USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 2
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words. The Snake clan has a tradition of coming from the north, from the San Juan country, and its priests in confirmation show ancient shrines in cañons on the route that was followed by the migrating people southward. The Bear clan came from the eastward, from the country around Jemez. Most important, con- sidering the perplexity with which ethnologists have studied the disposition of the agricultural people who once occupied the Salt and Gila River valleys, it is a Hopi tradition that the Water House (the Patki) and the Squash (Patun) clans came from the South, from "the cactus country."
On the Mogollon plateau are two large ruins and, thirty-two miles north- ward, in the valley of the Little Colorado, near Winslow, are the remains of five towns called by the Hopi "Homolobi." Of these there is good tribal his- tory to the effect that the settlements were abandoned because of rising alkali. The same condition was developed on the same ground by Mormon pioneers less than forty years ago. The Patki group include the Lizard, or Sand, Rabbit, Tobacco and Rain Cloud divisions. It has a record of life in Homolobi and of residence in Palatkwabi, near San Carlos in the Gila Valley. The Little Colo- rado villages, Doctor Fewkes believes, were occupied as late as 1632. From the same locality is assumed to have come the Lenya (Flute), a somewhat older migration. Of rather late date also, are some of the 140 cliff or pueblo ruins in the Canon de Chelly (Tsegi), many of them of undoubted Hopi origin. But, it should be understood, in places in the Southwest are evidences of successive flows of human tides, during indefinite spaces of time, to be measured by cen- turies.
It may be significant that the Hopi between 1866 and 1870 asked official permission to settle in the Tonto Basin, whence, according to tradition, some of their ancestors had come. It then was remembered that the Hopi first were known to the Spaniards as living in the land of Tontonteac, possibly only a striking verbal similarity. In 1892 the same Indians fiercely refused an offer by the Government to move them from their hill tops to a more fertile locality.
In the same connection there seems to have been established a general kin- ship between the pueblo people and the cliff dwellers, who, possibly through environment, were forced into different habits of life and custom. Even within historie times cliff dwellings of northern Arizona have known temporary Indian occupation.
The legends of the people of Tusayan are many and often are contradictory, as is natural considering the various origins. But generally, they tell of long periods of wanderings, of stoppings for "plantings," and of repeated building of houses.
CASA GRANDE, THE ANCIENT "GREAT HOUSE"
Without doubt the best-known and best-preserved prehistoric structure within the United States is Casa Grande, in the Gila River Valley, about twelve miles southwest of Florence and about sixteen miles from the Southern Pacific rail- road station of Casa Grande. The name is Spanish, simply meaning "large house," but it also has been known among Indians and Spaniards as "The House of Montezuma." This would assume an Aztec origin. Indeed, old ruins generally in south-central Arizona have been known to the Spanish-speaking Indians as "Casas de Moctezuma." A rocky formation at the end of the Sierra
CASA GRANDE RUINS
CLIFF DWELLING NEAR ROOSEVELT
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Estrella, just west of Maricopa station, is known to Indians and whites alike as "Montezuma's Head." Possibly this has its greatest degree of value in showing the inaccuracy of a popular understanding, for there can be no support what- ever of the theory that the Aztecs had anything whatever to do with the build- ing of Casa Grande or any of the ancient houses of the Gila and Salt River Valleys.
The first historie mention of Arizona's ancient towns was by Friar Marco de Niza in 1539, with a second by Pedro de Casteñeda in connection with the Coro- nado expedition the following year. They probably started the Aztec idea, for a ruin somewhere off on the northern desert, they called Chichilticalli, under- stood to have been "Red House" in the Aztec tongue. Many students have tried to show that the route of Coronado embraced the locality of Casa Grande, but it probably came not nearer than seventy miles, on the San Pedro.
