NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
A Village of an Unknown People 
Crumbling Ruins of a Forgotten People and a 
Wonderful Civilization 
By M. J. Brown 
All over Arizona are what is left 
of ancient ruins. Some have been ex- 
cavated and throw much light on an- 
cient America. Many, probably hun- 
dreds of them, have never been un- 
covered. 
In Central Arizona, through the 
cow country, very often will be found 
a mound of earth, a large mound. If 
the soil is free from stones or large 
rocks it is a safe bet it is an ancient 
ruin, a former home of the Aztecs or 
any old antiquity you care to guess. 
A ranchman showed me a hill near 
his ranch house which he said he was 
positive covered a remarkable ruin, 
from the fact it was similar in every 
way with mounds the Smithsonian 
people had excavated in different 
parts of the state, only much larger. 
He said he had long wondered why 
this mound had not been examined. 
The hill was like hundreds of 
mounds you will see everywhere, and 
it was covered with live oak scrub 
trees that had grown there for many 
years. There was no rock, just dry 
earth, and the rancher said “Some 
day” the boys would dig into ib, tor 
pottery and relics. He had_ lived 
there 19 years waiting for the favor- 
able some day. 
But these speculative ruins are not 
what I am going to write of. I am 
going to tell you of one of the most 
wonderful visible ruins in America 
today — most wonderful excepting 
the Prve cliff dwellers’ ruins. 
~ I have never been very much in- 
terested in the excavated communial 
ruins, for the reasons that there was 
so little to see, and so much to imagine 
and then I have always had the opin- 
‘on these “came after” the cave house 
and cliff dwellers —- were more mod- 
ern as it were, in ancient days. 
But I heard so much about the 
great ruins near Florence, and the 
scattered ruins around it, that | put 
the cliff people in the attic, and went 
to see this prehistoric locality. 
It goes by a half dozen names, but 
the two that seem to stick tightest are 
Montezuma’s Castle and Casa Grande. 
And here are as many legends and 
stories concerning it as there are 
names. Anyone can spring one and it 
has got to go for there is no way to 
disprove it. The great walls are 
standing (there today, slowly crumb- 
ling. They have stood there hundreds 
of years. None know who built them 
nor when they were built, and none 
will ever know positively. 
There it stands out in the Arizona 
sunshine today. Its great walls are 
roofless and in places have fallen, 
leaving great holes. It is a monument 
of antiquity for we who have come 
after, to guess about. 
The building proper is about 60 x 
too feet, but the excavated walls, 
small buildings, in connection with 
this “castle” cover much ground, and 
for years were covered and hidden by 
mesquite trees, sage brush and great 
cacti. 
The walls of this once great build- 
ing were, I judged, fully seven feet 
through, made of ’dobi mud mixed 
with some sort of mortar, and those 
walls are far older than United States 
Listory. 
‘The inside of these walls were fin- 
ished almost as smooth as a plaster- 
ed wall, and there are places whure 
the polish yet is almost as good as 
{he day it was laid, 
Once the building was four storie; 
high, so it was said, and the piles of 
crumbled dirt bear this out, but now 
the highest points of the ancient walls 
are not more than three stories and 
the roof and its beams have long 
fallen and. rotted. It is cut into 
rooms and halls by partitions, which 
are about four feet thick, and it 1s 
claimed ‘that the great building once 
had wooden stairways and ceilings, 
but that hundreds of years ago the 
Apaches set fire to the interior. 
This castle was the big central 
building of a community of homes, 
the entire village being surrounded by 
a wall. Inside were many small build- 
ings, subteranean rooms, ceremonial 
rooms, burial places, courts, plazas, 
terraces and much that shows this an- 
cient ruin was occupied by a civilized 
people. ‘There are in the outlines of 
irrigation ditches from the Gila river, 
there are plans of drainage for sew- 
erage, and the excavated pottery 
shows the inhabitants of this city 
were not the Indians. 
the entire ruins as inclosed by the 
wall were as nearly as I could place 
them about 250x450 feet, and there 1s 
every evidence that it has densely 
populated. 
Five years ago Congress made an 
appropriation for the excavation of 
this inclosure and for part of two 
years men and teams worked taking 
4) 
out the dirt and exposing the wall 
around the whole village and _ the 
walls of the many smaller buildings 
around the great ruin. I had no 
doubt the Interior Department has 
detailed descriptions and _ official 
guesses on this place, but 1 would 
rather take the legends and little 
scraps of history handed down _ to 
those who have lived in this vicinity 
for many years, It is so much more 
interesting than a government circular 
About half of the enclosure has not 
been excavated. 
It is however reliable history that 
this ruin was first seen by Spanish 
priests in 1694—and it was a ruin 
then and its legends, told me that it 
was undoubtedly at least goo years 
old. 
The question who built this city is 
a question that probably will never be 
assured, for the answer was lost long 
before a white man ever saw America. 
It was doubtless occupied for hun- 
dreds of years and then abandoned. 
Some of the old fellows will tell 
you it was built by ithe Aztecs. Again 
others claim that Montezuma was 
the founder, and that his spirit lives 
there today. The superstitious Mexi- 
cans and Indians fully believe this 
fairy tale; think the place is haunted, 
and many of them could not be induc- 
ed to enter the grounds. It is said the 
Mexicans cross themselves whenever 
they pass near the ruins, 
Over in one corner of the ruins a 
man showed me where some skeletons 
were found and he said the bones 
were in a fairly good state of preser- 
vation, and he judged from that the 
ruins could not be anywhere near 
1000 years old as many claim. But to 
me this was no argument, for the dry 
and petrifying air of this locality, and 
the earth which seldom sees rain, help 
to preserve everything and prevent de- 
cay. But for jthese conditions the 
great earth walls of the castle would 
have long since have been but a 
mound of earth. 
Some beautiful specimens of pot- 
tery, vases and other ornamental 
pieces have been excavated, proving 
that the ancient inhabitants were not 
only civilized but cultured. 
This ruin differs in many particu- 
lars from the scores of other ruins 
that have been partially excavated in 
Arizona, and it is said there has never 
been a piece of pottery, implements 
or shell found at the castle that in any 
manner correspond to other like relics 
in ruins less than roo miles distant. 
Whether this ruin was older, younger 
or of a distinctly different people, we 
can only guess. 
After I had returned to town, an 
old man, I would judge 70 years old, 
