Leaving the basin of the Colorado Chiquito, we pass southward to that of the Rio Gila, where the most extensive ruins of all are to be found. Some fine streams enter this river on the north, draining a country very little known, but of great interest, and containing many fertile valleys. The chief of these tributaries are the Rios Preito, Bonito, San Carlos, Salinas, and Rio Verde (which latter two unite before joining the Gila, twelve miles from the Pima villages), and, lastly, the Agua Fia. The great New Mexican guide, Leroux, started northward from the Pima villages in May 1854, crossed over to the junction of the Salinas with the Rio Verde (also called Rio de San Francisco), ascended the latter stream, and crossed from it to the 35th-pa-rallel route along the Colorado Chiquito. He represents the Rio Verde as a fine large stream, in some places rapid and deep, in others spreading out into wide lagoons. The ascent was by gradual steppes, stretching out on either side into plains which abounded in timber -- pine, oak, ash, walnut, sycamore, and cotton-wood. The river-banks were covered with ruins of stone houses and regular fortifications, which were evidently the work of a very civilized race, but did not appear to have been inhabited for centuries. They were built upon the most fertile tracts of the valley, where were signs of acequias and of cultivation. The walls were of solid masonry, of rectangular form, some twenty or thirty paces in length, and from ten to fifteen feet in height. They were usually of two stories, with small apertures or loopholes for defence when besieged, and reminded him strongly of the Moqui pueblos. The large stones of which these structures were built must often have been transported from a great distance. At one place he encountered a well-built fortified town, ten miles distant from the nearest water.
Other travellers and prospectors report many ruined pueblos along the Salinas, others on the San Carlos, and several very extensive ones in the fertile Tonto basin, which is drained by a tributary of the Salinas. Of many of the ruins on the Gila itself, and in the valleys of its southern tributaries, I can speak from personal knowledge. A little west of the northern extremity of the Burro Mountains, the Rio Gila leaves the Santa Rita and other ranges, and meanders for a distance of from seventy to one hundred miles through an open valley of considerable width. This long strip of fertile bottom-land is studded throughout with deserted pueblos, which at the present time belong almost entirely to the third class, viz. those of which the foundations alone mark the localities. It is impossible to travel more than a mile or two along the margin of the lowlands without encountering them; and one of our guides, who knew the ground well, told me that at least 100,000 people must at one time have occupied this valley. The ruins follow the river quite to the mouth of the first canon by which the Gila cuts through the Pina-lerio Mountains.
In the canada of the Aravaypa, on the western side of this range, I examined the ruins of two pueblos, one being a fortification covering the top of a steep hill which guarded the entrance to the Aravaypa canon. All along the San Pedro valley, through which Mr. Hunk's party travelled for 160 miles, ruined pueblos were frequently met with. Amongst them the remains of pottery, such as is in general use amongst the town Indians and Mexicans, were picked up in great abundance. Remains of acequias also were very numerous. Between Camp Grant, where I left my party to enter Old Mexico and the Pima villages, the mesas bordering on the Gila are pretty thickly studded with ruins; but further west than the confluence of the Rio Verde no more traces of pueblos are to be found.
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adapted from A. W. Bell
"On the Native Races of New Mexico"
1869 (Journal of the Ethnological Society of London)
