n doors, would it not have been as simple
to call through the opening? Yet another explanation is that they were
for drainage purpose, the cave man's first rude attempt at modern
plumbing; but that explanation falls down, too; for these openings don't
drain in any regular direction. Such a structure as Casa Grande must
have housed a whole tribe in time of religious festival or war; so you
come back to the explanation of ventilator shafts.

The ceilings of Casa Grande are extraordinarily high; and bodies found
buried in sealed up chambers behind the ruins of the other compounds are
five or six feet long, showing this was no dwarf race. The rooms do not
run off rectangular halls as our rooms do. You tumble down stone steps
through a passage so narrow as to catch your shoulders into a room deep
and narrow as a grave. Then you crack your head going up other steps off
this room to another compartment. Bodies found at Casa Grande lie flat,
headed to the east. Bodies found in the caves are trussed up knees to
chin, but as usual the bodies found at Casa Grande have been shipped
away East to be stored in cellars instead of being left carefully
glassed over, where they were found.

Lower altitude, or the great age, or the quality of the clays, may
account for the peculiarly rich shades of the pottery found at Casa
Grande. The purples and reds and browns are tinged an almost iridescent
green. Running back from the Great House is a heavy wall as of a former
courtyard. Backing and flanking the walls appear to have been other
houses, smaller but built in the same fashion as Casa Grande. Stand on
these ruined walls, or in the doorway of the Great House, and you can
see that five such big houses have once existed in this compound. Two or
three curious features mark Casa Grande. Inside what must have been the
main court of the compound are elevated earthen stages or platforms
three to six feet high, solid mounds. Were these the foundations of
other Great Houses, or platforms for the religious theatricals and
ceremonials which enter so largely into the lives of Southwestern
Indians? At one place is the dry bed of a very ancient reservoir; but
how was water conveyed to this big community well? The river is two
miles away, and no spring is visible here. Though you can see the
footpath of sandaled feet worn in the very rocks of eternity, an
irrigation ditch has not yet been located. This, however, proves
nothing; for the sand storms of a s