RUINS IN NORTHERN SONORA AND SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO. 67 



judge from the heaps of shells, the people gathered to feast on clams, oysters, and half a 

 dozen other kinds of shell-fish. At fu'st one surmises that there may have been no real 

 village, for the Hohokam may merely have come to the shore to gather shell-fish, but this 

 is not the case. Undoubtedly the shell-fish were an important item in the food supply of the 

 ancient people. Often they gathered one special variety, such as razor clams, and perhaps 

 ate it exclusively, leaving other kinds for other feasts, as appears from the character of 

 the shell-heaps. Back from the shore, however, signs of an agricultural village are visible 

 in the form of pottery scattered thickly for a distance of a mile or more. Shells, on the 

 other hand, are no more abundant than in the villages many miles in the interior, which 

 would scarcely be the case if the Hohokam had come here merely to get food from the sea. 

 The pottery is found chiefly on sKghtly elevated tracts 5 to 15 feet above the general level. 

 Apparently some sort of erosion, presumably eohan, has carried away much of the soil, 

 leaving hollows, which have since been partially filled by deposition from the floods of the 

 river. Possibly this condition existed when the Hohokam lived here; they may have 

 built their houses on the high places and cultivated the low ones. One thing at least is 

 clear: many people lived here whose interest was apparently not in being close to the sea, 

 but in being close to land which then was presumably arable and now would be highly pro- 

 ductive if only it were suppUed with water. 



Taken as a whole the conditions of the lower Altar are like those of the lower Santa 

 Cruz. According to tradition, the whole plain of the lower Altar was once under culti- 

 vation by the Papagos or then- predecessors. The tradition, however, as related by the 

 Mexicans, is not at all definite, and may have no foundation other than observation of the 

 phenomena which have been described above. No one who carefully examines the region 

 can fail to be impressed by the abundance of ruins, the care with which they are so located 

 as to command the best agricultural land, and the hopelessness of now attempting, by 

 means of primitive methods of cultivation, to support even a handful of families in the 

 regions where the Hohokam once seem to have been numerous. 



Phenomena which may have a bearing on the question of changes of climate are found 

 not only below, but above the present lower hmit of cultivation in the valleys of the Altar 

 and its tributaries. Chief among these are the so-called trincheras or terraced hills. 

 One such is said to be located near Altar, but that which will here be described Ues farther 

 to the south in the Magdalena Valley. From Altar it is reached by a ride of 14 miles south- 

 ward to the Magdalena River, and then southeast up the river for 21 miles. Much of the 

 way the road leads through a beautiful country, which would deceive the uninitiated into 

 the beUef that it is the best of farm land. The fine, fertile soil is well covered with short, 

 thick grass, which in early May 1910 had been dry and brown since the end of the rains 

 of the previous summer. Even in better seasons than 1909-10 the rain does not last long 

 enough to enable crops to be raised without irrigation, except in the very best years. 



The Trinchera is a dark rugged hill rising 600 feet above the smooth plain, while smaller 

 hills flank it to the east and southwest. The slopes of all the hills are divided into in- 

 numerable terraces, the work of an ancient people. To the north the broad alluvial plain 

 of the Magdalena is covered with fields of waving wheat, or with brown patches, left 

 unsown for lack of water for irrigation. Not far from the base of the hills lie the mud 

 houses and square corrals of a Mexican village, while the brush shanties of an Indian hamlet 

 are located a little farther away. (See Plate 2, c.) 



Long ago a branch of the Hohokam Uved here. In some respects they differed from 

 their northern brethren in Arizona, but not essentially. Among the sparsely scattered 

 bits of pottery which we found, we noted none painted with the ordinary brown designs. 

 The only decorated piece, picked up by Mr. Harrison, was adorned with a rectangular 

 pattern of red, blue, and black, and was more complex than anything that we saw elsewhere. 

 The Hohokam of the Trincheras used metates and manos for grinding corn and beans, just 



