Two good-sized ruins are situated near the Pima villages; one is known as Casa Montezuma, the other as Casa Grande. Casa Montezuma, also called Casa Blanca, consists of the remains of four large houses, one of which is tolerably perfect as a ruin. Around it are piles of earth showing where others had been; and although ten miles distant from the river, all the intervening space is intersected by acequias, and was no doubt once under cultivation. The chief ruin is four stories high, and forty feet by fifty wide; the walls face the cardinal points and have four estufas four feet by two in size. The rafters inside were almost entirely destroyed by fire; but, as far as could be seen, they had been very roughly hewn. The walls consisted of brick, mortar, and pebbles, smoothed without and plastered within. The arrangements of the rooms, the presence of doors, and the absence of terraces would lead one not to attribute this building to Aztec origin. The Pimas, however, account for it thus: -- Long ago a woman of exquisite beauty ruled over the valleys and the region south of them. Many suitors came from far to woo her, and brought presents innumerable of corn, skins, and cattle to lay at her feet. Her virtue and determination to continue unmarried remained alike unshaken; and her store of worldly possessions so greatly increased that, when drought and desolation came upon her land, she fed her people out of her great abundance and did not miss it, there was so much left. One night, as she lay asleep, her garment was blown from off her breast, and a dew-drop from the Great Spirit fell upon her bosom, entered her blood, and caused her to "conceive. In time, she bore a son, who was none other than Montezuma, and who built the large casas and all the other ruins which are scattered through the land. After instructing his people in the arts of civilization he departed for the south and then disappeared.

Casa Grande is situated a little below the junction of the Rio Verde and the Salinas. It is a rectangular ruin, 220 feet by 68, whose sides face the cardinal points. The highest walls are, as usual, to be found in the centre of the pile, and they appear to have been three or four stories high.

Besides abundance of broken pottery, we found sea-shells (often pierced and otherwise converted into ornaments) about the ruins which skirt the Gila and neighbouring streams, showing that these people must have had some intercourse with tribes living along the coast. These shells may have been brought by tribes inhabiting the Lower Colorado across the Sonora Desert, to exchange for food, clothing, and other Pima manufactures; but I think it most probable that the kindred race, the Papagos, were the chief venders of shells; for they are great traders, and wander through all Northern Sonora, from the Gulf of California to the Sierra Madre, and even now supply the scanty population of this region with sea-salt obtained from some salt-lakes near the coast.

The Pimas themselves state positively that at one time they were a great and powerful nation, living in houses similar to the ruins found on the Gila; but after the destruction of their kingdom they travelled southward, and settled in the valley where they now dwell; fearing lest they should again become an object of envy to a future enemy, they were content ever afterwards to live in huts.

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adapted from A. W. Bell
"On the Native Races of New Mexico"
1869 (Journal of the Ethnological Society of London)