There seems little doubt that the first European who ever saw Casa Grande was a Jesuit priest, Eusebio Francisco Kino, who led a band of friars into north- ern Sonora about 1668, who established a chain of twenty-nine Jesuit missions and who labored among the Indians of Pimeria and Papagueria until his death. In 1694 to him was repeated a tale heard by Lieut. Juan Mateo Mange, nephew of Don Domingo de Cruzate, the new Governor of Sonora. Mange had heard from Indians in northern Sonora of the existence of some great ancient houses near a river that flowed to the west. In November of the same year, Kino started on a trip of discovery and was led by Indians to Casa Grande, at that time apparently in almost as ruinous a condition as now. A Spanish chronicler told that Aztec traditions referred to this Casa Grande as having been a tem- porary abiding place of the Aztecs on their march southward to the valley of Mexico. Kino again visited the great house in the fall of 1697, accompanied by an escort commanded by Capt. Cristobal M. Bernal, coming down the San Pedro. The young soldier Mange was a member of this second party. Mass was said by Padro Kino in one of the rooms of the great house, where the same ceremonial had been performed on his previous trip. Mange wrote a very interesting account of his trip and accurately described the ruins, adding a rough sketch and a ground plan of the main building. He told that the middle was four stories high and the adjoining rooms were three stories, the walls two yards thick, of strong mortar and clay, "so smooth on the inside that they looked like planed boards and so well burnished that they shone like Puebla earthen ware." The roofs of all the houses had been burned, save the ceiling of one room, which was of wooden beams, with superimposed layers of mortar and hard clay on reeds. He inferred that the settlement or city had been inhabited by a civilized race under regular government, this "evidenced by a main ditch which branches off from the river into the plains surrounding the city, which remained in the center of it." The guides told that a distance of a day's jour- ney northward were similar ruins, undoubtedly those near Phonix and Tempe, and also spoke of ruins in another "ravine which joins the one they called Verde." In 1736 and in 1745 there are records of visits to the ruins respectively by Padre Ignacio Keller and Padre Jacobo Sedelmaier, missionaries from northern Sonora.
In 1762, in the "Rudo Ensayo," an anonymous writing attributed to Padre Juan Nentyg, is still another circumstantial account of the main building.
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Padre Francisco Garcés, who first carried the cross into western Arizona, vis- ited Casa Grande in 1775 on an exploring trip that started at the presidio of Tubac. He was a member of a party of 239 persons, led by Lieut .- Col. Juan Bautista de Anza, and which included also the Franciscan Padres Font and Tomas Eixarch. Both Garcés and Font have left descriptions of Casa Grande. The former introduces in his narration an odd tale of hostility between the Hopi, the pueblo dwellers of northern Arizona, and the Pima, who dwelt in the vicinity of Casa Grande, in which he assumes "That the Moqui (Hopi) anciently extended to the Gila in early days." In this he was sustained by the evidence of Indians living in his mission of San Xavier, who told that the Moquis had built the houses whose ruins and fragments of pottery are still vis- ible. Padre Garcés therefore concluded that the ancient people "could be Moquis, who came to fight and that, harassed by the Pimas, who always have been numerous and valiant, they abandoned long ago these habitations on the River Gila; as also have they done this with that ruined pueblo which I found before my arrival in Moqui; and that they retired to the place where now they live, in a situation so advantageous, so defensible and with such precau- tions for self-defense in case of invasion."
Padre Font heard Indian tradition, "which all reduces itself to fiction, mingled confusedly with some catholic truth." The Casa Grande, or Palace of Moctezuma, may have been inhabited some 500 years before, according to the stories and scanty notices that there were of it and that the Indians gave, "because, as it appears, the Mexicans (Aztecs) found it when in their transmi- gration the devil took them through various lands, until they arrived at the promised land of Mexico and in their sojourns, which were long, they formed settlements and built edifices." The reverend historian spoke especially of finding the ground strewn with pieces of jars, pots and plates of various colors, "an indication that it was a large settlement and of distinct people from the Pima of the Gila, since these know not how to make such pottery." Padre Fout recites one lengthy Pima legend, that of El Hombre Amargo (The Bitter Man), which has been repeated substantially in similar form by later investiga- tors. In this legend is the story of a flood, from which refuge was taken on a high mountain range, called the Mountain of the Foam (Sierra de la Espuma), assumed to have been the Superstition range, described as "cut off and steep like a corner of a bastion, with, high up near the top, a white brow as of rock which also continues along the range for a good distance, and the Indians say that this is the mark of foam of the water which rose to that height."
