GROUND PLAN OF ONE OF THE CASAS GRANDES AT CHIHUAHUA. Between this edifice and the main building, are three mounds of loose stones about fifteen feet high, which the explorers did not have time to open. For a distance of twenty leagues and covering an area of ten leagues wide along the Casas Grandes and Janos Rivers, according to García Condé, are ruins resembling small mounds, from which jars, pottery in various forms, painted with white, blue and scarlet colors, corn-grinders (metates), and stone-axes have been taken. If this region was ever occupied by the Aztecs, even temporarily, this latter class of remains might more properly be attributed to them, than the Casas Grandes. Innumerable fragments of pottery, superior to that now manufactured by the Mexicans, are strewn everywhere in the neighborhood of the Casas Grandes. The decoration is in black, red or brown, on a white or reddish ground. Several graceful and highly artistic vases have been collected about the ruins, and stone metates, nicely hewn, have been recovered in perfect condition. On the summit of the highest mountain, ten miles south-west of the ruins, stands an ancient fortress of stone, the walls of which are said by the writer in the Album Mexicano to have been from eighteen to twenty feet thick. The fort, which is attributed to the occupants of the Casas Grandes, was two or three stories, and in the centre had a high mound for the purposes of observation. Clavigero, who describes the fort and all of the ruins from hearsay, falls into the error of supposing the Casas to have also been constructed of stone. A short distance from the point where the 111° (meridian) of longitude crosses the Gila River, in Southern Arizona, in the valley occupied farther westward by the Pima villages, stands the most famous ruin of all the Western remains. The Casa Grande, otherwise named the Casa de Montezuma, has attracted the attention of and furnished a fruitful subject for most writers on Mexican antiquity, the majority of whom, however, have contributed nothing to our knowledge of the history or uses of the edifice. Of describers at second-hand, Mr. Bancroft has cited thirty-four authors, according to our reckoning, and to this number the reader must add that author’s account and ours. This fact is an admonition to us to confine ourselves to the briefest possible statement of facts, for certainly the thirty-sixth repetition of the accounts furnished by two or three original explorers would be altogether inexcusable, were it not for the inseparable relation of the Gila Casas to the remains to be described farther on. Mr. Bancroft has treated the bibliography of the subject in his usually comprehensive manner,[442] and it only remains for us to refer the reader to the original descriptions. The first of these was written by Padre Mange, the secretary of Padre Kino, on the latter’s tour of visitation to the missions of the region in 1697.[443] Lieutenant C. M. Bernal, of the same expedition, adds also a description.[444] Padre Sedelmair, who visited the ruin in 1744, copies literally Mange’s description in his account of the Casas.[445] Father Font, who, in company with Father Garcés, made an expedition conducted by Captain Anza to the Gila and the missions farther north, left a diary—now preserved in the original, in the archives at Guadalajara—from which Mr. Bartlett translated and published an extensive description of the Casas.[446] Of later writers, only four wrote from personal observation, namely, Emory[447] and Johnston,[448] of General Kearney’s Military Expedition to California in 1846; Bartlett[449] in 1852, and Ross Browne in 1863.[450] These are the only original sources of information on the Casa Grande of the Gila, of which Bartlett’s account may be said to be the best. However, Bancroft has contributed much to facilitate the study of the subject by his addition of a full literary apparatus.
From all of these we draw the facts without further citation. Two and a half miles south of the Gila, on a slightly elevated plateau, stands the remains of the Casa Grande surrounded with a growth of mesquite trees. The ascent from the river bottom is so slight and gradual that its former inhabitants had constructed acequias between the river and the buildings. Mr. Bartlett found three edifices within a space of one hundred and fifty yards. The larger one only was in a fair state of preservation. Its four outer walls and most of the inner ones were standing. Three storeys were plainly marked by the ends of the beams remaining in the walls or by the cavities which they once occupied. No doubt the building was one story, at least, higher than this indicated, as the upper walls have crumbled away considerably and filled the first story with disintegrated adobe and a mass of rubbish. The central portion or tower furthermore rises eight or ten feet higher than the outer walls, and may have formed another story above the main building. At their base, the walls are between four or five feet in thickness, rising perpendicular on the inside, but on the outside tapering towards the top in a curved line.
