The Arizona sentinel., 1901-06-12

A CurioS Indian.

I1Olclu I1OLu SOu uGIl0Iu MOAICO, who claims to be an Aztec, and thoroughly educated in the Aztec language, and Durham is con- vinced that he tells the truth.
 Near Durham station, there is a large amount of "picture writ ing" on the rocks, which is SUD- posed to have been written by the Aztecs. The second day after the Indians arrival at the station, MT. Durham took him to the rocks and pointed to the picture writing" He seemed surprised and delighted, and at once com menced to read the characters. After reading them, he told MT. Durham that they were dated 1237, and stated that about one quarter of a mile in certain di- rection he would find the ruins of an Aztec town. MT. Durham knew the ruins were there, and asked the Indian if he could go to them by the directions given in the writing, and he replied in the affirmative, then went direct to the rnins. He also told MT. Durham that the piles of rock near the ruins, which the latter had supposed were graves, de- noted where the Aztecs, when they left the country, had buried their idols. He stated that ac- cording to the writing on the rocks, he would find these idols by sinking to a vertical depth of thirteen feet and drifting in a certain direction ten feet. He offered to prove the truth of his Interpretation of the writing, by digging up some of the idols. He also stated that according to the writings on the rock, that in 0 certain direction and a certain distance would be found a very large, square house, and that i'll a certain corner of a certain room in this building, ollas containing tablets of stone giving Astec his tory had been buried, and that the tablets also gave a history of and directions to gold mines worked by the Aztecs.
 The direction and distance he read from the rocks and the de- scription of the building, indica- ted that the old Casa Grande ruin was the building referred to. He writes these Aztec char acters on paper with a pencil as readily as we write English words, and writes and reads them from left to right, the same as we do in English. But the most peculiar thing about this Indian curiosity is the fact that when you point out him any animal or object and ask him the English name of it, he will write it down in what he declares is Aztec and then write under it the English name correctly in English letters, but can not pronounce it. He explains this by saying his fath- CT, who was an Aztec scholar, also knew the English alphabet and taught it to him that there are the same number of charact- CTS in the Aztec alphabet as there are in the English alpha bet, and that the arrangement of them is such that by taking the English letters by number, they will correspond with the number of the Aztec characters in the Aztec alphabet. For instance, you point to cat and ask him to give the name in English. He will write it in Aztec first. The numbers of Aztec characters will correspond with the third, first and twentieth letters of our al- phabet, consequently he will write CAT, but could not write it without first writing it in his own language.
 We shall learn something more of this strange character. He may be able, by reading the
 picture writing" which is heard all over this country, to give us some interesting history of this ancient land. Arizona Blade. | -