[Footnote: History of Mexico, Cullen's Trans., 1, 119.]

If by the word Aztlan was intended "place of Cranes", and on the supposition that these tribes migrated from the San Juan region, the reasons for the designation are justified. The Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis) is one of the largest and most conspicuous of American birds, and is still found from the British Possessions to New Mexico, and winters in the latter. I saw a pair of these great birds in 1878, in the valley of the Animas River. Dr. Cones remarks that "thousands of Sandhill Cranes repair each year to the Colorado River Valley, flock succeeding flock along the course of the great stream from their arrival in September until their departure the following spring. Taller than the Wood Ibises or the largest Herons with which they are associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 534.]

It is an Indian trait to mark localities by some conspicuous feature or fact, and the selection of the Sandhill Crane to indicate their home country would have accorded with Indian usages.

Again, Herrera, who presents the current traditions, observes, that "these peoples painted their original in the manner of a cave, and said they came out of seven caves to people the country of Mexico.... After the six above mentioned races departed from their country, and settled in New Spain, where they were much increased, the seventh race being the Mexican nation, a warlike and polite people, who adoring their god Vitsilpuztli, he commanded them to leave their own country, promising them they should rule over other races in a plentiful country, and much wealth." [Footnote: History of America, iii, p. 188, 190.]

It is worthy of remark that the cave dwellings or cliff houses are in the San Juan district, the most of them being on the Mancos River, and on the western portion of the San Juan. These traditions may in fact refer to these cave dwellings as the original homes of their ancestors, and at the same time without precluding the supposition that they also constructed and inhabited some of the pueblo structures now in ruins in other parts of the same area. All the early accounts concur in representing the Aztecs or Mexicans, when they first arrived in Mexico, as subsisting by the cultivation of maize and plants, as constructing houses of stone, and with a religious system which recognized personal gods. These statements are probably true. They had attained to the statue of Village Indians. This again renders New Mexico their probable original home as the only area in the north where ruins of structures of tribes so far advanced have been found.

The San Juan district is remarkably situated in its geographical relations. This river, rising in the crests of the high mountains forming the water-shed or divide between the Atlantic and Pacific, flows southward until it enters the table-land formation, through which it flows in a southwesterly and then northwesterly direction, making a long, sweeping curve in New Mexico and Arizona, after which it runs westerly to its confluence with the Colorado. It receives from the north the following tributaries, rising like itself in the high mountains, the Piedra, Pine River (Los Pinos), the Animas, the La Plata, the Mancos, the McElmo, now dry, and the Hovenweep and Montezuma creeks, now nearly dry. Its southern tributaries are the Navajo, Chaco, and De Chelly.

With such evidences of ancient occupation, here and elsewhere in the San Juan country, we are led to the conclusion that the Village Indians increased and multiplied in this area, and that at some early period there was here a remarkable display of this form of Indian life, and of house architecture in the nature of fortresses, which must have made itself felt in distant parts of the continent. On the hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family, where they depended chiefly upon a fish subsistence, we have in the San Juan country a second center and initial point of migrations founded upon farinaceous subsistence. That the struggle of the Village Indians to resist the ever continuous streams of migration flowing southward along the mountain chains has been a hard one through many centuries of time, is proved by the many ruins of abandoned or conquered pueblos which still mark their settlements in so many places. At the present moment there is not a Village Indian in the San Juan district. It is entirely deserted of this class of inhabitants.

That the original ancestors of the principal historic tribes of Mexico once inhabited the San Juan country is extremely probable. That the ancestors of the principal tribes of Yucatan and Central America owe their remote origin to the same region is equally probable. And that the Mound Builders came originally from the same country, is, with our present knowledge, at least a reasonable conclusion.

