Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/26

] Mouth. The site of this settlement was visited by the writer in April, 1902. It is marked by several acres of potsherds that are scattered about the sand dunes on the south side of the dry river bottom that is scarcely lower than the level of the plain. A few Mexican families have lived in the vicinity for many years, pumping water from a depth of a hundred feet and depending upon crops of corn and beans raised in the summer when a few showers fall upon their fields. These Mexicans plow out stone implements and bits of pottery, but have never found any burial places. There are two medium-sized adobe ruins on the flat river bottom; one of these has walls of the same pisé type that is exhibited by the Casa Grande ruin (pl. ), situated 25 miles to the northward. from S. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 1, 559, 35th Cong., 2d sess., 1859. The number of Maricopas is included that the comparatively small importance of that tribe may be appreciated.

Mr Browne, a member of Commissioner Poston’s party that visited the villages in January, 1864, wrote: "The number of Pima villages is 10; Maricopas, 2; separate inclosures, 1,000." (J. Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country, 110.) On a later page (290) he gives the population by villages, of which he names but seven:

"There are 1,200 laboring Pimas and 1,000 warriors."

James F. Rueling (The Great West and the Pacific Coast, 369), who visited the Pimas in 1867, also states that there were then ten Pima villages.