Q: Is there any likelihood that Casa Grande and the Hohokom in the Salt River area could have been Aztlán?
A: There [are] so many interesting things about the Gila River region because of the Hohokom people, who apparently were moving into the basin with southern Mexican cultural characteristics, including the ball court. The ball court is a kind of a diagnostic feature in many ways of Meso-American culture. They brought that along, and they also, of course, are the people who built these tremendous irrigation ditches all over the Gila and Salt basin. Which again is a characteristic that seems to have originated in that area with them. So they are a Mexican based people, using the term “Mexican” in the sense of modern Mexico, and they spoke language that was probably Uto-Aztecan, although it is true that among the modern cultures of the region, the river Yuman people the Cuachan and the Mojave people, often show Hohokom-like characteristics, even though they speak totally different languages. So obviously there was a great deal of intermarriage and [a]cultural mixture. The Hohokom appear to have dominated not only the Gila and Salt, but also some people think that they had a colony as far north as Flagstaff, around the year 1070.
So, what we’re demonstrating by this is that there’s a lot of Mexican-like contact and influence, even into northern Arizona in the period of time around 1000. There are a lot of other activities that are going on during that period of time, of course. The Athapaskan people, the Navajo people, their myths and tales, begin taking flesh around 1000 A.D. roughly, in that northern region.
Q: Is it conceivable that some Hohokom, having built Casa Grande, having developed these agricultural techniques, could have migrated south to the Valley of Mexico?
A: The Hohokum people may have migrated south to Mexico, going back, as it were, to where they came from. That’s a possibility. Others believe that some of them moved to the Colorado River and intermarried with the Yumans and became absorbed there. Others, undoubtedly, became absorbed among the Pimas and Papagos, with whom they were associated and living. There are some that even think that the Pimas and Papagos are Hohokom descendants.
As far as Casa Grande, itself, is concerned, some scholars believe that Casa Grande was part of a Puebloan tradition that is not necessarily Hohokom. That the Hohokom didn’t necessarily build the large pueblos. You know, there is another very very large pueblo in Chihuahua called Casas Grandes, which is even bigger, a very spectacular place. And that was probably not built by the Hohokom. There were lots of pueblos in Northern Sonora, as at Sahuarita, there was a pueblo like Taos, with many stories, you know. So there are a lot of things going on in northern Sonora and Chihuahua and in the Southwest that we don’t yet really know very much about.
Q: Can we shift for a moment and go to Chaco Canyon?
A: I’m not really expert on Chaco Canyon, but I’ve seen a couple of films about it lately.
Q: It appears that at a certain point in history, the Anasazi leave Chaco Canyon, and there’s been a lot of debate about where they went. Because they disappeared in around 1200, which is coincident with the possible departure from Aztlán, the logical question is were they the forerunners of the Mexitín?A: Before I answer that, I want to read you some things about the ruins in the Colorado River area, so you can see if you want to cover that.
Q: OK.
A: “Between the 1770's and early 1900's, at least four pueblo type ruins were seen along the latter stream of the Colorado. Three in the delta, and one near Blythe. The latter was described by Major Samuel P. Heintzelmann in 1853 as a Spanish ruin located on the detached sandy plateau above the rise of the river, near a place called Hotamine. Hotamine was a Cuachan settlement, located at the southern end of the Palo Verde Valley.”
So you know where the Palo Verde is there, in the Blythe area.
“The ruin there could not have been of Spanish origin because the Spaniards had no settlements along the river.”
So, there was a ruin up there. No one’s ever investigated it.
“In 1775, Juan Bautista de Anza recorded that he had examined an ancient Indian structure, three leagues from Santa Olaya.”
The latter place was about ten leagues, or twenty-five miles southwest of Pilot Knob, which is, roughly, Yuma, down in the delta. De Anza suggested that the ruins represented an attempt to establish a Mexican Aztec empire in the region. So it must have been somewhat similar to other ruins, such as Casa Grande in Arizona, credited to the Aztecs by the Spaniards.
“In 1782, the area of the Cojuanes,” another people related to the Haliaguamis. They’re almost identical people, there in the delta. Their land was referred to as “the land of the Cojuenes,” that is Cojuanes, in place of the Casa Grande. This was apparently eighteen leagues southwest of Fort Yuma Hir-, Hill, near a lagoon. Anza’s Casa Grande would have been in the same area. So, that’s probably worth taking note of.
“In 1826 Lieutenant R. W. Hardy sailed up the Rio Arvi, from the Gulf, and on July 23rd wrote, ‘Near our present situation, one-half league up the Hardy above its junction with the Colorado, is one of those old ruins, which are supposed to mark out the progressive march of the Aztecs from the north to Mexico. It is called by the natives “Casas Grandes” but the Indians have no tradition respecting its former occupiers. None at least that I could learn.’ On July 29th, he was asked by the Indians of the area to pass, quote,'‘over to the Indian encampment at Casas Grandes,' but he didn't do that. About the year 1903, a cowboy, familiar with the delta region, discovered adobe ruins a few miles southeast of the junction of the Colorado and the Hardy. There he saw walls eight feet thick and ten feet high. In 1930, Fred B. Niffin attempted to locate this site, but could not do so, as the cowboy was not available to guide him to the exact location.

Q: Could you sum that up for us?

A: We have, surprisingly, quite a bit of information from early sources about pueblo type ruins in the lower Colorado delta. Some of them from very credible people, like Juan Bautista de Anza, who led a major expeditions to California. In 1775, he examined what he called an ancient structure about twenty-five miles to the southwest of now Yuma, Arizona, in the delta. He thought that they represented a ruin of the Aztecas, Casas Grande, or Casa Grande of the Mexican or Aztec empire, in the region. Similar sites were found later on, a few years later, for example, the territory of the Cojuana people is roughly the same area [and] was referred to as the territory of the Cojuanas and the Casa Grande.
So, I think there’s pretty good documentation that there was a Casa Grande in the delta. Similar structures were seen by Lieutenant Hardy, who explored what is now known as the Rio Arvi, in the 1820's, and also learned about a Casas Grandes, which was supposedly and Aztec ruin, in the delta area. But he didn’t, himself, go over to to see it.
Q: Why is it likely that we won’t find those ruins today?
A: Well, there’s been a lot of shifting in the delta, and they were made of adobe. Apparently, with rains and weathering, they gradually go down to form mounds. And unless you were a trained archeologist, really doing a very careful survey, all you would probably find, today, would be a few mounds. The roofing would have probably deteriorated completely, or have been dragged off by people to use for some other purpose, and so the mounds would be exposed, and would gradually disappear into just adobe hills.
Q: The only other thing I’d like to ask about is Chaco Canyon.
A: The people who are known as Anasazi, which is an Anthapaskan word from the Navajo language. The only group that currently survives, who speaks a Uto-Aztecan [language] are the Hopi. And the Hopi speak a Shoshonean or a Numic branch language, which is from the tribes to the north--Shoshones, Paiutes, Utes. It’s related to those, and to the Indian people of southern California, the Los Angeles basin people.