In 1871 the structure was visited by Capt. F. E. Grossman, who tried to trace the connection between the ruins and the modern Indians, and who found at least one sustaining legend, telling that the Pimas claimed to be the direct descendants of a Chief So-ho (of whose line Si-va-no erected Casa Grande), who governed a large empire long before the Spaniards were known. His people cultivated the soil, dug immense canals, spun cotton cloth and made baskets and earthenware. The narrator refers to the certainty, "that the house was built before the Pimas knew of the use of iron, for many stone hatchets have been found in the ruins, and the end of lintels over doors and windows showed by their hacked appearance that only blunt tools were used. It also appears that the builders were without trowels, for the marks of fingers of the workmen
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are plainly visible both in the plastering and in the walls where the plastering has fallen off."
The first American visitors were trappers, hunting the beaver, which were abundant in nearly all the Arizona streams of continuous flow. Among these visitors were the Patties, about 1825, and in 1833, Pauline Weaver, a French trapper, who led the Rich Hill party of placer miners in 1863.
Lieut .- Col. Wm. H. Emory in 1846 had sketches made of the ruins still showing the central upper room and heard from the Indians their own version of the immaculate conception, from which sprang the founder of the race which built all the houses found in ruins.
Scientific observation at Casa Grande was made by A. S. Bandelier and Dr. J. W. Fewkes about 1892. The former noticed that the' pottery resembled that excavated by Mr. Cushing in the vicinity of Tempe, of a class common to eastern and central Arizona ruins. He stated his belief that the larger house was a fortress provided as a place of retreat in time of attack. He also told that the Pimas claimed to be lineal descendants of the Indians who built and inhabited the large houses of the Gila and lower Salt River, that they attributed the destruction and abandonment of Casa Grande and other ruins to various causes and that they held that the villages were not contemporaneously inhabited.
The most systematic and only thorough exploration of the Casa Grande set- tlement has been made by Dr. J. W. Fewkes of the Division of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, who returned to Casa Grande for work during two winters between 1906 and 1908. The record of the work done by Dr. Fewkes is too voluminous to even digest. Most of it was done outside of the principal structure. He opened up a number of mounds that turned out to be pueblo houses, in two cases practically pyramids built upon the debris of probably older structures, abandoned after centuries of use. A number of compounds were excavated and several ceremonial houses. It was deduced that the canals had been dug by means of wooden shovels, the earth probably carried to a dis- tance by women and children. There were reservoirs for the conservation of water, not always connected with the irrigation ditches, possibly for holding water for drinking. Compared with the ruins of the Salt River Valley, com- paratively few mortuary remains were found, though as at Tempe, there were evidences both of burial and of cremation. Apparently the settlement was of a much later date than in the neighboring valley and the period of occupation seemingly was much shorter.
Dr. Fewkes has expressed an opinion that the builders of Casa Grande might racially be traced down to the Pimas of to-day, a statement which has brought out strong opposition from a number of sources. It is understood that the' decision, which is not by any means final, was reached only after re- solving of many doubts founded particularly upon Pima legends and upon the character of the pottery and domestic implements found. On the other hand, it would appear much easier to believe that the builders of Casa Grande (Pima- "Va-a-ki") and of the great houses of the Salt River Valley, the "Hohokam" of the Pimas, were the progenitors of some of the dozen pueblo building tribes now living in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. The char- acter of the buildings of the lower valleys is not very different from the archi- tecture of the Zuñis, Moquis or New Mexican Pueblos, all of them industrious Vol. 1 -2
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people, with a relative degree of civilization that dates far back of the coming of the Spaniards, when the tribes of Pimeria were found by the Spaniards about as they were fifty years ago. The similarity in pottery cannot be considered evidence of great weight, for the designs on the ancient ware too readily could have been copied by the modern Indian potters. It should be noted also that the best of the modern pottery is of Maricopa manufacture. The Maricopas have lived near Casa Grande for a comparatively short period of time. Among the Pimas the making of pottery, save of the rudest kind, is understood to have been comparatively modern.
