NO. 1873 PREHISTORIC RUINS IN GILA VALLEY FEWKES 423 



which we stood. In every direction the plain was strewn with broken pottery, 

 of which I gathered up some specimens to show the quality, as well as the 

 style of ornamentation." 



Mr. H. C. Hodge 1 thus speaks of the Tempe ruins: 



"Six miles east from Phoenix, and two miles from the Hellings mill, now 

 owned by Major C. H. Vail, are the ruins of a large town, near the center of 

 which is one very large building, 275 feet long and 130 feet wide. The debris 

 of this building forms a mound which rises thirty feet above the surrounding 

 plain. The walls are standing about ten feet in height and are fully six feet 

 thick. There seem to have been several cross-walls, and the whole was sur- 

 rounded by an outer wall, which on the south side was thirty feet from the 

 main wall ; on the east, sixty feet ; on the north, one hundred feet ; and on the 

 west side sixty feet. 



"On the north and at the northwest corner were two wings, perhaps guard 

 or watch houses. On the south of the outer wall was a moat, that could be 

 flooded with water from a large reservoir fifty yards to the south. Several 

 other large reservoirs are at different points in and around the main town, 

 which was over two miles in extent. 



"A large irrigating canal runs to the south of the large building, which was 

 from twenty-five to fifty feet wide. This canal took the water from the 

 Salt River eight miles above, and can be easily traced for twenty miles or 

 more below. * * * The largest of the old irrigating canals visited and 

 examined by the author is some twenty-five miles above Phoenix, on the south 

 side of the Salt River, near the point where the river emerges from the 

 mountains. This one, for eight miles after leaving the river, is fully fifty feet 

 wide. For this distance it runs in a southwest course through hard, stony 

 ground, and enters on a vast stretch of mesa or table-land, which extends 

 south and southwest from thirty to sixty miles, having an elevation above the 

 river of nearly one hundred feet. 



"At about eight miles from where this great canal leaves the river, it is 

 divided into three branches, each twenty-five feet wide, one of which runs in 

 an east of a south course, one nearly south, and the third southwest, the three 

 probably carrying water sufficient to irrigate the whole of the immense plateau 

 before mentioned. Two miles west of where the main canal branches are 

 the ruins of a large town, which extends along the mesa for many miles. 



"Near the center of this town are the ruins of the largest building yet dis- 

 covered. Its ground measurement is 350 feet by 150 feet, with outer walls, 

 moats, embankments, and reservoirs outside the main walls, and ruins of 

 smaller buildings in all directions. 



"On the line of the branch canals, distant many miles from this one, are 

 other ruins of towns similar to the others described. Below the great canal 

 and the large ruin described, extending through what is called the Tempe 

 settlement, are other irrigating canals of nearly equal size to the others, and 

 which were taken out of the river many miles below the large one mentioned, 

 and along there are also the ruins of great houses and towns." 



Father Sedelmair, according to the last authority, described a ruin 

 36 miles below the Casa Grande, on the same side of the Gila. 



1 Arizona as it is, or the Coming Country, 1877. 



