62 CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA [BTH. ANN, 28 
people became numerous. One of the direct descendants of S6/-hé, King Si/-va-no, 
erected the Casas Grandes on the Gila River. Here he governed a large empire, 
before—long before—the Spaniards were known. King Si/-va-no was very rich and 
powerful and had many wives, who were known for their personal beauty and their 
great skill in making pottery ware and ki/-hos (baskets which the women carry upon 
their heads and backs). The subjects of King Si’-va-no lived in a large city near the 
Casas Grandes, and cultivated the soil for many miles around. They dug immense 
canals, which carried the water of the Gila River to their fields, and also produced 
abundant crops. Their women were virtuous and industrious; they spun the native 
cotton into garments, made beautiful baskets of the bark of trees, and were particularly 
skilled in the manufacture of earthenware. (Remains of the old canals can be seen to 
this day, and pieces of neatly painted pottery ware are scattered for miles upon the 
site of the old city. There are several ruins of ancient buildings here, the best pre- 
served one of which is said to have been the residence of King Si/-va-no. This house 
has been at least four stories high, for even now three stories remain in good preserva- 
tion, and a portion of the fourth can be seen. The house was built square; each story 
contains five rooms, one in the center, and a room on each of the outer sides of the inner 
room. This house has been built solidly of clay and cement; not of adobes, but by 
successive thick layers of mortar, and it was plastered so well that most of the plastering 
remains to this day, although it must have been exposed to the weather for many years, 
The roof and the different ceilings have long since fallen, and only short pieces of 
timber remain in the walls to indicate the place where the rafters were inserted. These 
rafters are of pine wood, and since there is no kind of pine growing now within less than 
50 miles of the Casas Grandes, this house must either have been built at a time when 
pine timber could be procured near the building site, or else the builders must have 
had facilities to transport heavy logs for long distances. It is certain that the house 
was built before the Pimas knew the use of iron, for many stone hatchets have been 
found in the ruins, and the ends of the lintels over doors and windows show by their 
hacked appearance that only blunt tools were used. It also appears that the builders 
were without trowels, for the marks of the fingers of the workmen or women are plainly 
visible both in the plastering and in the walls where the former has fallen off. The 
rooms were about 6 feet in height, the doors are very narrow and only 4 feet high; 
round holes, about 8 inches in diameter, answered for windows. Only one entrance 
from the outside was left by the builders, and some of the outer rooms even had no 
communication with the room in the center. There dre no stairs, and it is believed 
that the Pimas entered the house from above by means of ladders, as the Zuni Indians 
stilldo. The walls are perfectly perpendicular and all angles square.) 
Earty AMERICAN REPORTS 
The first American visitors to the Gila-Salt Basin appear to have 
been trappers, who found beaver fairly abundant, especially on the 
river and its tributaries. In 1825 the Patties,’ father and son, were 
in the neighborhood of Casa Grande, and Paul Weaver, a trapper, is 
said to have inscribed his name on its walls in 1833. One of the most 
renowned of all the pathfinders and explorers of the West, Kit Car- . 
son, led a party of Americans from New Mexico -to California in | 
1829-30. It may be safe to say that every traveler who rested a 
longer or shorter time at or near the neighboring Pima village of 
Blackwater visited Casa Grande. These earlier visitors left no record 
1 Pattie, Personal Narrative. See also J. Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country, p. 118, New 
York, 1869. A figure of Casa Grande as it appeared in 1859, somewhat modified in Nadaillac, L’ Amérique 
Préhistorique, is given in Cozzens, The Marvellous Country, London, 1874. 
