Note IV'-23 — Chapter IV · OBSERVATIONS ON NEW SPAIN.[IV'-1]

That is, Rio San Francisco, one of the initial forks of the Gila: see the map, and note19. The other is the main continuation of the Gila, sometimes called Rio San Domingo. The confluence is in Arizona, a few miles over the New Mexican border. There are mountains in this region called the San Francisco divide, and others known as the San Francisco range—both by no means to be confounded with the San Francisco mt. of the range in north-central Arizona. Whether the ruins of which Pike speaks as on this river be the work of the aboriginal colonists of Old Mexico from the northwest is, of course, in question; he simply renders a prevalent opinion of his time. The oldest authentic ruins known to exist in Arizona have only very recently been brought to light by the exhumations conducted by my friend, Mr. Frank H. Cushing, of the Hemenway Archæological Expedition, in 1886-88, in the valley of the Salado or Salt r., near the town of Tempe, and not far from Phœnix. An account of these discoveries, from the pen of Dr. Washington Matthews, U. S. A., forms part of the Seventh Memoir of Vol. VI. of Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1893, pp. 142-161, figs. 1-22. Mr. Cushing dug up mounds he supposes to be from 1,000 to 2,000 years old, full of bones and pottery, and revealing structures, some of which recall the long famous Casa Grande itself. The buildings represented by the cluster of mounds crowded an area some 6 m. long and ½ to 1 m. wide. Five of the best marked mounds, standing in the places of groups of houses, have been named Los Muertos, Los Guanacos, Los Hornos, Las Canopas, and Las Acequias. Four kinds of architecture have been recognized as priest-temples (style of Casa Grande); sun-temples, in some cases 200 feet long by 150 broad; certain great communal houses, a sort of several-storied prototypes of our modern city flats; and ultramural huts, jacals, or wickiups. I should have called them respectively hierœcias, heliœcias, synœcias, and exœcias. Those old Saladoans had an extensive system of irrigation, the lines of acequias madres or mother-ditches alone representing over 150 m. of dug-way; some of these canals are now utilized by the new-comers. It took many thousand people many years to leave monuments like these. Their actual antiquity is unknown; that it is very great is obvious; it is great enough to have resulted in the disappearance of everything but bone and clay. There is no sign of wood-work or textile fabric. Conjecture of a thousand years or more may reasonably be based on comparison of the natural rate of decay of structures known since the historic period, 1540. Thus, the Casa Grande has not changed perceptibly in our day, except from vandalism, and probably looks much as it did 350 years ago. It would appear also that the same indefatigable explorer has settled the long-mooted question of the Seven Cities of Cibola (Cebola, Sibola, Zibola), against any theory of their being the Moki (Tusayan) villages, or being anywhere else than in the vicinity of Zuñi itself. The names which have come down to us since Coronado, 1541, are: (1) Ahacus, Avicu, Aquico, Jahuicu, Havico; (2) Canabe; (3) ...; (4) Aquinsa; (5) Alona; (6) Musaqui, Maçaque, Maçaquia; (7) Caquina. According to a certain phonetic system the preferable spelling is given as: (1) Hawiku; (2) Kyanawe; (3) Ketchupawe; (4) Apina or Pinawan; (5) Halona; (6) Matsaki; (7) Kyakima. All these were in what is now Valencia Co., N. M.; two were some miles S. W. of Zuñi, near the village of Ojo Caliente; two were nearer Zuñi, but E. of it; two were within 3 m. of Zuñi, S. of it; while one, Halona, occupied in part, at least, the site of the present pueblo. The ruin of Hishota-uthla, classed as "Cibolan" though not as one of the Seven Cities, is 12 m. N. E. of Zuñi, on the road to Fort Wingate; excavation there has revealed "a compactly-built, many-storied stronghold of stone containing a population of probably more than a thousand people," supposed to have been dead and gone long before Coronado passed that way. Zuñi, now one of the best known of all the extant pueblos in New Mexico, is also the best living exemplar of such places. Its antiquity is great, though hardly estimable with precision. Some of its inhabitants made a tour of the United States under Mr. Cushing's management in 1881 and 1882. Immense collections of implements, utensils, and the like were made about that time by the late Colonel James Stevenson, and deposited in our museums. I visited the town in the summer of 1864, when it was far from having been as well exploited as it has since become; so my own observations are obsolete. The Zuñi nation, otherwise Çuni, Sune, Soone, Suinyi, Shiwina, etc., sole member of the Zuñian linguistic stock, has but one permanent pueblo, though it also inhabits at times three other small villages, of the nature of "summer resorts," as we should say of our similar æstival refuges. These Indians numbered 1,613 by the census of 1890. They are well distinguished by their speech from all the various Tusayan, Tañoan, and Keresan pueblonians of New Mexico, Arizona, and Chihuahua: for some of which, see next note.