CASAS GRANDES ("

Great Houses ")  , a small village of Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua, situated on the Casas Grandes or San Miguel river, about 35 M . S. of Llanos and x5o M . N.W, of the city of Chihuahua . The railway from Ciudad Juarez to Terrazas passes through the town . It is celebrated for the ruins of early aboriginal buildings still extant, about half a mile from its present site . They are built of " sun-dried blocks of mud and gravel, about 22 in. thick, and of irregular length, generally about 3 ft., probably formed and dried in situ." The walls are in some places about 5 ft. thick, and they seem to have been plastered both inside and outside . The principal edifice extends 800 ft. from north to south, and 250 ft. east to west; its general outline is rectangular, and it appears to have consisted of three separate piles united by galleries or lines of lower buildings . The exact plan of the whole is obscure, but the apartments evidently varied in size from mere closets to extensive courts . The walls still stand at many of the angles with a height of from 40 to 50 ft., and indicate an original elevation of several storeys, perhaps six or seven . At a distance of about 450 ft. from the main building are the substructions of a smaller edifice, consisting of a series of rooms ranged round a square court, so that there are seven to each side besides a larger apartment at each corner . The age of these buildings is unknown, as they were already in ruins at the time of the Spanish Conquest . The whole district of Casas Grandes is further studded with artificial mounds, from which are excavated from time to time large numbers of stone axes, metates or corn-grinders, and earthern vessels of various kinds .

These last have a

white or reddish ground, with ornamentation in blue, red, brown or black, and are of much better manufacture than the modern pottery of the country . Similar ruins to those of Casas Grandes exist near the Gila, the Salinas, and the Colorado and it is probable that they are all the erections of one people . Bancroft is disposed to assign them to the Moquis . See vol. iv. of H . H . Bancroft's The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, of which the principal authorities are the Noticias del Estado de Chihuahua of Escudero, who visited the ruins in 1819; an article in the first volume of the Album Mexicano, theauthor of which was at Casas Grandes in r842; and the Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua (1854), by John Russell Bartlett, who explored the locality in 1851 .