FEWKES] HISTORY 63 
of their visits, however, or made at the most only meager references 
to the ruin. The most important accounts of Casa Grande in the 
middle of the nineteenth century are found in the official reports of 
the expedition to California led by General Kearny, in 1846, at the 
time of the Mexican war. 
In 1846 Brantz Mayer erroneously ascribed the discovery of Casa 
Grande to Fathers Garcés and Font in 1773. He also mistook Font’s 
measurements of the wall of the surrounding compound for that of 
the main edifice, for he writes: ! 
Like most of the Indian works, it was built of unburned bricks, and measured 
about 450 feet in length, by 250 in breadth. Within this edifice they found traces 
of five apartments. A wall, broken at intervals by lofty towers, surrounded the 
building, and appeared to have been designed for defence. 
The error of confounding the dimensions of the main structure 
with those of the surrounding wall, which Font gave with fair 
accuracy, has misled several later writers on the ruin. 
EMORY’S NARRATIVE 
In 1846 the ruins were visited by Lieut. Col. William H. Emory, 
with the advance guard of the ‘“Army of the West.’”’ Under date of 
November 10 of that year Emory makes the following entry in his 
journal and includes an illustration which shows that the main 
building had not suffered greatly from the elements during the 70 
years immediately following the time of Font and Garcés:? 
November 10.— . . . along the whole day’s march were remains of zequias 
[acequias], pottery, and other evidences of a once densely populated country. About 
the time of the 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, 60 feet square, pierced 
for doors and windows. The walls were 4 feet thick, and formed by layers of mud, 2 
feet thick. Stanley made an elaborate sketch of every part; for it was, no doubt, built 
by the same race that had once so thickly peopled this territory, and left behind the 
ruins, [Fig. 4.] 
We madea long and careful search for some specimens oi household furniture, orimple- 
ment of art, but nothing was found except the corngrinder, always met with among the 
ruinsand on the plains. The marine shell, cut into various ornaments, was also found 
here, which showed that these people either came from the seacoast or trafficked there. 
No traces of hewn timber were discovered; on the contrary, the sleepers of the ground 
floor were round and unhewn. They were burnt out of their seats in the wall to the 
depth of 6inches. The whole interior of the house had been burnt out, and the walls 
much defaced. What was left bore marks of having been glazed, and on the wall in 
the north room of the second story were traced the following hieroglyphics [appar- 
ently not shown.] 
From a Maricopa Indian Colonel Emory learned a version of the 
Pima tradition of the origin of Casa Grande: 
I asked him, among other things, the origin of the ruins of which we had seen so 
many; he said, all he knew, wasa tradition amongst them, that in bygone days, a woman 
1 Mexico, As it Was and As It Is, p, 239, Philadelphia, 1847. 
2 Notes ofa Military Reconnoissance, from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, 
etc.; Ex. Doc. No. 41, 30th Cong., Ist sess., Washington, 1848. 