The material of the walls consists of blocks of adobe, prepared as in the Casas Grandes of Chihuahua, in position on the walls, probably in boxes two feet high and four feet long; after the mud had dried sufficiently, the box was moved further along the walls and refilled. Some difference of opinion has existed as to the color of the mud employed, though all admit it to be that of the surrounding valley. Mr. Bancroft gives some attention to this point, and observes that Bernal pronounced it “white clay,” and that according to Johnston it is also white with an admixture of lime from the vicinity. Mr. Hutton, a civil engineer who had thoroughly examined them, reported to Mr. Simpson that the surrounding earth was of a reddish color, but the admixture of pebbles with the mud gave the Casa a whitish appearance in certain reflections. Mr. Bancroft seeks by this argument to identify this building with Castañeda’s Chichilticale, which is described as having been built of red earth.[451] The outer sides of the walls were finished with a plaster similar to that which composed the blocks, but the inner side was covered with hard finish of such fine quality that when visited they still retained their polish after centuries of exposure. It is estimated that the edifice must have stood a hundred years at least prior to its discovery by the Spaniards. The inner walls are slightly thinner than the outer ones, and divide the building into five apartments, as shown in Mr. Bartlett’s ground plan. The building measures fifty feet in length by forty in width.
Ground Plan. The three central rooms indicated are each about eight by fourteen feet, while those at each end of the edifice are ten by about thirty-two feet. The doorways indicated in the plan are three feet wide by five feet high, except that in the western façade, which is only two feet wide and seven or eight feet high. The main part of the edifice was probably thirty feet high, while the tower rose still ten feet higher. Padre Kino found a floor in an adjoining ruin still perfect, the supporting timbers of which were round and about five inches in diameter, while the floor proper was formed by placing cross-sticks on the joist and covering them with a layer of adobe. Mr. Browne observed the marks of a blunt axe still plainly visible in the timbers of cedar or sabine which had been thus employed, while their charred ends furnish the only clue to the cause of the ruin of the edifice, a fact suggestive of the ravages of the savage Apaches. No stairways or other means of ascent were discovered, and it is inferred that ladders were employed upon the outside as among the modern Pueblos. Near the main building, to the south-west, Mr. Bartlett discovered another Casa in ruins, and with difficulty traced its ground plan; while a third was so completely decayed as to leave no certain outline of its form. To the north-west about two hundred yards, was a circular embankment eighty or one hundred yards in circumference, which Mr. Bartlett supposes to have been used as a stock inclosure. A few yards farther north Mr. Johnston observed a terrace, two hundred by three hundred feet and five feet high, and having a summit platform seventy-two feet square, from which an excellent view of the valley is afforded. This monument is unlike any other found among the New Mexican remains. The entire valley is strewn with heaps of rubbish and ruined adobe edifices, which indicate that once the whole region was thickly populated by this remarkable people. Mr. Bartlett found broken metates (corn-grinders), and innumerable fragments of pottery painted tastefully with red, white, lead color, and black. The figures were geometrical, and many of the vessels had been decorated on the inside—a practice not in vogue with the modern peoples of the Gila Valley. The finish was also far superior to that of modern pottery. The Casa Grande, when last observed by Mr. Browne, was fast going to pieces, the moisture having undermined some parts of the outer walls, which were only kept erect by their great thickness. In 1873, Mr. Bancroft learned that the edifice was still standing, but it is evident that it must soon share the fate of its fallen neighbors. It is certain that this Pueblo civilization spread itself over a large tract of country north of the Gila Valley in the basin of the Rio Salado or Salinas, the principal tributary of the Gila. Numerous buildings similar to those previously described, have been noticed by different writers on the Rio Salado and its tributaries. The ruins of large edifices surrounded by smaller ones are described by Sedelmair (discovered in 1744) as standing between the Gila and Salado.[452]
Casa Grande of the Gila Valley. (As sketched by Ross Browne in 1863.)
