came everywhere, I and the boundary commission,
upon the ruins left by parties who
had gone on the same road before us. Abandoned
waggons here take the place of the
dead camels of other deserts; we found them
occasionally baking in the sun, or arrived at
places where we saw much iron strewn about,
with fragments of vehicles, tin kettles, and
camp equipage, impediments that had been
destroyed by overburdened men. More
valuable property lies along the whole overland
route to California deposited in caches.
That Hudson's bay term, cache, has extended
to the shores of the Pacific. Men perplexed
by the dangers and difficulties of transit on
their way out or their way home, bury
valuable property that they carry with them,
in the hope that they or their friends may at
a future time recover it. A tree or rock, or
any durable object easily to be recognised in
after time is selected, from which bearings
are taken, and a distance of say fifty feet is
measured. At the point so found, and so to
be found again by any man who knows the distance
and the bearings chosen, there is a hole
dug, the property is buried, and protected if
needful by cloth or boards. The earth or
sand is thrown over it and strewn about, so
that no indication may remain to betray
hidden treasure. Perhaps to account for any
ineffaceable disturbance of the ground, a camp
fire is lighted on the spot. It is estimated
that of every hundred caches so made not five
are ever opened afterwards, and even of those
some are discovered and opened by the
Indians. If there were any seed of fruitfulness
in all these buried treasures there would
be stranger things than petahayas springing
up out of the deserts of the Gila.

Upon one spot, when there was evidence
of a great breaking-up of property, the tires
of two wheels straightened had been embedded
firmly in the soil. They were no
doubt landmarks from which bearings and
distances had been taken for a cache. Farther
on, after descending from a crest of table
land, there was a piece of rocky ground
covered with fragments of trunks and waggons,
among which were human bones and skulls.
That was the scene of the disaster that fell
on the family of Mr. Oatman in March of the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-one. Mr.
Oatman was travelling, in company with
other emigrants, and had with him waggons
and merchandise. Against advice, he set off
in advance of his companions from the Pimo
villages. His little son came back among the
Indians some days afterwards, a child of
twelve years old, beaten and bruised, who
had returned on foot through seventy miles
of wilderness, forty-five of them without
water, to report that the Indians had killed
his father and his mother, and carried off his
sisters. He had himself been beaten and left
for dead. When he revived he had seen only
the mangled bodies of his parents, and the
wreck of their property. His two sisters,
girls of from twelve to fifteen years old, were
gone. The perpetrators of this outrage were
Apache Indians, and the Maricopas went
with the child on a fruitless expedition for
the recovery of the two girls who are at this
hour, if they be not killed, detained among
the savages. The Maricopas covered Mr.
Oatman and his wife with stones, for no grave
could be dug in those inhospitable rocks, and
went on to inform the Major at Fort Yuma.

The rocks in many parts of this district
are covered with rude sculpture, after such
designs as the youngest European children
might amuse themselves by scrawling on
their slates. Mr. Bartlett doubts whether
they mean more than that some Indians have
in these places amused themselves by scratching
where their forefathers have scratched.
The sculptures are of all ages, and some may
belong to the very ancient times when men
lived about here who built tall houses of
masonry—"houses of Montezuma," as the
Indians have learnt to call them—casas
grandes, as set down by the geographers.

They are no great houses that are built by
the poor Coco-Maricopas of to-day. Their
habitations look more like rabbit warrens.
There are twenty or fifty of these houses to
a village surrounded by trees and gardens;
for these Indians, unlike the Apaches, settle
upon a spot of ground and cultivate it, giving
fruitfulness to it by diverting water from
the river into aqueducts, so that they will
use up in summer even the whole stream in
the irrigation of their soil. Their houses
are dens built of sticks and straw, with or
without mud. Forked poles are stuck
upright in the ground; poles are laid across
them; and about these there are sticks laid
so that a rude kennel is formed in which a
man cannot stand upright, and into which he
creeps by a hole some three feet square.
Rushes or straw are woven between the poles,
and the whole mansion is sometimes stuccoed
with mud. In these houses the Indians sit
and sleep, and to these they retire when the
weather is inclement; but their ordinary
life is out of door or under rude arbours
attached to their more solid wigwams.
Constructed in the same way as the dwelling-
house, but with more care, loftier and better
ventilated, is the storehouse of each family,
in which wheat, shelled maize, petahaya, and
all the provisions for the season in which no
fruit grows, is kept in vases of thick, close
basket-work, large enough to contain ten,
twelve, or even fifteen bushels of grain.

The party engaged in the business of the
boundary commission having encamped near
the Maricopa village, was soon surrounded
by the friendly villagers. One of their chiefs,
Francisco Dukey, who spoke Spanish well,
was their interpreter; and, in return for
white cotton cloth, calico, red flannel, and
other shirts, the friendly Indians soon
brought into the camp such provisions as
were to be had at that time of the year.