July 24, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
129 
miles, passing many large mounds, and the 
partly standing walls of three prehistoric pue¬ 
blos. None of these walls is more than six 
, feet in height, but they are so firm, they ring 
. so clearly under the blow of a stone, that one 
wonders why the whole building is not stand- 
I ing. 1 he material is colecha, a natural cement 
mixed with rubble stones, very plentiful in parts 
of the Gila and Salt River valleys. 
From the last of these small ruins we turned 
• down into the wide, level valley. From the river 
southward there are traces of canals and lat¬ 
erals, and everywhere the ground is strewn with 
pieces of broken pottery, metates and grinders. 
Hundreds of slight, round elevations mark the 
places where the ancient gardeners lived in 
their flimsy houses. There was an immense 
population here, and presently we came to the 
center of it, the ruins of Casa Grande, where 
dwelt no doubt the priests and leaders of this 
people. The Casa Grande proper is a three¬ 
storied house about forty by sixty feet with 
walls four feet thick at the base, and is built 
of colecha. It stands within a walled enclos¬ 
ure about 225x400 feet, and round about it are 
something like thirty-four more rooms, recently 
;xcavated by the Government. 
Coronado saw this place in 1540, and it was a 
■uin then. The next person to visit it was 
H ather Rino, who wrote that the inner walls 
>f the great house were as “smooth as planed 
'Oards and shone like polished pottery.” 
About two hundred yards from this ruin the 
xovernment has excavated another one of about 
le same size, which was undoubtedly still more 
ncient. The finds uncovered in the work have 
een interesting and consist of a number of 
celetons, fine specimens of pottery, of beauti¬ 
fy embroidered cloth, turquoise and shell 
■welry, stone axes and implements, much dried 
>rn, beans, seeds of squash and various “medi- 
ne” things; sacred pipes, altars, shells and 
owls similar to those used by the Hopi people, 
understand that the story of the work done 
:re by Doctor Fewkes and his conclusions as 
the origin and disappearance of the remark- 
le people who once lived here, is soon to be 
Wished by the Smithsonian Institution. 
One thing is certainly evident. The ancient in- 
bitants of this land made one vast semi-tropi- 
'1 garden of this portion of the Gila valley, 
t it remains a desert to-day simply because 
: white settlers have been vanquished in their 
1 empts to reclaim it. In this instance, at least, 
l: man with a stone axe, and a piece of slate 
'• a shovel, was a better farmer than the white 
n for all his tools of steel and his accurate 
"veying instruments. 
Hder s bee ranch, I find, was once known as 
Walker ranch, where in the days of the 
■jrland trail lived a Judge Walker with his 
xican family in an Apache-proof adobe fort- 
s. But adobe, it seems, was too plebian for 
so he had lumber freighted in by bull 
' ms f rom Santa Fe, at a cost of twenty thou- 
d dollars, and built a wooden mansion for 
senora and senoritas. The vast vineyards 
'planted are overgrown with weeds; the thou- 
■ds of fruit trees he set out are but a mem- 
: the wide canal he dug is choked with 
H the mansion is in ashes. Naught remains 
it all but a couple of tumble-down adobes 
'ch Elder has converted to his own use. 
irectly opposite the big deserted ranch, ris¬ 
ing from the northern edge of the river, is a 
steep cone-like hill known as Walker’s butte, 
where the rancher, I am told, kept a watchman 
day in and day out, to apprise his laborers of 
the approach of the marauding Apaches. I have 
climbed it, and found evidences that it was also 
the watch tower of the ancient tillers of the 
soil. It is only two miles due north of the Casa 
Grande ruins. In imagination one can see the 
watchers—dust centuries ago—standing there 
patiently day after day, scanning the gray des¬ 
ert. I here came a time when his keen eyes 
detected an approaching foe and he gave the 
alarm, perhaps by firing a pile of brush col¬ 
lected for the purpose. 
The dwellers along the canals, no doubt, 
worked always with one eye on that butte, and 
the moment the signal was shown, from near 
and far the women and children, the halt and 
the blind, fled to the protection of the massive 
walls surrounding the central Casa Grande. If 
the foe were few in number, the men most likely 
met and fought them; but if in overwhelming 
numbers they, too, fled to the big pueblo where, 
behind the ten-foot walls, with plenty of water 
and quantities of stored products of the fields, 
they could stand a siege for a very long period 
of time. In this connection it may be said that 
it is not probable they were massacred or driven 
from their homes by a superior foe. One of 
the conclusions of Dr. Fewkes in regard to 
them is that for whatever reason they ceased 
to dwell here, they at least departed in an or¬ 
derly manner, taking with them practically all 
of their household goods and property. In none 
of the rooms were there skeletons, nor any 
confusion of things and burnings, as there would 
have been in case of the storming and taking 
of the pueblo by assault. No skeletons were 
anywhere uncovered except the remains of those 
who had been carefully and decently buried. 
