JUDD— USE OF ADOBE 



Casa Grande, which is really a group of large and small structures 

 occupying a rectangular area inclosed by adobe walls, is being pro- 

 tected by the National Government as the best extant example of 

 the compound or large, many storied type of aboriginal community 

 dwelling. The geographical distribution of such settlements has not 

 yet been completely determined. The largest and perhaps most char- 

 acteristic of the type are found in the broad valleys of the lower Salt 

 and middle Gila rivers, but similar compounds and the remains of 

 many smaller houses, usually not far distant from major dwellings, 

 are distributed widely throughout the surrounding desert, in those 

 localities where primitive irrigation seemed most feasible. With few 

 exceptions, long years of exposure to the elements has reduced these 

 massive structures of the Casa Grande type, as well as the smaller, 

 outlying rancherias, to mere mounds of whitened clay, over and about 

 which the usual fragments of stone implements and earthenware ves- 

 sels may be seen. In many sections prosperous communities of citi- 

 zens now flourish on the sites of extensive prehistoric settlements, 

 whose house and garden walls have been almost completely effaced 

 during the intensive, modern cultivation of fields once used by the 

 builders of the Great Houses. Dr Fewkes has called attention to the 

 fact 1 that, in many instances at least, the present American inhabi- 

 tants are most numerous in those portions of the Gila and Salt river 

 valleys which afford evidence of having harbored the densest pre- 

 historic population. Future investigations should disclose the extent 

 to which the fertility of the soil may have attracted the earlier culture 

 and the degree to which easily constructed canals influenced the estab- 

 lishment of such settlements as that of Casa Grande. 



In western Utah, scattered through broad valleys between Salt 

 Lake City and St George, are many low, rounded mounds, accumu- 

 lations of wind-driven earth over the fallen walls of single, one-storied 

 adobe dwellings. At the present time neither the approximate num- 

 ber nor the general distribution of these mounds is known, but there 

 is every reason to believe that they represent a considerable homo- 

 geneous culture which had not yet developed complex community 

 dwellings similar to those found in other sections of the Southwest. 



During the spring of 1915 it was the writer's good fortune to 

 conduct, under the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 an archeological reconnoissance of certain sections of this region. 

 Limited excavations were made in mounds at several localities, in 

 the hope of ascertaining not only the chief architectural character- 



1 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 52, pt. 4, p. 407. 

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