Not one of these descriptions corresponds with the Casa Grande of Arizona, and still less do they fit the Casas Grandes in Chihuahua. The latter is even quite out of the question. The former is situated a mile and a half south of the bank of the Gila, in a wide waterless plain of dazzling grayish-white sand and marl. The plain stretches out of sight in the south, but the horizon is bounded in the distant west by the low range of the Maricopa hills, while in the east the Sierra Tortilla is visible in the distance. On the north bank of the Gila the foot-hills of the Superstition Mountains rise precipitously, and back of them that range unfolds itself like a broken wall, overlooked by the Sierra Masásar in the northwest, while in the northeast the Sierra Pinal lifts itself up, the only range crowned with fir-trees. All the near mountains are marked by an awful wildness, frightful steepness, and terrible cliffs and gorges, while the vegetation is sparse and exclusively thorny. There are found the beautiful red-flowered ocotilla (Fouquiera splendens), the creosote-plant (Larrea gigantea), and quantities of mezcal-agaves. Every plant pricks and the leaves are gray. A lowly vegetation grows on the white sand flats and gravel hills and clings to the bare rocks. Only when showers fall the ravines are filled in a short time with wild torrents, which overflow and irrigate the plain; for while in June, July, and August the clouds discharge daily upon the mountains, a whole year has often passed at Casa Grande, sometimes eighteen months, without its raining. The thermometer rises every day in summer to above 100° in the shade, and snow-falls are almost unknown. It is a hot, arid region, covered with desert plants, to which the coarser forms of the lower animal life, the disgusting bird-spider (Mygale heintzii), the great millipede (Scolopendra heros), the scorpion (Scorpio boreus and Telyphonus excubitor), the rattlesnake (Caudisono molossus), and the large warty lizard, appropriately called the Gila monster (Heloderma horridum), are eminently adapted. The mountain sheep (Ovis montana) formerly roamed in the mountains. The region has for many centuries been inhabited exclusively by the Pima Indians, who have always been a more or less settled, agricultural people, like the Pueblos of New Mexico, living in villages composed of round huts, and acquainted with the art of irrigation by canals.
I have already mentioned that the Pimas claimed to be descendants of the inhabitants and builders of the Casa Grande. Casteñeda says that the “red house” was destroyed by the people who lived there at the time of his arrival, and describes them as completely savage.
The ruin of Casa Grande is composed of a whitish-gray calcareous marl, is three stories high, and has no floor or roof. The roof was probably destroyed by fire, kindled by the Apaches. It is not certain but is possible that the building was once covered on the outside with a red plaster, as it still is on the inside, so as to make it look from without like a red house; and in this possibility consists the only analogy that can be discovered between Casa Grande and Chichiltic-calli. In all other points there is not the slightest resemblance.
It is useless to look for the “red house” farther west, or between Florence and Fort Yuma. The ruins cease at Gila Bena, and the country beyond is almost a clear desert. East of Florence, between Riverside and San Carlos, the mountains are too wild and ragged. Within New Mexico there is no place affording any ground for identification with it in the latitude corresponding with the head of the Gulf of California. Chichiltic-calli, therefore, was situated in the southeastern corner of Arizona, and within a quadrangle which is bounded on the east by New Mexico, on the west by the Rio San Pedro, on the south by Sonora, and on the north by the Gila River. As the ruin does not stand upon any stream, it is impossible to fix the exact place; yet I was disposed at first to look for it in the vicinity of the new Fort Grant, or south of Mount Graham, where the fir woods really begin. The height above the sea of this station, where there are considerable ruins, is 4753 feet, while the mountains rise to 10,516 feet, and snow-storms are not only regular every winter, but considerable. If this site should not be found to answer, then the ruins at Eagle Creek, west of Clifton, might be considered. But they lie north of the Rio Gila, and that stream has a considerable breadth and a notable supply of water even in summer. The fact that the mountains north of the banks of the Gila for a short day’s journey toward Mount Turnbull, Mount Graham, the Sierra Bonìta, and the Peloncillo, are still bare or covered with thorny plants, as at Casa Grande, is against seeking for Chichiltic-calli at Fort Grant. There are also more substantial reasons as I shall proceed to show, for not looking for it on Eagle Creek.
