CORONADO-'S MARCH. 327 



on their journey to Monterey and the port of San Francisco, and which 

 same ruin was subsequently visited and described by Emory, of the Corps 

 of Topographical Engineers, in 1847. 



Father Font's description of it is as follows : 



" On the 3d of October, 1775, the commandant ordered us to halt, in 

 order that we might visit the Casa Grande, known by the name of Monte- 

 suma, situated one league from the Rio Gila. We were accompanied by 

 some Indians, and by the governor of Uturituc, who related to us on 

 the way the tradition he had received from his ancestors about this 

 house, some of the particulars of which are doubtless fabulous and others 

 again true. 



" The latitude of the locality we found by an observation of the sun to 

 be 33i. 



" The Casa Grande, or palace of Montesuma, must have been built five 

 hundred years previously, (in the thirteenth century.) if we are to believe 

 the accounts given by the Indians; for it appears to have been con- 

 structed by the Mexicans at the epoch of their emigration when the 

 devil, conducting them through different countries, led them to the 

 promised laud of Mexico. The house is seventy feet from north to south, 

 and fifty from east to west.* The interior walls are four feet in thick- 

 ness ; they are well constructed ; the exterior walls are six feet thick. 

 The edifice is constructed of earth, in blocks of different thickness, and 

 has three stories. We found no traces of stairways ; we think they 

 must have been burnt when the Apaches burnt this edifice." t 



Emory's description, evidently of this same building for the old maps 

 place Father Font's Casa Grande on the Eio Gila, just above the Piraa 

 village, where Emory locates it is as follows : " About the time of 

 noon halt, a large pile which seemed the work of human hands was 

 seen to the left. It was the remains of a three-story mud-house sixty 

 feet square, pierced for doors and windows. The whole interior of the 

 house had been burnt out, and the walls much defaced."} 



This description, though not precisely the same as that of Father 

 Font, yet is sufficiently close, with the identity of the location, as before 

 stated, to show that they have reference to the same building. Now, 

 Emory by astronomical observation found the latitude #if his camp near 

 this locality to be 33 4' 21" north, and the longitude west from Green- 

 wich 111 45'. Father Font, as before stated, determined the latitude 

 to be 33 J; but as Emory had, without doubt, far superior instruments, 

 his results are preferable. 



We have then, as we think, located Chichilticale, the site of Casa 

 Grande, with a strong probability of accuracj'. 



On Squier's map of Coronado's route, accompanying the paper on this 

 subject, in the Transactions of the Ethnological Society, (vol. 2,) by 

 Albert Gallatin, I perceive that he makes Coronado to cross the Gila at 

 Casa Grande, but places the latter in about latitude 32, and longitude 

 110 ; or more than a degree too far south, and nearly two degrees too 

 far to the east. Now, as Juan Jaramillo. who was a captain in Coro- 

 nado's expedition, in his report says the general direction of their inarch 

 from Chichilticale to Cibola was northeast, a line drawn from Chichil- 



* A Spanish foot is 0.91319 of an English foot. (United States Ordnance Manual.) 



t Journal of Father Font, of the college of Santa Cruz of Qneretaro. Appendix VII, 

 Castmcdifs delations, TernauxCompans' Collections; see also Humboldt's " Essai Poli- 

 tiquo Sur la lloyanme de la Nouvelle Espagne," edition of 1811, pp. 3(5, '297, 'J:K 



i Notes of a military recouuoissance made by Lieutenant Colonel William II. Emory, 

 Corps of Topographical Engineers, in 1846-'47, with the advance guard of the Army o^ 

 the West, p. 82. 



Juan Jaramillo's Relations, Tomaux Compaus' Collections, pp. 368, 369 



