FEWKES] EXCAVATIONS AT CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA 317 



(plate XL, a) and another representing a bird indicate that the 

 artists of Casa Grande were not inferior to those of the old 

 pueblos of the Little Colorado in this kind of work. None of the 

 shell objects differ greatly from those found in the ruins of north- 

 ern Arizona. In one burial there was a bowl full of marine shells. A 

 perforated pectunculus (plate XL, g) from another interment is 

 identical with many specimens from Homolobi, Chevlon, and other 

 ruins of the Little Colorado drainage. Several specimens of bone 

 were taken from the rooms, but not as abundantly as in some other 

 ruins the author has excavated. A fine dirk, apparently made from 

 a deer bone, was taken from the collar-bone of a skeleton of a man ; 

 it was so placed that the point rested over the heart. 



There formerly grew along the banks of the Gila a reed which 

 was used by the people of Casa Grande for arrows and coverings 

 for the beams of their floors and roofs. In the third from the main 

 ruin of the six ceremonial rooms, a great many reed cigarettes were 

 found. Each of these was about an inch and a half long, wrapped 

 with a woven band by which it was held when hot. The reed was 

 filled with tobacco and was smoked ceremonially, the priest sending 

 forth smoke to the cardinal points. All the reed cigarettes which 

 were found were burned or charred, and lay in one corner of the 

 room. 1 



SKELETONS 



Human skeletons were found buried a few feet deep in mounds 

 outside the compounds and under the floors of houses. No evi- 

 dence of cremation was observed, but of such bodies as were found 

 some lay extended at full length, others with leg bones drawn up to 

 the breast. The remains were usually accompanied by a few mortu- 

 ary objects. 



OTHER RUINS NEAR THE CASA GRANDE GROUP 



The Casa Grande group of mounds is not the only one of its kind 

 in the Gila valley. The traveler on the road west from Florence 

 will frequently have his attention drawn to similar mounds which 

 loom above the mesquite and sage bushes as gray elevations bare of 



1 In the memory of several of the old Pimas, similar reed cigarettes were 

 smoked when they went to war. The same kind of cigarettes is still em- 

 ployed by the Hopi in some of their ceremonies, and are deposited at cave 

 shrines in the Superstition Mountains, north of Casa Grande, showing that 

 they were sometimes offered to the gods after use. 



