In the climax of the Fiesta de Santa Fe (held this year on the night of September 10), a solemn procession carries candles to the Cross of the Martyrs. The cross memorializes the Spanish victims of the 1680 revolt, when the region's Pueblo Indians rose up in violent protest against their mistreatment and burned the city.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, the National Geographic book The Great Southwest, 1980)