first found it. Kino identified it as the ruin which Fray
Marcos saw in 1539 and called Chichilticalli, and which Coronado passed
in 1540. The early Spanish historians believed it an ancestral
settlement of the Aztecs.

Its formal discovery followed a century and a half later. Domingo
Jironza Petriz de Cruzate, governor of Sonora, had directed his nephew,
Lieutenant Juan Mateo Mange, to conduct a group of missionaries into the
desert, where Mange heard rumors from the natives of a fine group of
ruins on the banks of a river which flowed west. He reported this to
Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, the fearless and famous Jesuit missionary
among the Indians from 1687 to 1711; in November, 1694, Kino searched
for the ruins, found them, and said mass within the walls of the Casa
Grande.

This splendid ruin is built of a natural concrete called culeche. The
external walls are rough, but are smoothly plastered within, showing the
marks of human hands. Two pairs of small holes in the walls opposite
others in the central room have occasioned much speculation. Two look
east and west; the others, also on opposite walls, look north and
south. Some persons conjecture that observations were made through them
of the solstices, and perhaps of some star, to establish the seasons for
these primitive people. "The foundation for this unwarranted
hypothesis," Doctor Fewkes writes, "is probably a statement in a
manuscript by Father Font in 1775, that the 'Prince,' 'chief' of Casa
Grande, looked through openings in the east and west walls 'on the sun
as it rose and set, to salute it.' The openings should not be confused
with smaller holes made in the walls for placing iron rods to support
the walls by contractors when the ruin was repaired."

TUMACACORI NATIONAL MONUMENT

One of the best-preserved ruins of one of the finest missions which
Spanish priests established in the desert of the extreme south of
Arizona is protected under the name of the Tumacacori National Monument.
It is fifty-seven miles south of Tucson, near the Mexican border. The
outlying country probably possessed a large native population.

The ruins are most impressive, consisting of the walls and tower of an
old church building, the walls of a mortuary chapel at the north end of
the church, and a surrounding court with adobe walls six feet high.
These, like all the Spanish missions, were built by Indian converts
under the direction of priests, for the Spanish invaders pe