Figure on Rock on Piedras Verdes River.
White lines indicate pecking, the rest is coloured red.
The plains of San Diego used to swarm with antelopes, and even at the time of my visit herds of them could be seen now and then. One old hunter near Casas Grandes resorted to an ingenious device for decoying them. He disguised himself as an antelope, by means of a cloak of cotton cloth (manta) painted to resemble the colouring of the animal. This covered his body, arms, and legs. On his head he placed the antlers of a stag, and by creeping on all fours he could approach the antelopes quite closely and thus successfully shoot them. The Apaches, according to the Mexicans, were experts at hunting antelopes in this manner.
Hunting Antelope in Disguise.
We excavated a mound near Old Juarez and found in it a small basin of black ware. There were twelve or fifteen other mounds, all containing house groups. The largest among them was 100 feet long, fifty feet wide, and ten feet high; others, while covering about the same space, were only three or four to six feet high. They were surrounded, in an irregular way, by numerous stone heaps, some quite small, others large and rectangular, inclosing a space thirty by ten feet.
Casas Grandes.
From an archæological point of view, the district we now found ourselves in is exceedingly rich, and I determined to explore it as thoroughly as circumstances permitted. One can easily count, in the vicinity of San Diego, over fifty mounds, and there are also rock carvings and paintings in various places. Some twenty miles further south there are communal cave-dwellings, resembling those in Cave Valley, which were examined by members of the expedition at the San Miguel River, about eight miles above the point at which the river enters the plains. Inside of one large cave numerous houses were found. They had all been destroyed, yet it was plainly evident that some of them had originally been three stories high.