them. The two points become incandescent, and apply their heat at the spot desired. Whereas it to heat the usual form of electric iron, the new soldering device is instantly ready for use. It consumes current only during actual use, and eliminates all losses of heat through conduction and radiation incidental to the usual irons, in which a large mass of metal must be heated. s