Neither Old Timer nor Sonora could tell me 
what had become of the one time owners of 
the big ranch except that the judge had died 
somewhere in poverty and the family had dis¬ 
appeared. In his palmy days the judge had been 
noted for his lavish hospitality to rich and poor 
alike. The bull whackers, mule skinners, the 
raggedest white and Mexican prospectors and 
Indians, and general riff-raff of the desert, as 
well as the great, were given hearty welcome, 
a place to sleep and abundant supplies. 
“Adamsville was started about the time the 
judge settled on this place,” said Old Timer 
when I asked him for something about the man 
who had tried to make the desert blossom once 
more. “Well, one day after he had been here 
a year or so a lone Mexican, leadin’ a lean, 
dried-up little burro, drifted into the ranch here 
an’ asked for water an’ somethin’ to eat. There 
wan’t anythin’ on the burro but a pick, shovel, 
gold pan an’ two empty panniers. The man 
had no gun; his shirt an’ pants an’ old hat were 
in tatters, he sat down to the grub that was 
piled on the table in front of him an’ eat like 
a wolf. Then he asked for tobacco an’ husks, 
an’ rollin’ half a dozen cigarettes he smoked 
’em one after another till from the smoke 
streamin’ out of the winders you would have 
thought the house was afire. When he finished 
the last one of ’em he fished a piece of quartz 
out of his pocket an’ handed it to the judge. 
It was at least a fourth gold. ’My! my! where 
did you find it?’ the judge asked. 
‘Out there in the mountains,’ the fellow told 
him, wavin’ his hand off toward the southeast. 
I m goin’ to sleep now; when I wake up, maybe 
this evenin’, I’ll tell you all about it.’ 
He went out an’ laid down in the shade of 
the veranda, just as if he owned the place, an’ 
slept all the afternoon, but when supper time 
came he was right on hand to store away an¬ 
other big feed. ‘Now, tel) us all about it,’ said 
the judge, handin’ him the tobacco an’ husks, 
the two of ’em settin’ out in the cool. 
It is not much to tell, senor,’ said the 
cholo. ‘For years I have wandered in the moun¬ 
tains, in Sonora, in Chihuahua, in Abajo Cali¬ 
fornia, and here at last in these Tortilla Moun¬ 
tains I have found great riches. It is a wide 
ledge, senor, and a long one, and most of it 
is yellow speckled like the piece I gave you.’ 
“ ‘How much do you want for the find ?’ 
Senor, that will be for your greatness to 
decide. I will show you the place; you shall 
give me what you please.’ 
"Up came the judge to Adamsville the next 
day an’ gave me the tale, showed me the quartz, 
wanted to know if I would go with him an’ 
have a look at the place. 
“‘How many of us?’ I asked. 
You an’ I an’ the cholo,’ he replied. 
“ ‘No, sir, not on your life,’ I replied. ‘I ain’t 
quite ready yet to furnish material for an 
Apache torture dance. If you’ll make it six of 
us, though, an’ let me pick the men, why, you 
bet I’ll go.’ 
“‘But that’ll be too many; my! my! too many 
altogether to share in the find,’ the judge ob¬ 
jected. ‘It may be only a pocket, you know.’ 
“ ‘Big or little, if you want me, six of us 
goes, I told him, an’ he gave in, agreein’ to 
be on hand the next mornin’ with the cholo an’ 
his share of the pack outfit. 
“Well, I picked out the men I wanted, Sonora, 
here, an’ three others, all good men. The next 
mornin’ when he was gettin’ ready to leave, a 
Pima Indian boy who herded horses for the 
judge, was bent on goin’, too; but the old man 
told him to stay at home an’ watch the herd 
close. Pete—that was his name—shook his head. 
‘No,’ said he in bad Spanish, ‘I will not stay; I 
am going with you.’ 
But I can’t let you go. There is no one 
else to herd,’ the judge told him. ‘Run along, 
now, and turn the bunch out.’ 
“‘I resign right here; right now! You will 
get another herder,’ Pete told him, an’ wheelin’ 
his horse off he went, leavin’ the judge some 
surprised an’ mad. ‘Here, come back,’ he yelled, 
but the Injun paid no attention to him, nor 
turned his head, an’ lit out for the Pima village 
just below here. 
“The judge rustled around, boilin’ mad, an’ 
got a Mexican out of the vineyard to take 
Pete’s place. ‘Senor, I beseech you not to go 
out on the desert with this stranger,’ this man 
said to him. But when asked why he said that 
he couldn’t or wouldn’t give any reason except 
that he and his mates did not know the stranger 
and were suspicious of him. 
“Well, we started, leavin’ Adamsville about 
ten o’clock. The minute I set eyes on the cholo 
I sort of distrusted him, too, an’ so did 
Sonora—” 
That’s what I did, distrusted him on sight.” 
the latter added. “’Twant his rascally face 
alone, either. You remember, Harvey, the first 
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