San Esteban del Rey, Acoma

1641

Wittick, Ben (photographer; 1845-1903)

Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA

The original church of San Esteban del Rey, dates from 1641. The Pueblo residents of Acoma built San Esteban del Rey of adobe, stone, and wood, all common materials of the region. This mission church stands upon a sandstone mesa, in one of the oldest communities in North America. This photograph of ca. 1880-1890 has a legend in English written on it, "Old Church at Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico,” so was perhaps intended for a non-local public.

Ben Wittick, the photographer of this scene, traveled the southwestern United States in the late 19th century, taking pictures of indigenous communities and people. As was typical of mission churches in Pueblo communities, San Esteban del Rey has two bell towers flanking the main doorway. The nave of the church extends 150 feet in length, which is large for adobe and wood churches in New Mexico. It sits upon a mesa that rises 350 feet above the valley floor. In the 17th century, San Esteban del Rey and many adjacent houses overlooked fields down below. From this angle, it is easy to see the campo santo, or burial ground, that extends in front of the church’s main entry to the buttressing wall. The sand and dirt needed to create it was carried up from the valley floor.

The mission church of Acoma was built by local residents, under the guidance of Juan Ramírez, a Franciscan friar. The use of adobe here, as in other Pueblo communities like Acoma, drew upon local building knowledge, although the church form was introduced by Spanish friars. While the community of worshippers in Acoma was not the largest of the Pueblos, compared to other mission churches in New Mexico, San Esteban del Rey is exceptional for its scale. It measures 45 meters in length and 10 meters in width, with walls over 3 meters thick in places. Ben Wittick worked in the southwest of the United States for 15 years (1878-1903), as official photographer for the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad and as a studio photographer. He became known for his photographs of southwestern landscapes and studio portraits of Pueblo, Navajo and Apache people. This image was likely taken when Wittick and his son were traveling through Arizona and New Mexico in the early 1880s.

The primary materials for the church are stone, adobe and wood. The exterior was originally covered with lime-based plaster. In addition to providing the labor for building, local people transported materials to the mesa: sand and adobe came from the valley floor, wood timbers from mountains about 30 miles away. The photograph was printed from a 5 inch by 8 inch (12.7 cm by 20.3 cm) glass negative. In 1883, when in Acoma, the photographer Ben Wittick made both stereoscopic views and single lens photographs of the community and its church, such as this one.

San Esteban del Rey dates from 1629-1641, the same period as many mission churches in Pueblo communities. Spanish accounts of this era note that San Esteban del Rey was particularly well furnished, with both ritual objects and an organ. Unlike most Pueblo churches, parts of San Esteban del Rey may have survived the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Rebuilding and renovation was undertaken after the Revolt in the 18th century and again in the 20th. The community of Acoma and its church were both placed on the register of National Historic Landmarks in the United States, as was the New Mexico church of San José de Gracia, also in Vistas. This photograph is one of several hundred images taken by Ben Wittick and now housed in the Palace of Governor archives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Late in the 16th century, Acoma suffered terribly at the hands Spanish soldiers during a horrific massacre, and many of its surviving residents suffered physical abuse and enslavement. Through the 17th –late 19th centuries, the community remained largely hostile to Spanish and later Anglo-American interactions. Yet this 17th century building required an enormous investment of indigenous labor, suggesting the people of Acoma were well acquainted with resources in the region and options for trade and transport. Today, San Esteban del Rey sits within the Acoma reservation, and it can be visited as a tourist site. When Wittick took this image, railroad tracks, carrying tourists to the Southwestern United States, passed close to the mesa, along the valley floor where some residents of Acoma had houses.

Ben Wittick, Reproduced courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), #15586

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Broder, Patricia Janis, 1990. Shadows on Glass: the Indian World of Ben Wittick. Savage, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

McHenry, Paul, 1990. “Rebuilding Acoma Sky City.” APT Bulletin 22 (3): 55-64.

Treib, Marc. 1993. Sanctuaries of Spanish New Mexico. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Wingert-Playdon, Kate. 2012. John Gaw Meem at Acoma: The Restoration of San Esteban del Rey Mission. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.