Indian migrations have occurred under the influence, almost exclusively, of physical causes, operating in a uniform manner. These migrations, involving the entire period of the existence here of the inhabitants of both American continents, will be found to have a common and connected history. A study of all the facts may yet lead to an elucidation and explanation of these migrations with some degree of certainty. The hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia River was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family holds the best chance of solving the great problem of the origin and distribution of the Indian tribes.

[Relocated Footnote: Where maize was indigenous is unknown, except that it was somewhere upon the American continent. It is the only cereal America has given to the world. At the period of European discovery, it was found cultivated and a staple article of food in a large part of North America and in parts of South America. There were also found beans, squashes, and tobacco, with the addition in some areas of peppers, tomatoes, cocoa and cotton. The problem of the place of the origin of maize is probably insoluble, but speculations are legitimate and such are all I have to offer.

The fecundity of plant-life in the Rocky Mountains is remarkable, particularly on the southern slopes, where they subside into the mesa, or table-land formation, north of the San Juan River. The continental divide is in the eastern margin of the region. The first suggestion I wish to make is that all cereals and cultivated plants must have originated in the great continental mountains of the two hemispheres, and have propagated themselves along the water courses of the mountain valleys down to the plains traversed by the great rivers formed by these mountain tributaries. All the cereals belong to the family of the Grasses (Gramineae), and each of them, doubtless, is the last of a series of antecedent forms.

I saw rye, barley and oats growing wild by self-propagation in the mountain valleys of Colorado the present season; and also the wild pea, whose stunted seeds had the taste of the cultivated pea. Turnips, onions, tomatoes, and hops are found growing wild in the Pine River Valley, and the pie-plant or rhubarb is said to grow luxuriantly in the Elk Mountain valleys. I also saw wild flax and the gourd growing by self-propagation in the valley of the Animas. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries are found in the mountain valleys in numerous places, together with flowering plants of many species and varieties. Tiny forms of flowering plants are to be seen above patches of snow in places where the snow had recently melted. This fecundity of plant-life from ten to twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the relation of these mountain tributaries to the San Juan, which runs from east to west, not remotely from the base of these mountains, in such a manner as to invite and receive into its lap, so to express it, the vegetable wealth developed in these mountain chains, are facts that force themselves upon the attention of the observer.

The altitude of the San Juan Valley ranges from seven thousand feet at Pagosa Springs to five thousand nine hundred and seventy feet at the mouth of the Animas, and diminishing to four thousand four hundred and forty-six feet near the point where it empties into the Colorado (Hayden's Atlas of Colorado, Sheet 111). The altitude at Conejos is seven thousand eight hundred and eighty feet (ib.,) which is about as great an elevation as admits of the successful cultivation of maize. I noticed in a field of maize growing at Conejos that the stalk grew only about three feet high, and that the ear grew out of it but six inches from the ground. Specimens of the ear we obtained showed that it was about five inches long, with the kernel small and flinty. The ear is in four colors, white, red, yellow, and black, each being one or the other of these colors. In a few cases two colors were intermixed in the same ear. It seemed probable that this the primitive maize of the American aborigines, from which all other varieties have been developed. A few cobs which we found at a cliff house on the Mancos River corresponded with the Conejos ear in size, and were probably the same variety. Afterwards at Taos I found the same ear in white, red, yellow, and black; the staple maize now cultivated at this pueblo, but much larger. I brought away several fine ears saved for seed. One black ear measured twelve inches in length, with twelve rows of kernels, while the white variety, both at Conejos and Taos, had each fourteen rows.

Finally, a dry country, neither excessively hot nor moist, like the San Juan region, would seem to be most favorable for the development and self-propagation of maize as well as plants until man appeared for their domestication. These are but speculations, but if they should prompt further investigations concerning the place of nativity of this wonderful cereal, which has been such an important factor in the advancement of the Indian family, and which is also destined to prove such a support to our own, these suggestions will have not been made in vain.]



CHAPTER IX.

