AND THE CASAS GRANDES. 265 
Education could not devote a portion of their means 
to a more worthy object, than to send ‘teachers and 
mechanics among this interesting people before they 
become contaminated by intercourse with the whites, 
and the seeds of evil are sown, which, when ripened, 
will exert the same baneful influence upon them as 
they have upon all other aboriginal tribes, leading to 
their degradation and final extinction. They will be 
found willing pupils, having. expressed a great desire 
to be taught to read, and to obtain a knowledge of © 
the mechanic arts. 
Among the Indians visited by Coronado and Marco 
de Niza, about the middle of the sixteenth century, in 
their extensive journeys through the regions between 
the Rio Grande and the Pacific, although it is certain 
that the former crossed the Gila, I am unable to dis- 
cover any allusion to the Pimos, or to the district 
occupied by them. In the diary of an expedition 
made by the ensign Juan Mateo Mangi, who accompa- 
nied Father Kino, in the year 1697, after visiting the 
Casa Grande (of which I shall hereafter speak), he 
says: ‘On the margin of the river, distant one league 
from the Casa Grande, we found a town in which we 
counted one hundred and thirty souls.”* The author 
continues : “ Having traversed four leagues, we arrived 
at the town of Tusonimon, which isso named from a 
great heap of horns, from the wild or sylvan sheep, 
which appears like a hill; and from the number that 
* I am indebted for this extract to Mr. Schooleraft’s valuable work 
on the Indian Tribes, vol. iii, p. 301. It is from a manuscript in the 
archives of the City of Mexico, from which it was copied by Bucking- 
ham Smith, Esq., Secretary of the United States Legation. 
