56 CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA [BrH. ANN. 28 
tion in their language means “‘the bitter or cruel man,’’ and that through the bloody 
wars which the Apache waged against them and the 20 tribes allied with them, killing 
many on both sides, they laid waste the settlements, and part of them, discouraged, 
went off and returned northward, whence they had started years before, and the 
majority toward the east and south; from which statements we inferred that it was 
very likely that these were the ancestors of the Mexican nation, judging by their 
structures and relics, such as those that are mentioned under the thirty-fourth 
degree [of latitude] and those in the vicinity of the Fort of Janos under the twenty- 
ninth degree, which are also called Casas Grandes, and many others which, we are 
told, are to be found as far as the thirty-seventh and fortieth degrees north. lati- 
tude. On the bank of the river, at a distance of 1 league from the Casas Grandes, we 
found a rancheria in which we counted 130 souls, and, preaching to them on their 
eternal salvation, the Father baptized 9 of their little ones, although at first they 
were frightened at the horses and soldiers, not having seen any till then. 
Early in March, 1699, during a seventh tour of Pimeria, as the 
Pima country was called, Father Kino made his final visit to Casa 
Grande,! and in 1701 he prepared a map of the country, remarkably 
accurate for its day, in which Casa Grande is charted for the first 
time. ; 
The next visits to the celebrated ruin of which there is record 
were made in 1736-37 by Father Ignacio Keller, of the mission of 
Suamea, not far from the present Nogales, reference to which is 
made in the Rudo Ensayo. Again, in 1744, the Jesuit father, 
Jacobo Sedelmair, of the mission of Tubutama, on the Rio Altar, 
went to the Gila near Casa Grande in an endeavor to cross the 
northern wilderness from this point to the Hopi (Moqui) country. 
He describes what was evidently the present main structure as a 
large edifice with the central part of four stories and the surrounding 
wings of three stories.” 
“RUDO ENSAYO”? NARRATIVE 
Twenty years later, that is, about 1762, another definite descrip- 
tion of the ruin is given by the author of the anonymous Rudo 
Ensayo,’ attributed to Father Juan Mentuig, or Nentoig, of the 
mission of Guazavas, on the Rio Bavispe, a branch of the Yaqui. 
The author seems not to have visited the ruins himself but to have 
gathered his information from other missionaries, notably Father 
1 (Ortega,) Apostolicos Afanes, etc., op. cit., p. 276. 
2 Documentos para la Historia de México, 3e série, tv, 847, 1853-57. Sedelmair’s account, as Bancroft (Native 
Races, IV, 623, 1882) has pointed out, is a literal copy of Mange’s Diary in the Archives of Mexico. See 
also Orozco y Berra, Geografia, p. 108, 1864. 
3 Rudo Ensayo tentativa de una prevencional descripeion Geographica de la Provincia de Sonora, etc., 
por un Amigo del Bien Comun, San Augustin de la Florida, Afio de 1763. This work, the original of 
which is in the Department of State of Mexico and a duplicate copy in the Royal Academy of History at 
Madrid, was published by Buckingham Smith. Under the title Descripcion geografica natural y curiosa 
de la Provincia de Sonora (1764) this essay appears in the Documentos para la Historia de Mérzico, 3e série, 
Iv. 503, and from it the part pertaining to Casa Grande was translated by Buckingham Smith and pub- 
lished in Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes, m, 304-306, 1853. An English translation of the Rudo Ensayo, by 
Eusebio Guitéras, appears in the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, v, 110-264, Phila., 
1894. 