HOUSES OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

The general view of the house-life and houses of the Indian tribes thus far presented will tend to strengthen the hypothesis about to be stated concerning the earth-works of the Mound-Builders. Apart from the explanation that the long-houses of the Northern Tribes and the joint-tenement house of the Sedentary Indians are capable of affording, they are wholly inexplicable. The Mound-Builders worked native copper, cultivated maize and plants, manufactured pottery and stone implements of higher grade than the tribes of the Lower Status of barbarism; and they raised earth-works of great magnitude, superior to any works of the former tribes. They fairly belong to the class of Sedentary Village Indians, though not in all respects of an equal grade of culture and development. Their embankments, which inclosed a rectangular space, were in all probability, the foundations upon which they erected their houses. It is proposed to consider these embankments under this hypothesis.

Under the name of Mound-Builders certain unknown tribes of the American aborigines are recognized, who formerly inhabited as their chief area the valley of the Ohio and its tributary streams. Traces of their occupation have been found in other places, from the Gulf of Mexico to Lakes Erie and Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, and in some localities west of this river.

Without entering upon a discussion of these works, this chapter will be confined to four principal questions:

I. The house-life of the American aborigines, in the usages of which the Mound-Builders were necessarily involved.

II. The probable center from which the Mound-Builders emigrated into these areas.

III. The uses for which their principal earth-works were designed, with a conjectural restoration of one of their pueblos; and,

IV. The probable numbers of the people.

The Mound-Builders have disappeared, or, at least, have fallen out of human knowledge, leaving these works and their fabrics as the only evidence of their existence. Consequently the proposed questions, excepting the first, are incapable of specific answers; but they are not beyond the reach of approximate solutions. The mystery in which these tribes are enshrouded, and the unique character of their earth-works, will lead to deceptive inferences, unless facts and principles are carefully considered and rigorously applied, and such deductions only are made as they will fairly warrant. It is easy to magnify the significance of these remains and to form extravagant conclusions concerning them; but neither will advance the truth. They represent a status of human advancement forming a connecting link in the progressive development of man. If, then, the nature of their arts, and more especially the character of their institutions, can be determined with reasonable certainty, the true position of the Mound-Builders can be assigned to them in the scale of human progress, and what was possible and what impossible on their part can be known.

THE HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES, IN THE USAGES OF WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS WERE NECESSARILY INVOLVED.

It will be assumed that the tribes who constructed the earth-works of the Ohio Valley were American Indians. No other supposition is tenable. The implements and utensils found in the mounds indicate very plainly that they had attained to the Middle Status of barbarism. They do not fully answer the tests of this condition, since they neither cultivated by irrigation, so far as is known, nor constructed houses of adobe bricks or of stone; but, in addition to the earth-works to be considered, they mined native copper and wrought it into implements and utensils—acts performed by none of the tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism; and they depended chiefly upon horticulture for subsistence. They had also carried the art of pottery to the ornamental stage, and manufactured textile fabrics of cotton or flax, remains of which have been found wrapped around copper chisels. These facts, with others that will appear, justify their recognition as in the same status with the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central America. They occupied areas free from lakes as a rule, and, therefore, the poorest for a fish subsistence. This shows of itself that their chief reliance was upon horticulture. The principal places where their villages were situated were unoccupied areas at the epoch of European discovery, because unadapted to tribes in the Loner Status of barbarism, who depended upon fish and game as well as upon maize and plants.

