56 THE CLIMATIC FACTOR AS ILLUSTRATED IN ARID AAIERICA. 



210 by 90 feet in size, is surrounded by thick mud walls which, in spite of being much 

 broken down, still present the appearance of a ridge 4 or 5 feet high. The interior was 

 evidently hollowed out to a level slightly below that of the surrounding plain, while the 

 walls of dry mud must have had a height of not less than 6 or 8 feet. Similar inclosures are 

 found in many ruins, for instance at Jaynes on the upper terrace, where several lie close to 

 the road on the south side just east of where it descends to the lower level on which the 

 railway station is located. Hasty examination suggests that these are reservoirs, but a 

 little study shows that usually they are so located that water could not possibly be caused 

 to flow into them and fill them. Their walls rise so far above the level of the plain that 

 even if canals, of which there is no sign, carried water to them, only the lower portion, 

 to a depth of 2 or 3 feet, could be filled. Moreover, some of them have broad entrances 

 not appropriate to reservoirs. Structures of the same sort are found in all parts of the 

 drainage area of the upper Salt and Gila rivers, and go far toward proving community of 

 race or at least of civilization among all the inhabitants. Mindeleff and others have come 

 to the conclusion that these were ceremonial chambers, roofed, perhaps, with branches 

 supported upon poles. This seems highly probable. If the theory is correct the presence 

 of such temples would in itself indicate the existence of villages of considerable size and 

 permanency. 



Back of the temple and the great grinding stones, if these terms are allowable, the 

 whole eastern and northern face of the hills is covered with low walls, 2 or 3 feet high, pro- 

 tecting the exposed side of roughly smoothed spaces from 10 to 30 feet wide. Apparently 

 these were built as places of refuge for the inhabitants of the village below. Each one may 

 have been covered with a booth of branches, although there is no direct evidence of this. 

 The Hohokam certainly spent a good deal of time here, for pottery is scattered thickly. 

 Probably the potsherds represent largely the broken fragments of jars in which water was 

 brought from below, although where the water came from is a puzzle. If the oval hollows 

 are temples, no sign of reser\'oirs has been detected anj^vhere on the plains, nor has any 

 trace of cisterns been noted on the hillsides. The number of platforms or inclosures is 

 great. At first one is tempted to say there must be a thousand of them. We did not count, 

 but a rough estimate shows that they surely number several hundred. No distinctly defen- 

 sive walls are found here, like those at Tumamoc Hill near Tucson or on the mesa at San 

 Xavier. Possibly this site was abandoned before the pressure of hostile tribes had led to 

 the development of the art of defense to the point where regular forts were constructed. 

 At any rate, the hill was apparently a refuge for the inhabitants of the village on the plain, 

 and the number of platforms agrees with the size of the area where pottery is found in 

 indicating a population numbered by hundreds of families. 



On the west side of the hills forming the Point of the Tucson Mountains another large 

 village is found. For a cUstance of nearly 1.5 miles along the terrace above the alluvial 

 plain of the Santa Cruz, pottery and the usual accompanying artifacts are thickly scattered. 

 The central portion of the village occupies an area of about 200 acres, while the surrounding 

 imrt, where the population was less dense, covers a slightly larger additional area. In 

 the center of the village pottery is very thick and the upper layers of earth are full of it 

 to a depth of 2 feet. In the portion where pottery is thickest, not far from the foot of the 

 hills on the east and from the terrace leading down to the river on the north, Unes of stones 

 indicate the foundations of houses, as at Sabino. We did not count them, not realizing 

 at the time how important they might be. It almost seems as if they represented an occupa- 

 tion later than that of the rest of the ^'illage, but this is mere conjecture. The decora- 

 tions on the pottery and the occurrence of inclosures such as those which we have taken 

 to be temples prove that in general the people here were like those in the other villages 

 of this region. The hills on this side rise as steeply as on the other and offer as good a shelter 

 from enemies, but they seem to be devoid of refuges or walled inclosures Uke those on the 



