Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/30

] posed that the Casa Grande pueblo was under the control of "Siba" or "Siʼvan$y$;" indeed it is now frequently designated "Siʼvan$y$ Ki" by the Pimas. Fifteen miles southeast of the Casa Grande ruin is the mountain ridge that rises abruptly from the nearly level plains which is known as Ta-aʼtûkam or Picacho mountain. Picacho is an isolated peak south of the mountain. The pass between them, through which the main trail ran from the Pima villages to Tucson, and through which the railroad has been built, was one of the most dreaded portions of the overland trail when the Apaches were "out," as they were most of the time. To the northeast of the mountain is a small pueblo ruin that lies about 15 miles from the river, which is apparently the nearest water. It was probably occupied during a part of the year only. East of the mountain is a ruin called Kĭsʼtcoĭt Vatcĭkʽ, Table Tank; on the north is one known as Moʼ-okʽ Vatcĭkʽ, Sharp Tank; and at the foot of Ta-aʼtûkam, on the west, is Aʼ-alt Vapʽtckʽ, Small Tanks. Southwest of the mountain were situated the Pima village of Akûtcĭny and the two pueblo ruins previously mentioned. There is another small pueblo ruin a few miles northwest of the site of Akûtcĭny, but no others of similar type are known to the writer at any point in Arizona south of Picacho. A personal examination of all the ruins of the southeastern part of the Territory has shown them to be of a different type from those of the upper and lower Gila and the Salt river valleys. The ruins along the San Pedro, it is true, extend to the southward of the parallel of Picacho, and it is believed to be desirable that some of them be explored. Superficially they resemble the ruins about Solomonsville, where cremation Salado, Gila, and Verde has no light shed upon it by their folk-lore tales. "Here the statements of the Pimas, which Mr Walker has gathered, are of special value; and to him I owe the following details: The Pimas claim to have been created where they now reside, and after passing through a disastrous flood—out of which only one man, Cĭ-hö, was saved—they grew and multiplied on the south bank of the Gila until one of their chiefs, Ci-vă-nŏ, built the Casa Grande. They call it to-day 'Ci-vă-nŏ-qi' (house of Ci-vă-nŏ); also 'Văt-qi' (ruin). A son of Ci-vă-nŏ settled on lower Salt river, and built the villages near Phoenix and Tempe. At the same times tribe with which they were at war occupied the Rio Verde; to that tribe they ascribe the settlements whose ruins I have visited, and which they call 'O-ŏt-gŏm-vătqi' (gravelly ruins). The Casa Blanca and all the ruins south of the Gila were the abodes of the forefathers of the Pimas, designated by them as 'Vĭ-pĭ-sĕt' (great-grandparents), or 'Ho-ho-qŏm’ (the extinct ones). (Ci-vă-nŏ had twenty wives, etc. ['Each of whom wore on her head, like a headdress, the peculiar half-hood, half-basket contrivance called Ki'-jo.' Papers Archeol. Inst.,, 463.]) At one time the Casa Grande was beset by enemies, who came from the east in several bodies, and who caused its abandonment; but the settlements at Zacaton, Casa Blanca, etc., still remained, and there is even a tale ['It is even said that the people of Zacaton made war upon their kindred at Casa Blanca and blockaded that settlement by constructing a thorny hedge around it. Through the artifices of the medicine-men the hedge turned into a circle of snakes.' Papers Archeol. Inst.,, 464] of intertribal war between the Pimas of Zacaton and those of Casa Blanca after the ruin of Casa Grande. Finally, the pueblos fell one after the other, until the Pimas, driven from their homes, and moreover decimated by a fearful plague, became reduced to a small tribe. A portion of them moved south into Sonora, where they still reside, but the main body remained on the site of their former prosperity. I asked particularly why they did not again build houses with solid walls like those of their ancestors. The reply was that they were too weak in numbers to attempt it, and had accustomed themselves to their present mode of living. But the construction of their winter houses—a regular pueblo roof bent to the ground over a central scaffold—their organization and arts, all bear testimony to the truth of their sad tale, that of a powerful sedentary tribe reduced to distress and decadence in architecture long before the advent of the Spaniards." Bandelier in Fifth Ann. Rep. Archeol. Inst. Am., 1883–84, 80, 81.