762 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



had a capacity of about thirty gallons. Some of the smaller pieces 

 were unbroken, and, although unglazed, were smoothly finished 

 and decorated in colored patterns with rare taste. There were 

 ladles or dippers, shallow saucers, graceful ollas, and vases dis- 

 playing much artistic feeling in their conception and execution. 

 One room appeared to have served as a store-room for earthen- 

 ware utensils, some of which were found in nests, contained one 

 within another, the smaller specimen measuring but one and one 

 fourth inches in diameter. A few perforated discs of pottery, re- 

 sembling wooden ones from cliff and cave dwellings, were noted. 



Numerous tools of bone, chiefly such as were employed in the 

 manufacture of ropes, neatly carved from the bones of deer or 

 antelope, were among the relics found. Various food substances 

 were examined, including bones, teeth, or horns (usually charred 

 by fire) of elk, mule-deer, antelope, beaver, spermophile, pouched 

 gopher, wood-rat, muskrat, mice, cotton-tail and jack-rabbit, tur- 

 key, serpent, turtle, and fish. A sandal of yucca, differing in design 

 from that taken from the wall of Montezuma's Castle, and several 

 pieces of human scalps, complete the list of relics from this casa. 



There are many ruins of the class just described in the Verde 

 region, as indicated on the accompanying map. Among them are 

 several conspicuously perched on the summits of high, isolated, 

 flat-topped buttes on the Rio Verde and on Oak, Beaver, and 

 other tributary creeks ; others are built on the precipitous edges 

 of table-lands bordering canons in which streams flow ; while 

 some occupy lower positions in the valleys. It would appear, 

 from the location of some of these casas grandes, that the water 

 supply has diminished or otherwise greatly altered since they 

 were occupied, as there is now no water to be found within several 

 miles of them. Cisterns were doubtless utilized, but must have 

 proved inadequate to supply the needs of so large a population. 



These pueblos frequently inclosed an open square or court. 

 There is such a one on Oak Creek, built on a bluff butte, level 

 on the top, which is one hundred and twenty-five feet above the 

 surrounding mesa. The building is subrectangular in shape, 

 conforming to that of the summit of the butte, the sides of which 

 are precipitous. Other villages, perhaps less prosperous on ac- 

 count of their inferior advantages for agriculture, are to be seen 

 in many localities, which were evidently but one story high. Such 

 is the case with a pueblo built on the point of a mesa east of the 

 Lower Verde settlement. 



Furnaces, probably used for firing pottery, were discovered in 

 some of these ruins. There is a very perfectly preserved one in a 

 ruin on the right bank of Oak Creek, close to its junction with 

 the Verde River, having walls standing to the height of fifteen to 

 twenty feet. 



