The Coolidge examiner., 1930-04-18
(By IRWIN HAYDEN
Continued from lost week.

Tor helemdn Illdlly COIHpleISu INC
sweeping up of the floor of his pit
house and found, right in front or
what seem sto have been the door
way, a dandy fire-pit, about 10
inches in diameter and about five
inches deep. If you who read TINS
have never seen a fire-pit, careful
ly lined with adobe or caliche, It's
surface gray with ashes, you have
something to live for. love to con-
template these prehistoric domestic
hearths: love to sift through my
fingers the ashes of their ultimate
fires and endeavor to picture the
scene when those last fires were
lighted.
But we have been trying to pic
ture something more worthwhile
than that, namely, the probable con-
struction of the siding and roof OF
the pithouse. We have found no
postholes, in or about it, henceSwe
cannot we'll postulate posts. Sides
it must have had and roof, but
what supported the roof if any:
Remember that the sides OF the
pits were of calIche, about three to
five inches thick, plastered against
tie soil in which the pits were sonk
Keleman's pit is about 10 feet long
and 13 feet across. The thin caiiche
SIDES would not hold any weight.
A roof does not hang in the air but
must perforCe rest on something.
Perhaps the house was sided an'
rooted by leaning poles against
each other, like q gable roof, bu.
this would involve the setting o.
the ends of the poles in the ground,
and supporting them in the center;
and we have found no trace of posi-
holes or of any wooden beams Lf
poles, or ashes or charcoal Irom
such. The hands of Time have torn
these pages from the book we are
trying to read.
Hohokam Elusive
1t seems the longer we dig in
and around our compound, the less
we know about the Ho-ho-kam, the
vanished people" who, the Pima
say, built and occupied the Casa
Grande ruins in the central Gila
river valley of Arizona. Pithouses
have been found beneath the floors
and walls of some of the COM
pounds; we are finding them over
the walls of ours, indicating that In
this case they are newer than the
compound. The one | am working
in was apparently built in the pc
riod when black -on-white pottery
was the style in decorated ware.
Strange about this black-on-white
ware; | was told today that it ap-
pears rather suddenly here, in full
bloom, as it were, right in the midst
of ruins where, previously, red-on-
buff ware was the rage. This means
something, but what? 1t may mean
that women from some other tribes
which made and used black-on-
white ware were captured and
brought here. They would naturally
continue to make black-on-white
pottery. Or it may signify that
tribes making black-on-white pot
terry came down from the north
(perhaps) and fought these red-on-
buff pottery makers and killed the
men off, sparing the women and
marrying them. The invaders would
of course make black-on-white pot
terry but the captured women would
make red-on-buff.
Many Visitors
1t seems, so 1 am told, that never
has anynone found a black-on-
white burial jar or bowl in this re-
gion. All of the urn burials or buri-
ais in which the remains of Gre
mated bodies are inferred in yes
sells, been so far found in red-on-
buff jars or bowls. Did the people
who made black-on-white pottery
cremate their dead or bury them?
They tell that last year 38 nl0
people visited Casa Grande ruins.
Every day or so some of these Wis
itors come out to watch us dig. Not
many, but those who do come are
almost always very much interest
ed and it is a genuine pleasure to
tell them what little we know about
what we are doing. One of the re-
wards for this sort of work is the
quality of the people we meet; rich
and poor and medium well-off;
highly educated, some well-read
and somC just toierable, but all of
them the salt of the earth. Almost
never have seer. ali. dioagreeabie
or uninteresting people Eangln5
around such digging as ours. Al
most always IN the folks who come
our way there is a very noticeable
gentleness and kindness of spirit;
and e Nv regret that there is
no time tor Cs &c get really ac-
quainted.
DIR. Charles Van Bergen and Mi.
Woodward, curator of history Tor
the Museum of History, Science
and Art, Los Angeles, have appear
ed on the scene. We had good
grist of digging to show them and
more problems than they or we or