According to J. B. Alexander, for some time agent at Sacaton, "There are few Pima legends with a text that seems to be adhered to closely. In general a Pima legend can readily be manufactured on short order, and the Indians themselves are most accommodating in obliging a stranger with a tale sustaining his own belief."
The writer has asked many old Pimas about the Hohokam and has rarely gotten any answer except, "We don't know anything about them." In 1880, while going to the great corn dance on the upper Pima reservation, in com- pany with the old war chief of the Pimas, there was passed the great ruin on the Tempe road, east of Phoenix, a structure with six times the area of Casa Grande. The old Indian was asked what he knew of the ancient building. He called it "Una Casa de Montezuma" and added in Spanish, with a sweep of his hand, "When here came the fathers of my forefathers, all then was as it is now. We know nothing of these people."
The Casa Grande ruins for a number of years have been maintained as a national monument with a paid caretaker. The main building has been covered with a hideous roof of sheet iron, similar to that sometimes used over hay- stacks, but necessary to preserve it from further disintegration by the elements. Dr. Fewkes also has concreted the tops of some of the walls uncovered by him. But these obviously modern additions, it is hoped, will serve the purpose of preserving for the eyes of future generations a link of highest value connecting with a comparative civilization of which there is no written record.
A CENTER OF PREHISTORIC DEVELOPMENT
Within the Salt River Valley, without doubt was the seat of the highest development of Arizona's prehistoric tribes. Scattered over the valley are thou -. sands of mounds that mark where ancient houses and castles once stood.
There were seven principal settlements within the valley, each having a large central building or commercial house, around which have been left indications of the presence of many dwellings, even hundreds. Besides these were at least an equal number of what seem to have been villages and hundreds of detached houses, probably placed within the irrigated holdings. On the whole, the ruins generally show about the same extent of aging and of dilapidation, and the evi- dence would seem rather in favor of the theory that the valley at one time was occupied over nearly as great a cultivated area as now is known, and by a much larger population. As told elsewhere, the time of settlement undoubtedly was prior to that at Casa Grande and, as Salt River carries a much greater flow of water available for irrigation than does the Gila, to that degree the settlement and acreage tilled were larger.
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The prehistoric canal systems of the Salt River Valley have been traced by Herbert R. Patrick and Jas. C. Goodwin, gentlemen deeply interested in south- western archæology, and both have made maps after long and careful study. It has been found that the ancient canals of the valley practically have been duplicated, and on much the same lines, by the canals that irrigate the lands of to-day. As a rule, these old canals are on somewhat higher levels, for it has been found that where the old ditches can be traced to the river bank, the river bed is shown to have been lowered by erosion from eight to fifteen feet. The dams probably were much the same as those built by the early white farmers, of mesquite sticks, with brush and rock, easily taken out by freshets and easily put back by man. In the aggregate, Mr. Patrick measured about 135 miles of main canals in the ancient systems. At the time of his survey, 1903, the total mileage of the modern system was only ten miles more. The longest of the ancient canals was about twelve miles, though one system had about twenty-eight miles, including branches. The area irrigated by these old systems he computed as approximately 140,000 acres, which was just about the same as the irrigated area within the same year specified; therefore, considering the average acreage cultivated to the Indian family of to-day, he believed that under the old canals there may have been approximately 20,000 families, or a population of about 100,000. In this estimate Mr. Patrick figured that the entire valley was occupied at one time. This may not have been the case. As the ancient dwellers migrated from point to point, they may also have migrated from canal system to canal system, and the occupation of the valley may have been consecutive, involving a much lessened estimate of the population.
The only exploration worth considering that has been given the Salt River Valley ruins was by Frank Hamilton Cushing, in 1887. Mr. Cushing, then a member of the Hemenway-Southwestern Archaeological expedition, though con- nected also with the Smithsonian Institution, was especially well equipped for the work and had the assistance of a number of skilled specialists (one of them Fred W. Hodge) in various lines of ethnologie investigation. He did very little outside of the area of a buried city seven miles south of Tempe, which he named "Los Muertos," the "City of the Dead."