A knowledge of the general character of the houses of the American aborigines will enable us to infer what must have been the general character of those of the Mound-Builders. This, again, was influenced by the condition of the family. Among the Indian tribes, in whatever stage of advancement, the family was found in the pairing form, with separation at the option of either party. It was founded upon marriage between single pairs, but it fell below the monogamian family of civilized society. In their condition it was too weak an organization to face alone the struggle of life, and it sought shelter in large households, formed on the basis of kin, with communism in living as an incident of their plan of life. While exceptional cases of single families living by themselves existed among all the tribes, it did not break the general rule of large households, and the practice in them of communism in living. These usages entered into and determined the character of their house architecture. In all parts of North and South America, at the period of European discovery, were found communal of joint-tenement houses, from those large enough to accommodate five, ten, and twenty families, to those large enough for fifty, a hundred, and in some cases two hundred or more, families. These houses differed among themselves in their plan and structure as well as size; but a common principle ran through them which was revealed by their adaptation to communistic uses. They reflect their condition and their plan of life with such singular distinctness as to afford practical hints concerning the houses of the Mound-Builders.

THE PROBABLE CENTER FROM WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS EMIGRATED INTO THESE AREAS.

It is well known that the highest type of Village Indian life was found in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and that the standard declines with the advance of the type northward into Mexico and New Mexico, thus tending to show that it was best adapted to a warm climate; but it does not follow that we must look to these distant regions for the original home of the Mound-Builders. The nearest point from which they could have been derived was New Mexico, and that is rendered the probable point from physical considerations, and still more from their greater nearness in condition to the Village Indians of New Mexico, below whom they must be ranked. The migrations of the American Indian tribes were gradual movements under the operation of physical causes, occupying long periods of time and with slow progress. There is no reason for supposing, in any number of cases, that they were deliberate migrations with a definite destination. With maize, beans, and squashes (the staples of an established horticulture), the Village Indians were independent of fish and game as primary means of subsistence, and with the former they possessed superior resources for migrating over the wide expanses of open prairies between New Mexico and the Mississippi. The movement of the tribes who constructed the earth-works in question can be explained as a natural spread of Village Indians from the valley of the Rio Grande, on the San Juan, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and thence northward to the valley of the Ohio, which was both easy and feasible. Its successful extension for any considerable distance north of the gulf was rendered improbable, by reason of the increasing severity of the climate. There are some reasons for supposing that climate delayed the movement for centuries, and finally defeated the attempt to transplant permanently even the New Mexican type of village life into a northern temperature so much lower during the greater part of the year.

A number of archeologists, who have considered the question of the probable anterior home of the Mound-Builders, are inclined to derive them from Central America. The ground for this opinion seems to be the fact that horticulture must have originated in a semi-tropical region, where this type of village life was first developed, and, therefore, that all the forms of this life were derived from thence. It would be a mistake, as it seems to the writer, to adopt the track of horticulture as that of Indian migration. In its first spread horticulture would be more apt to return upon the line of the latter than wait to be carried, by actual migrations, with the people. Moreover it is unnecessary to invoke such an argument, for the reason that New Mexico had been for ages the seat of horticultural and Village Indians, and was necessarily occupied by them long before the country east of the Mississippi. Every presumption is in favor of their derivation from New Mexico as their immediate anterior home, where they were accustomed to snow and to a moderate degree of cold.

[Footnote: At a recent meeting of the National Academy of Science at Washington, where this subject was presented, Prof. O. C. Marsh remarked, in confirmation of this suggestion, that "in a series of comparisons of Indian skulls, he had been struck with the similarity between those of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and of the Mound-Builders. As the shape of the Mound-Builder's skull is very peculiar, the coincidence is a very striking one."]

THE USES FOR WHICH THEIR PRINCIPAL EARTHWORKS WERE DESIGNED, WITH A CONJECTURAL RESTORATION OF ONE OF THEIR PUEBLOS.

