Casa Grande Ruins Administrative History

Not all travelers were happy with the route through the Casa Grande region. If Brantz Mayer had had his way, the Great House would have been spared the destructive visits of graffiti makers and souvenir hunters. After his 1852 visit, Mayer hoped for the day when steam routes would create the situation whereby "travellers will not be compelled to pass either the desert or those more southern regions where the moldering ruins of Casas Grandes [sic] denote the ancient seat of Indian civilization." Despite his dread of the desert, Mayer did appreciate the Great House enough to include a drawing of it in his work (figure 3). [10]

Figure 3: Sketch of the Casa Grande in 1853.
Brantz, Mayer, Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol. 2, Hartford: S. Drake, 1853.

Probably the most learned man to describe and draw (figure 4) the Great House in the antebellum era came to the area to establish the new boundary between the United States and Mexico following the war between those two nations. Not only would John Bartlett offer the first interpretation for the use of the Casa Grande, but he suggested means by which it could be preserved. Bartlett speculated that the inner rooms must have been used to store corn and perhaps the whole building had been a granary. He noted that the base of the outside walls had crumbled and had been cut inward some twelve to fifteen inches. Since this destabilized the structure, he thought that a couple days spent in restoring the wall bases with mud and gravel would keep the building durable for centuries. [11]

Figure 4: 1852 Drawing of the Great House.
John R. Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations, Vol. 2, NY.: D. Appleton & Co., 1854.

Bartlett was quite familiar with Casa Grande before he arrived there since he had read the accounts of Juan Mateo Manje and Pedro Font. While marking the international boundary along the Gila River on July 12, 1852, Bartlett found the Great House. He wrote that two or three miles before getting there he noticed irrigation canals and broken pottery. The surrounding countryside was covered with twelve-to twenty-foot high mesquite. On the site, he noted that there were three buildings. The Great House, with three stories and a dimension of fifty by forty feet, was the best preserved although its top had crumbled. Bartlett decided that there must have been a fourth story, otherwise he could not account for all the rubbish inside the structure. The thick walls consisted of large square blocks of mud which Bartlett thought were prepared by pressing earth into boxes that were about two feet high and four feet long. Exterior walls tapered inward toward the top. The southern front wall had fallen in places and had long fissures, but the other three sides were "quite perfect." On the outer surface, the walls had been given a rough plaster, but on the inside the surface had received a hard finish. Inside the rooms, he saw the charred ends of four-to five-inch diameter beams in the walls. [12]

Numerous ruins could be seen in the immediate area of the Casa Grande. Near the Great House to the southwest, a second ruin stood with a two-story central section. A third ruin was located just northeast of the Casa Grande, but it was in such poor condition that its original form could not be discerned. In fact Bartlett saw mounds of dirt in every direction, suggesting the remains of a large number of structures. Bartlett was the first to describe a semi-circular embankment with an eighty-to 100-yard circumference located just northwest of the Great House. He had found the ballcourt although he did not realize it at the time. Interspersed with the mounds were numerous pottery fragments. Bartlett collected some of these pottery pieces. [13]

In his narrative, Bartlett included the accounts of Casa Grande produced by Lt. Juan Mateo Mange and Padre Pedro Font. He wrote that in 1775 Font had thought the Aztecs had built the Great House some 500 years before that date. Bartlett professed not to understand how the Aztec story had originated since there was not one shred of evidence to support such a tale. He observed that even the Aztec language differed from that of tribes to the north. [14]

In 1853 the United States approached the Mexican government seeking to purchase land south of the Gila River for a southern transcontinental railroad. James Gadsden, the American negotiator, succeeded in reaching an agreement on December 30, 1853. It was approved in Washington in June 1854. At that time Casa Grande fell within American territory. Since the Apache had established pre-eminence in that area, few white men chose to travel in the vicinity of the Casa Grande in the latter 1850s and 1860s. J. Ross Browne and Charles Poston accompanied by a contingent of California Volunteers and guided by Cyrus Lennan, a local trader, did visit the ruins in January 1864. The route from the Pima headquarters at Sacaton along the Gila River proved difficult because of the numerous groves of dense mesquite. Once at the Great House, the party found the ruins in the same condition as previous viewers. Like Bartlett, Browne made a drawing (figure 5) and noted that the upper part of the structure had been washed and furrowed by rain, while the base had worn away to such depths that it threatened the whole building. Much of the group's time was spent in collecting souvenirs. The guide, Lennan, told Browne that on previous occasions he had dug at Casa Grande and had found a number of bone awls. Others, Lennan stated, had uncovered items of flint, bone, and stone. When the assemblage departed, they left "well laden with curiosities." Everyone had his pottery fragments as well as specimens of adobe and plaster. [15]

Figure 5: 1864 Drawing of the Great House.
J. Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974