FOWKES ] HISTORY 55 
MANGE’S NARRATIVE 
Mange’s account! of the famous ruin (pls. 8, 9) is so interesting and 
so important for comparison with the condition of Casa Grande as 
it exists to-day that it is here given in full: 
On the 18th we continued westward across an extensive plain, barren and without 
pasture, and at a distance of 5 leagues we discovered on the other side of the river 
other houses and buildings. Sergeant Juan Bautista de Escalante and two companions 
swam across to reconnoiter and reported that the walls 
were 2 yards thick, like a castle, and that there were 
other ruins in the vicinity, all of ancient workman- 
ship. We continued westward ‘and after making 4 
more leagues we arrived at noon at the Casas Grandes, 
in which Father Kino said mass, having till then kept 
his fast. One of the houses is a great building, the 
main room in the middle being four stories high and the 
adjoining rooms on the four sides of it being three 
stories, with walls 2 yards thick, of strong mortar and 
clay, so smooth on the inside that they look like 
planed boards and so well burnished that they shine 
like Puebla earthenware; the corners of the windows, 
which are square, being very straight and without any 
hinges or crosspieces of wood, as if they had made !!6-1- Sketch of Casa Grande ruin 
5 5 (Mange). 
them with a mold or frame: and the same is true of 
their doors, although these are narrow, whereby it might be known that this is the work 
of Indians. “The building is 36 paces long and 21 paces wide, of good architecture. 
A crossbow shot farther on 12 other houses are seen, half tumbled down, also with 
thick walls and all with roofs burnt, except one room beneath one house, with round 
beams, smooth and not thick, which appear to be of cedar or savin, and over them 
reeds very similar to them and a layer of mortar and hard clay, making a ceiling or 
story of very peculiar character. In the neighborhood many 
other ruins may be noted and (terremotos?) [heaps of earth], which 
inclose two leagues, with much broken pottery of vessels and 
pots of fine clay, painted in various colors, resembling the 
Guadalajara pots of this country of New Spain, whence it is 
inferred that the settlement or city was very large, inhabited 
by a civilized race, under a regular government. This is 
Fig. 2. Ground plano! evidenced by a main ditch which branches off from the 
Casa Grande ruin . t 5 A : A Saawes 
(Mange). river into the plain, surrounding the city which remains in 
the center of it, in a circumference of 3 leagues, being 10 
yards wide and 4 feet deep, by which they diverted perhaps one-half of the 
river, that it might serve them for defense, as well as to provide water for their 
city subdivisions and to irrigate their crops in the vicinity. The guides said 
that at a distance of a day’s journey there are other edifices [*] of the same kind of work- 
manship, toward the north, on the other bank of the river in another ravine which 
joins the one they call Verde, and that they were built by people who came from the 
region of the north, their chief being called El Siba, which according to their defini- 
1 Mange, op. cit., pp. 282-284. The original manuscript journal in the Archives of Mexico contains a 
sketch and a ground plan, which are introduced with some changes in an extract from Mange’s diary pub- 
lished in Schooleraft’s Indian Tribes (m1, 301-303, 1853), from a translation by Buckingham Smith, but 
these do not appear in the printed copy of Mange’s Diary in Doc. Hist. Mer. The sketch and plan 
(figs. 1, 2) reproduced in the present work are from photographs of the original manuscript, procured 
through the courtesy of Dr. Nicolas Leén of the City of Mexico. The accompanying translation is from 
the published Spanish account. 
2 Evidently those now in ruins near Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa, in the Salt River Valley.—J. W. F. 
