Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/58

50 CASAS GRANDES CASAUBON brown, and black, on a red or white ground. The best specimens command a high price in Chihuahua and neighboring towns. On the summit of a mountain, about 10 m. from the Interior View. Casas Grandes, are the remains of an ancient stone fortress, attributed to the same people who built the Casas Grandes, which was prob- ably intended as a lookout. On the Salinas and Gila rivers, in the country of the Pimo and Coco-Maricopa Indians, and in Arizona, are ruins of like character and evidently identical origin, to which the same name is usually applied. The Indians call all such ruins " casas de Mon- tezuma." Of those on the Salinas little remains but shapeless heaps of rubbish, broken pottery, and the traces of several irrigating canals. On the Gila, however, there are three distinct build- ings, all enclosed within a space of 150 yards. The largest measures 50 by 40 ft., and at a dis- tance looks not unlike a square castle, with a tower rising from the centre. The southern wall is badly rent and crumbled, but the other three walls are nearly perfect ; they are rough- ly plastered over on the outside, and hard- finished inside with a composition of adobe. The material of which they are constructed is the same as that used in the Casas Grandes of Chihuahua. The walls are perpendicular with- in, but their exterior face tapers in a curve to- ward the top. One of them is covered with rude figures. The ends of the beams, which denote by their charred appearance that the building was destroyed by fire, are deeply sunk in the walls, and show three stories now stand- ing. The lower floor is divided into five apart- ments. There is an entrance on each of the four sides, but there are no windows except on the W. side, and no traces isf an interior stair- way. The other two buildings are much smaller, and one of them wa^ perhaps merely a watch tower. Both are badly ruined. About 200 yards distant is a circular enclosure, from 60 to 100 yards in circumference, probably in- tended for cattle. For miles around the plain is strewn with fragments of pottery. The ori- gin of these ruins is a subject of doubt. They were seen nearly in their present state by the early explorers of the country, and the Indians then assigned them an age of no less than 500 years. Mr. Squier supposes them to have been the work of the aboriginal race of the Moquia. Late explorations have shown that the whole of the wide region drained by the Gila and Colorado rivers, now for the most part arid and desolate, was once widely if not densely popu- lated. On the cliffs bordering the Colorado, and on the shelves of its rocky banks, in places apparently inaccessible, are remains of consid- erable edifices. Throughout the country west of the Rio Grande are the outlines of buildings, discernible by the stones that supported adobe walls, which have now been washed away by rains, or have been disintegrated by time. The stone buildings of the existing Pueblo Indians do not, as far as plan is concerned, differ much from those of their ancestors. They are built around courts, and are generally about three stories high ; the walls receding by stages, and access being gained only by the use of ladders. When these ladders are drawn in, the various sides present a perpendicular front to an enemy, and the building itself becomes a fortress. These features indicate that before the conquest the quiet, agricultural population of what is gener- Moqui Town, near Tewah. ally called New Mexico was subject to raids or incursions from the barbarous hordes roam- ing to the north and northeast, against whom their casas were probably an efficient protec- tion. The strength of the walls of these struc- tures was proved during the Mexican war, when it wns found that they were impregnable to field artillery. To gain greater security, the ancients built on the high mesas, or terrestrial islands, that abound in the region they occu- pied (precisely as did the barons of Europe in the middle ages), whose level summits could only be reached by narrow and easily defensible passes, in many cases hewn in the rock. The remains of the buildings that crowned these natural fastnesses are conspicuous and interest- ing features in the wide region embraced be- tween the Rio Grande on the east, the Gila on the south, and the Colorado on the west. CASAUBON. I. Isaac, a Swiss theologian and critic, born in Geneva in February, 1559, died in London, July 1, 1614. He was the son of a French Protestant minister, studied at Lau-