A brief reference to the character and extent of these works is necessary as a means of understanding their uses. The authors of the volume "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" remark, in their preface, that "the ancient inclosures and groups of works personally examined and surveyed are upwards of one hundred.... About two hundred mounds of all forms and sizes, and occupying every variety of position, have also been excavated." [Footnote: Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, Preface, XXXIV.] Out of ninety-five earthworks, exclusive of mounds, figured and described in this valuable memoir, and which probably mark the sites of Indian villages, forty-seven are of the same type and may unhesitatingly be assigned to the Mound-Builders; fourteen are groups of emblematical earthworks, mostly in Wisconsin, and may also be assigned to them; but the remaining thirty-four are very inferior as well as different in character. They are not above the works of the Indians in the Lower Status of barbarism, and, therefore, do not probably belong to the Village Indians who constructed the works in the Scioto Valley. If to those first named are added the emblematical earth-works figured and described by Lapham, [Footnote: Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, Vol. V.] and a few other works not known to Squier and Davis, and since described by other persons, there are something more than one hundred works, large and small, indicating the sites of Indian villages, of which perhaps three quarters were occupied at the same time. The conical mounds raised over Indian graves, which are numerous, are not included. [Footnote: When a calamity befalls an Indian settlement it is usually abandoned.]

"A large, perhaps the larger portion of these works," observe the same authors, "are regular in outline, the square and circle predominating.... The regular works are almost invariably erected on level river terraces.... The square and the circle often occur in combination, frequently connecting with each other.... Most of the circular works are small, varying from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter, while others are a mile or more in circuit." [Footnote: Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, I, pp. 6 and 8.]

These embankments are, for the most part, slight, varying from two feet to six, eight, ten, and twelve feet in height, with a broad base, caused by the washing down of the banks in the course of centuries. These facts are shown by numerous cross-sections furnished with the ground-plans by the authors. But the circular embankments are usually about half as high as the rectangular.

Some idea of the size of Indian villages, and of their nearness to each other, is necessary to form an impression of their plan of life and mode of settlement. The illustrations should be drawn from the Village Indians, to which class the Mound-Builders undoubtedly belonged. Not knowing the use of wells, they established their settlements on the margins of rivers and small streams, which afforded alluvial land for cultivation, and often within a few miles of each other. In the valley of the Rio Chaco, in New Mexico, there were several pueblos within an extent of twelve miles, each consisting of a single joint-tenement house, constructed usually upon three sides of a court; and westward of the Chaco Valley were, and still are, the seven Moki pueblos, within an extent of twenty-five miles. At the present time, in the valley of the Rio Grande, a single pueblo house, accommodating five hundred persons makes an Indian village. Two or three such houses as at Taos and Santo Domingo form a large pueblo and a group of several such houses as at Zunyi a pueblo of the largest size which once contained perhaps five thousand persons, now reduced to fifteen hundred. There are no reasons for supposing that any pueblo in Yucatan or Central America contained as high a number as ten thousand inhabitants at the period of the Spanish conquest, although these countries were extremely favorable for an increase of Indian population. Their villages were numerous and small. Castanyada, who accompanied the expedition of Coronado to New Mexico in 1540-1542, estimated the population of the seventy villages visited by detachments and situated between the Colorado River Zunyi and the Arkansas at twenty thousand men which would give a total population in this wide area of a hundred thousand Indians.

There were seven villages each of Cibola, Tusayan, Quivira, and Hemes, and twelve of Tiguex; it would give an average of about fourteen hundred and fifty persons to each village. In all probability these are fair samples as to the number of inhabitants of the villages of the Mound Builders with exceptional cases as the village on the site of Marietta in Ohio where there may have been five thousand if an impression may be formed from the extent of the earth works occupied in the manner hereafter suggested. Where several villages were found near each other on the same stream as in New Mexico, the people usually spoke the same dialect, which tends to show that those in each group were colonists from one original village. The earth works of the Mound Builders must be regarded as the sites of their villages. The question then recurs for what purpose did they raise these embankments at an expenditure of so much labor? The must have lived somewhere in upon or around them. No answer has been given to this question and no serious attempt has been made to explain their uses. They have been called defensive enclosures but it is not supposable that they lived in houses within the embankments for this would turn the places into slaughter pens in case of in attack. Some of them have been called sacred enclosures but this goes for nothing apart from some knowledge of their uses. They were constructed for a practical intelligent purpose and that purpose must be sought in the needs and mode of life of the Mound-Builders as Village Indians; and it should be expressed in the works themselves. If a sensible use for these embankments can be found, its acceptance will relieve us from the delusive inferences which are certain to be drawn from them so long as they are allowed to remain in the category of the mysteries.

