Whipple describes some ruins discovered by him in 1854 on Pueblo Creek and other small streams which form the head waters of the Verde. They consist of what seem to have been two fortified settlements, and a third separate fortification. The first was an irregular stone enclosure on the top of a hill three or four hundred feet high. The walls were from eight to ten feet high, and the interior was divided by partition walls five feet thick into different compartments. On the slopes of the hill were traces of adobe walls with the usual abundance of broken pottery. The second was located in a fertile spot on a fork of the Pueblo Creek, and consisted of a mass of stones, six feet thick and several feet high, forming a square enclosure "five paces in the clear." The third work is situated about eight miles further west, and commands what is known as Aztec Pass. It is an enclosure one hundred feet long, twenty-five feet wide at one end and twenty at the other, the walls being four feet thick and five feet in height. In the absence of any definite statement on the subject these northern fortifications are presumed to be of rough, or unhewn, stones without mortar.[XI-34]
Typical Plan of Gila Structures.
Plan of a Gila Structure.
LABYRINTH ON THE GILA.
Plan of Labyrinth on the Gila.
From the mouth of the San Pedro, which joins the Gila about forty miles eastward of the Casa Grande, up the Gila valley eastward, ruins of ancient edifices are frequently found on both banks of the river. Emory says "wherever the mountains did not impinge too close on the river and shut out the valley, they were seen in great abundance, enough, I should think, to indicate a former population of at least one hundred thousand; and in one place there is a long wide valley, twenty miles in length, much of which is covered with the ruins of buildings and broken pottery." The remains consist uniformly of lines of rough amygdaloid stones rounded by attrition, no one of which remains upon another, apparently the foundations upon which were erected adobe walls that have altogether disappeared. The plan of the buildings as indicated by their foundations was generally rectangular; many of them were very similar to the modern Spanish dwellings, as shown in the accompanying cut; but a few were circular or of irregular form. One of them just below the junction of the Santo Domingo, on an isolated knoll, was shaped as in the following cut, with faces of from ten to thirty feet. Besides the traces of what seem to be dwellings, there were also observed, an enclosure or circular line of stones, four hundred yards in circumference; a similar circle ninety yards in circumference with a house in the centre; an estufa with an entrance at the top; some well-preserved cedar posts; and some inscribed figures on the cliffs of an arroyo, similar to those lower down the river, of which cuts have been given. The native Pimas reported to the Spaniards in early times the existence of a building far up the Gila, the labyrinthine plan of which they traced on the sand, as shown in the cut. Emory and Johnston found these traces of aboriginal towns in at least twelve places on the Gila above the San Pedro, the largest being at the mouth of a stream flowing from the south-east, probably the Santo Domingo. I find no mention of ruins on any of the smaller tributaries of the Gila above the Casa Grande, though it seems very probable that such ruins may exist, similar to those on the main stream. A painted stone, a beaver-tooth, and marine shells were the miscellaneous relics found by Johnston among the ruins, besides the usual large quantities of broken pottery. Emory speaks of a few ornaments, principally immense well-turned beads of the size of hens' eggs, also fragments of agate and obsidian. The latter explorer gives a plate of rock-hieroglyphics of doubtful antiquity, and Froebel also sketched certain inscriptions on an isolated rock. Six or eight perfectly symmetrical and well-turned holes about ten inches deep and six or eight inches wide at the top were noticed, and supposed to have served for grinding corn.[XI-35]