Under the searching spades of his workmen many low, long gravelly knolls and other elevations, covered with mesquite and sage brush in rank growth, proved the debris of thirty-six large communal houses, constituting a city, from which were gathered almost numberless implements and remains of aboriginal art. The city thinned out into suburbs and beyond these were found farm houses, of which the fire-hardened floors were uncovered at least two miles dis- tant. The smaller houses had roofs of mud, of substantially the same character built by the Mexicans of to-day. There were a number of public ovens, great cooking pits, lined with mud and a natural cement, with fragments of rock, which in places had been melted by the' excessive heat. One of these pits was fifteen feet in diameter and seven feet deep.
The main temple, a structure much larger than Casa Grande, though smaller than a similar ruin near Phonix, was surrounded at a distance of about sixty feet by a mud wall, within which were a number of subordinate structures, as well as a couple of open courts. Mr. Cushing found no doors in the exterior walls of the main structure, though there were windows and port holes, and thus
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inferred that the interior was reached by ladders, as is the case to-day in some of the northern pueblos.
Death and the dead apparently had few terrors for these people, for mixed in daily association were the urn-graves of their friends and relatives and the adobe sarcophagi of their priests. Within the main group were found thirty- two skeletons, a few of women and children. A couple of the skeletons were nearly six feet in length, though the average stature was low, and the skulls" were similar to the Peruvian type. The skeletons lay in vaults, usually placed in the corner of a room supposed to have been occupied by their tenants in life. The floors show evidences of having been filled in level with the top of the tomb, or the tomb was built up till the ceiling was reached. One of the skeletons, where the sutures of the skull had consolidated, was that of a man who had reached at least the age of 100 years. It was inferred that persons so buried were considered as possessed of power to separate at will the spirit from its earthly tenement. The remains of the commoner people were incinerated, then placed in burial urns, covered with saucer-like lids. Beside were placed miniature earthen vessels, filled with food for the journey to the happy hunting grounds and then the whole was covered with earth to a depth of from one to several feet. Several cemeteries were opened, each with dozens of these pot- tery funeral caskets. The burial plats were scattered, seeming to show that every family or small clan had a separate and convenient place to deposit its dead, near the wall of its block of dwellings. The level of the land appears to have changed little during the centuries and only in a few places had rain or wind betrayed the existence of these ancient burial grounds. Around each burial always were found a number of broken vessels, usually comprising a com- plete household set. They were broken in order to "kill" them, that their spirits might accompany their lately deceased owner on his journey to the happy hunt- ing ground. This same custom is known in Zuñi land. This practice of bury- ing food and water vessels, as well as beads, prayer sticks, etc., also was known among the ancient Hopis, a fact developed by the explorations of Dr. Fewkes in the prehistoric pueblo of Sikyatki.
A feature of sentimental as well as ethnologie interest was the finding of a number of "killed" earthen images of dogs, close beside the remains of chil- dren. The deduction is most obvious. Older persons, possessed of the esoteric knowledge of the phratries, could find their way through the darkness on the trail that led to the eternal abiding places. Not so with the children. With each, very logically, was buried the dog that had been its especial playmate on earth, for the spirit of the faithful animal could be depended upon to lead the' way home. Judging from the latter-day Mexican or Indian village, surely there must have been a large supply of dogs, probably of the common hairless Mexican "pelon" type, yet there must have been an occasional shortage, indi- cated by the substitution of the earthen image.
Cushing rather inclined to the belief that Los Muertos was abandoned after an earthquake, of which he found a number of signs. Under one fallen wall was found the skeleton of a man who had thus been crushed to death. Cushing called it "A Tragedy in Bone." But there were cranial differences, and it is probable that the bones were those of some prowler of later years.
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Cushing had differences with his backers and so his data covering Los Muertos never has had publication, save in a few detached papers by himself and his associates. His greatest work was that in Zuñi, where he lived for six years and whence he led his brother chieftains back in 1882, to secure from the Eastern Ocean a supply of water for the ritualistic ceremonies into which he had been initiated. He died April 10, 1900, aged 43, his fatal illness largely due to the hardships of his life among the Zuñi.
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