It is proposed to submit a conjectural explanation of the objects and uses of the principal embankments, and to advocate its acceptance on the ground of inherent probability. It will be founded on the assumption that the Mound-Builders were horticultural Village Indians who had immigrated from beyond the Mississippi; that as such they had been accustomed, to live in houses of adobe bricks, like those found in New Mexico; that they had become habituated to living upon their roof terraces as elevated platforms, and in large households; and that their houses were in the nature of fortresses, in consequence of the insecurity in which they lived. Further than this, that before they emigrated to the valley of the Ohio they were accustomed to snow, and to a moderate degree of winter cold; wore skin garments, and possibly woven mantles of cotton, as the Cibolans of New Mexico did at the time of Coronado's expedition.

[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]

The food of the New Mexicans, at this time, consisted of maize, beans, and squashes, and a limited amount of game, which was doubtless the food of the Mound-Builders. Captain Juan Jaramillo, who accompanied the same expedition, remarks in his relation that the Cibolans "had hardly provisions enough for themselves; what they had consisted of maize, beans, and squashes (maiz, des haricots, et des courges).... The Indians clothe themselves with deer skins, very well prepared. They have also buffalo-skins tanned, in which they wrap themselves." [Footnote: Coll. Ternaux-Compans, ix, 369.]

Although several centuries earlier in time, the Mound-Builders, with habits of life similar to those of the Cibolans, in 1540, would understand, besides horticulture, the use of adobe bricks, and the art of constructing long joint-tenement houses, closed up in the first story for defensive reasons, and built in the terraced form two, three, and four stories high, the ascent to the roof of the first story being made by ladders.

If, then, a tribe of Village Indians, with such habits and experience, emigrated centuries ago in search of new homes, and in course of time they, or their descendants, reached the Scioto Valley, in Ohio, they would find it impossible to construct houses of adobe bricks able to resist the rains and frosts of that climate, even if they found adobe soil. Some modification of their house architecture would be forced upon them through climatic reasons. They might have used stone, if possessed of sufficient skill to quarry it and construct walls of stone; but they did not produce such houses. Or they might have fallen back upon a house of inferior grade, located upon the level ground, such as the timber-framed houses of the Minnitarees and Mandans, in which case there would have been no necessity for the embankments in question. Or, they might have raised these embankments of earth, inclosing rectangles or squares, and constructed long houses upon them, which, it is submitted, is precisely what they did. Such houses would agree in general character and in plan, and in the uses to which they were adapted, with those of the aborigines found in all parts of America.

The elevated platform of earth as a house-site is an element in Indian architecture which reappears in a conspicuous manner in the solid pyramidal platforms upon which the great stone structures in Yucatan and Central America were erected, and which sprang from the defensive and the communal principles in living. This latter principle required large houses for the accommodation of a number of families in the Lower Status of barbarism, and large enough in some cases, when the people were in the Middle Status, to accommodate an entire tribe. When adobe bricks were used the house was usually a single structure, three or four rooms deep and three or four stories high, constructed in a block, and in the nature of a fortress. The ground story was little used, except for storage, and they lived, practically, upon the roof terraces. When the use of stone came in, the structure often consisted of a main building four or five hundred feet long, and two wings two and three hundred feet in length, inclosing three sides of an open court, the fourth side being protected by a low stone wall. Such were the pueblos now in ruins upon the Rio Chaco in New Mexico.

