Sky City

Sky City: Myth, Truth, or Allegory

There is a place found in the desert of New Mexico called Sky City.  This spiritual place is found high atop a bluff and is still inhabited by Native American Indians.  Sky City is the central theme in Willa Cather’s The Enchanted Bluff short story written in 1909 for Harper’s Magazine.  One of the central characters named Tip tells a story about Sky City and its native habitants.  Is the story told in The Enchanted Bluff actually based on realistic facts, just made up myths, is it or is an allegory to the boys’ lives?

Sky city, or Acoma pueblo, is located 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Acoma is the oldest inhabited settlement in the United States.  It is believed that the first Native Americans that settled there were from the 12^th century.  They chose to settle on top of a bluff that extends upward 357 feet in the desert of New Mexico.  This location made it possible to see enemies approaching from all directions. The natives would use the river below for farming and drinking water for the tribe.  It is said that the only way to the top of the bluff in early times was the use of a hand cut staircase which the hunters would climb to return home.

In the story The Enchanted Bluff one of the characters is recalling a camping trip that himself and 5 other boys were taking at the end of summer.  The river swelled up and made a moat around a higher patch of ground thus creating an island get away.  The narrator’s good friend was named Tip, the son of a grocery store owner.  He worked hard before and after school in the store.  Tip started telling a group of his friends a story his Uncle Bill had told him about an amazing bluff.  The other boys who hung on his every word were named Percy, Fritz,Otto, and Arthur.  The bluff, Tip told his friends, was only accessed by a wooden stepped, rope ladder that overhung from the top.  It is not known if this ladder is actually a true and accurate item used in early times but the hand cut staircase is certainly a fact.  Another part of the story that doesn’t quite match the historical records is the size of the bluff.  Tip told his friends an exaggeration of the real fact. “There’s a big red rock there that goes right up out of the sand for about 900 feet.”  In actuality the cliff is almost 2/3 shorter than Tips version.

          A man named Don Juan Onate, who was a Spanish conquistador, invaded the pueblo in 1598.  The tribes men retaliated and a war began.  It is said that the Spaniards were larger and more equipped for battle then the Indians.  The Spaniards had brought a cannon (a weapon the natives had never before encountered) and had no defense prepared. The power of the cannon and range of the conquistadors muskets quickly dwindled the native population to only a few hundred people.  The remaining Indians were sold as slaves or taken to be reformed to Catholicism.

     One tale Tip recalled in the story was about a violent storm that came when the Indians were off hunting.  When they came back the only access to the bluffs top, the staircase, was severely damaged.  The women and children watched from atop the cliff as their tribal men were killed by a traveling war party that came along shortly after the damage to the staircase.  The people left in the village could not get down where there was food and water.  Tip said “they starved to death up there, and when the war party came back on their way north, they could hear the children crying from the edge of the bluff where they had crawled out, but they didn’t see a sign of a grown Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since.”

               In one tribal story that has been handed down through the generations is of a large storm.  This particular storm stranded elderly women tending the crops (not hunters like Tip had been told) and the survivors on the top of the cliff starved or jumped to their death.  The tribe relocated to another spot on the mesa.  In 1897 a professor named William Libbey is said to have looked for habitation evidence.  He said he found no such evidence.  Shortly after a man named Frederick Webb Hodge made another exploration and did find arrowheads, pottery shards and other native inhabitants’ possessions.  Thus, the great storm talked about in tribal folklore, was proven true.

     The Enchanted Bluff was written in 1909 so if the stories setting is in the same time period for the boys, the cliff has been habituated since.  In 1629 a mission church was built and a road was made to the top of the bluff.  It seems that Tip’s information was somewhat inaccurate when he said that no one had been up there since.  So far the story The Enchanted Bluff is shown to have been based on true facts that are exaggerated which are typical of high school boys.

     I would like to see a side of the story which may be an allegory to the boys’ lives.  An allegory is one which an item symbolizes a deeper spiritual meaning.  In the story The Enchanted Bluff there seemed many parallels in symbols and hidden meanings.  A couple of analogies could be made in just a few of the paragraphs.

     At the beginning of The Enchanted Bluff Cather brilliantly describes the setting of the story.  She describes the lush landscape and how the area became an island for a short period of time “every spring the swollen stream undermined a bluff to the east, or bit out a few acres of corn field to the west and whirled the soil away to deposit it in spumy mud banks somewhere else…. Sometimes these were banked so firmly that the fury of the next freshet failed to unseat them; the little willow seedlings emerged triumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up into summer growth, and with their mesh of roots bound together in moist sand beneath them against the battering of another April.”

     This brief passage is filled with symbolism.  The first words that have a parallel to the young boys’ lives is the word “bluff” itself.  She talks how the island is made by rushing waters and how the water swells under the bluff.  This could easily symbolize the rising demands of the boys to become men.  They seem to be holding on to their youth despite the raging responsibilities that are rising as they finish high school.  The struggle to climb the sides of the bluff seems to have the connotation of pushing the boys to become men.

     Another definition of “bluff” is to lie or mislead someone.  I think Tip may have been bluffing when he said he was going to go and see this magical place.  He knew that they were in Nebraska and to make it all the way to New Mexico would be difficult.  Sometimes it is easier to imagine a place, a magical place, and keep it close in mind than to actually go and see it.  I know when I was young and was going to see the Grand Canyon. I had an idea set in my mind that it was going to be so big that I could not see the bottom.  I was disappointed when, in fact, I could see the bottom.  I believe Tip would be disappointed upon learning his imagined enchanted bluff 900 feet in the air was actually a meager 400 foot cliff instead.  Maybe he never went to see it purposely.

      I also found a parallel when Cather talked about the way the seedlings were coming up each year.  She describes the little trees emerging triumphantly and how they have a growth spurt in the summer months.  It seems to me that the little seedlings again represent the young boys and their growth that is apparent each summer.  Maybe when the boys first met, they talked about bikes or candies.  It seems like the talk they shared this particular summer was one that projected them in the future.  They seem to have shot up in maturity as they discussed distant travel and Indian folklore.

     Another allegory is the roots that seemed to bunch together.  The boys talked as if this was a typical camping trip each year.  They shared personal information and items which in turn “bound” them together.  Any gardener can tell you that the roots are the life of the plant and to try to separate their massive tangle would do damage to the plant.  It seems the boys’ friendship is the structural base for their lives.  They always have the memories they shared to carry them through their difficult times.  They have climbed the sides of the bluff together and even if they were to part ways forever they will have had their roots bound together from their summertime camping trips.

     I have thought whether the story is made up, based on factual evidence or is just an allegory to a deeper story and have come up with one conclusion.  I see the story as a mixture of all three components.  The story is actually based on facts as there is a place in Acoma, New Mexico that houses a huge bluff in which Native Americans reside.  The truth is also exaggerated somewhat as Tip tells a different version of the great storm that happened or the actual size of the bluff.  I think boys generally try and exaggerate to enhance any story being told.

     I also believe Cather was brilliant enough to add in words to prepare us for the story.  These words guided us through each page with repetition and symbology.  How wonderful is it to see her play on words.  She could have been talking about the boys camping in the forest or a cave.  Instead she gives us the parallel of a bluff.  An object that is strong and somewhat unobtainable.  The boys are definitely at a point in their life where they know change is coming and that the struggle is an inevitable part of the equation.  I think Cather purposely wrote the story in a style that makes the reader wonder what the exact meaning is.