The march of the troops from Compostella to Culiacan was not free from hindrances. The horses were too highly fed for hard work, and the soldiers did not know how to arrange the loads upon them. Much of the baggage was therefore lost, and the provisions began to fail at Chiametla. The Indians were hostile, and Maestro de Campo Samaniego lost his life in a skirmish with them. On Easter Monday, 1540, the little army arrived at Culiacan, where it was received with much enthusiasm and military pomp. Hermandarias de Saavedra was appointed to the place of the slain officer.
Discontent had already broken out among the men in Chiametla. Diaz had met them there on his return, and although his reports were kept secret, stories of misfortune became current, and the storm broke out against Fray Marcos, who was now accused of having purposely exaggerated. We do not know what the Franciscan had said, but what he wrote is fully confirmed by the report of Diaz. The morose Casteñeda says that the priest and Coronado especially had told the men stories about mountains of gold. We have nothing in writing on the subject except Casteñeda’s own testimony. It is curious that while he raised such complaints, he at the same time quarrelled with Coronado because he would not stay in New Mexico.
After Coronado had tarried two weeks in Culiacan, he started somewhat hurriedly with fifty horsemen to hasten forward to Cibola in advance of the main body. Ten foot-soldiers and the priests went with him. Cristobal de Oñate remained as representative of the Governor in Sinaloa, and Tristan de Arellano was given the chief command over the main body, with instructions to follow on in fourteen days. The departure of Coronado probably took place at the end of April. The campaign was thus divided into three parts: the advance under Coronado, the rear under Arellano, and the expedition by sea under Alarcon. The last contributed so little to the result that I prefer to tell its story briefly at once.
Hernando Alarcon sailed with the ships “San Pedro” and “Santa Catarina” on May 9th and kept along the coast; encountered the usual storms, terrors, and shoals; added a third ship, the “San Gabriel,” to his fleet at “Aguaiaval”; and arrived on August 26th at the mouth of a large river, the current of which was so rapid that the vessels could hardly make way against it. He launched two boats and embarked in them with a few men and light artillery to ascend the stream. The shores were inhabited, and the houses were round, made of limbs of trees, and plastered and covered with earth, like those of the present Pimas. Several families lived in the same building. Not much reliance is to be placed on the reports of the Indians which he repeats in his Relacion, for great mistakes were unavoidable in the absence of interpreters. For that reason the statement which would otherwise be valuable, that the Indians showed him a village of stone houses on a height in the distance, is doubtful. Alarcon thus went up and down the river twice, and asserts that he sailed 85 leagues, or 230 miles, upon it. Finally he heard of Cibola, of the arrival of the Spaniards there, and of the death of the negro. The distance at which he was from Cibola is variously given by him at thirty, forty, and ten days’ journey. In despair of meeting Coronado, he returned to the Mexican coast at the end of the year 1540, with the purpose of his voyage unaccomplished.
Although the main object of this voyage, coöperation with Coronado, was not gained, it contributed much to geographical knowledge, for it determined the form of the Gulf of California and elicited the first information concerning the lower course of the largest river on the western coast of America—the Rio Colorado; for this is the river which Alarcon ascended with his boats. The map in the Ptolomæus of Messer Pietro Andreas Mattiolo, of the year 1548, already represented Lower California in its true shape as a peninsula.
Postponing for the present the story of the efforts which were made by the land expedition to establish communication with Alarcon, I return to Coronado, who left Culiacan and marched northward with sixty men, five priests, one lay brother, and a few Indians who were more bold than discreet. He first met the Yaqui Indians in the territory of Sonora, and north of that, 12 leagues, or 32 miles, from Sonora, he met the southern Pimas in the “Valley of Hearts” (Valle de los Corazones). On the third day after his departure from Culiacan, a mishap befell the expedition: a priest, Fray Antonio Victoria, broke his thigh and had to be sent back. The Valley of Hearts is south of Batuco, and Coronado therefore probably reached the Rio Sonora in the vicinity of Babiácora, or about 160 miles south of the Mexican border of Arizona. Forty leagues, or 108 miles, farther on, he founded a Spanish colony in the Valley of Suya, to which he gave the name of San Hierónymo. As the Valley of Suya lay on the Sonora River, San Hierónymo should be looked for north of Bacuachi. The place was situated on the bank of “a small river.” Although there are names of places that likewise end in Sonora west of the Sonora Valley, in the country between Magdalena and Altar, once controlled by the Pimas, there is no doubt that Coronado entered the real Sonora Valley. Casteñeda gives names of places that are only to be found there. “Guagarispa,” called “Ispa” by Jaramillo, is unmistakably “Huc-aritz-pa,” the present “Arispe.”