Velarde has also cited the remains of similar structures at the junction of Salado and Verde and of the Salado and Gila.[453] We cannot refer to all of the remains reported in this region, especially since most of them are indescribable and shapeless heaps of ruins. One edifice, however, was observed by Mr. Bartlett, two hundred feet in length by sixty or eighty feet in width; and from the accumulation of debris, it is estimated that the edifice must have been three or four stories in height. This was but one of several similar heaps of ruins observed in the immediate vicinity. This locality, distant thirty-five miles from the river’s mouth, was evidently at one time the site of a populous city. The remains of numerous works, probably of a public character, such as irrigating canals—one of which is now more than twenty feet wide and four feet deep and several miles long, in the construction of which it was necessary to cut down the bank of the plateau—occur in considerable numbers. The whole region is strewn with fragments of broken pottery of fine workmanship.[454] M. Leroux, in 1854, discovered on the Rio Verde ruins of stone houses and regular fortifications which did not appear to have been occupied for centuries. The walls were of solid masonry of rectangular form, usually from twenty to thirty paces in length, and the style of architecture similar to that of the Casa Grande of the Gila. Still there was sufficient resemblance to the Pueblos of the Moquis to indicate a transition from the southern to the northern style of Pueblo dwelling. The sudden change in the material employed—that from adobe to stone in large blocks, well hewn—is rather remarkable. The ruins are found with more or less continuity between Fort McDowell and Prescott.[455] Mr. Bancroft, after citing the above, expresses regret at his inability to secure information in the possession of officers in the Arizona service.[456]
Lieutenant Whipple describes extensive ruins on the small streams forming the head-waters of the Rio Verde. Both stone and adobe structures were numerous, and the walls usually were found to be about five feet thick.[457] Emory has described some Pueblo buildings of singular structure on the upper Gila and its tributaries; most interesting of these is one with a labyrinthine plan of inner circular walls. The region also abounds in rock inscriptions of a rude though no doubt conventional character.[458] It is quite natural to suppose that remains of this ancient people would have been found extensively on the greatest river of the region—the Colorado. Mr. Bancroft passes the subject with the statement that “no relics of antiquity are reported by reliable authorities,” and fitly explains that it is unlikely, in view of the peculiarity of the region, that none will ever be found in the immediate vicinity of the river.[459] Whipple and his associates state that “upon the lower part of the Rio Colorado no traces of permanent dwellings have been discovered.”[460]
Since the publication of Mr. Bancroft’s fourth volume, the public has been made acquainted with the details of Major J. W. Powell’s exploration of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.[461] The descent of the river was accomplished by the Major and his companions in the summer of 1869, amid dangers so appalling and privations so distressing, that we need not hesitate in pronouncing it an exhibition of heroism having few parallels in the history of exploration. The Major has since repeated his perilous journey of which we have enjoyed the pleasure of a verbal description in part from the explorer himself. Groups of ruins were discovered in the gloomy depths of the Grand Cañon at three different points. In referring to them we will reverse the order in which they were discovered. A hundred or more miles (for we are unable to estimate the distance from the account) above the Virgen River, where the granite walls rise perpendicularly from the water’s edge thousands of feet, the cañon widened somewhat and a considerable group of ruined buildings were discovered on a terrace of trap. There had evidently been quite a village in that solitary spot, shut in by hundreds of miles of granite walls either up or down the river’s course. Mealing stones and fragments of broken pottery were scattered about the ruins, and so many beautiful flint chips that the discoverers conjectured that it might have been the home of an ancient arrow-maker. Major Powell found on a natural shelf in the rock, back of the ruin, a globular basket, badly broken, and so decayed that when taken up it fell to pieces.[462] Some distance farther up the river, the grim walls of more than a mile in height parted to admit the clear waters of a stream named by the explorers “Bright Angel River.” In a little gulch above the creek the foundations of two or three Pueblo houses were discovered. They were built of irregular cut stones, laid in mortar. An old, deeply-worn mealing stone and a great quantity of pottery were found, and old trails were observed worn into the rock.[463]