In the highest form of this architecture in Yucatan and Chiapas, the pyramidal elevation appears faced with dry stone walls. The buildings upon its summit were often in the form of a quadrangle, with an open court in the center; but the buildings were generally disconnected at the four angles, as in the House of the Nuns at Uxmal. All of these forms are parts of one system of indigenous architecture; and the several parts are susceptible of articulation in a series representing a progressive development of a common thought, that of joint residence, with the practice of communism in living in large groups in the same house, or in one group consisting of the entire household.

Let us, then, inquire whether the principal embankments of the Mound-Builders were adapted, as raised platforms of earth, for the sites of long houses constructed on the communistic principle, and in the general style of the houses of the American aborigines.

In the valley of the Scioto, in Ohio, and within an extent of twelve miles, were found the remains of seven villages of the Mound-Builders, four upon the east and three upon the west side of the river. They are among the best of their works, and furnish fair examples of the whole. One of the number, the High Bank Pueblo, is shown in ground-plan in the engraving, Fig. 46. It is the only one in which the inclosure is octagonal instead of square. The remains of each of the seven consist principally of embankments like railway grades several feet high and correspondingly broad at the base, inclosing a square or slightly irregular area, the embankment on each of the four sides being about a thousand feet long, with an opening or gateway in the middle and at the four angles of the square. Attached to or quite near to five of the seven are large circular inclosures, each formed by a similar though lower embankment of earth and inclosing a space somewhat larger than the squares. The respective heights of the embankments, forming four of the rectangles, are given at four, six, ten, and twelve feet; and of three of the circular embankments, at five and six feet, respectively.

The embankments inclosing the squares were probably the site of their houses; since, as the highest, and because they are straight, they were best adapted to the purpose. The situations of these pueblos at short distances from each other on the same stream accords with the usages of the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central America in locating their villages. These pueblos were probably occupied by Mound-Builders of the same tribe, and were not unlikely under a common government, consisting of a council of chiefs. It is probable, also, that they were constructed, one after the other, by colonists from an original village.

In the engraving, Fig. 46, the form and relations of the embankments are shown, with cross-sections indicating their elevation and present ground-dimensions. It was taken from the work of Squier and Davis. [Footnote: Smith Con., vol. i, p1. xvi.]

These authors remark that "the principal work consists of an octagon and circle, the former measuring nine hundred and fifty feet, the latter ten hundred and fifty feet in diameter.... The walls of the octagon are very bold, and, where they have been least subject to cultivation, are now between eleven and twelve feet in height by about fifty feet base. The wall of the circle is much less, nowhere measuring over four or five feet in altitude. In all these respects, as in the absence of a ditch and the presence of the two small circles, this work resembles the Hopeton Works." [Footnote: ib., p. 50.]

Of the latter, which is nine miles above on the Scioto, they remark that "the walls of the rectangular work are composed of a clayey loam twelve feet high by fifty feet base.... They resemble the heavy grading of a railway, and are broad enough on the top to admit of the passage of a coach." [Footnote: ib., p. 51.]

It will be noticed that the octagonal work shown in the engraving consists of seven distinct embankments. Six of these are about four hundred and fifty feet long, and the remaining one, which once consisted of two equal sections, as shown by the mound to face an original opening in the center, now forms one continuous embankment facing one side of the inclosed area. If these embankments were reformed, with the materials washed down and now spread over a base of fifty feet, with sloping sides and a level summit, they would form new embankments thirty-seven feet wide at base, ten feet high, and with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide. If a surface coating of clay were used, the sides could be made steeper and the summit platform broader. On embankments thus reformed out of their original materials respectable as well as sufficient sites would be provided for long joint-tenement houses, comparted into chambers like stalls opening upon a central passage way through the structure from end to end, as in the long-houses of the Iroquois. Such embankments were strikingly adapted to houses of the aboriginal American model, the characteristic feature of which was sufficient length to afford a number of apartments. This feature became more marked in the houses of the Village Indians, among whom houses three hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred feet in length have been found, as elsewhere stated.

These embankments answered as a substitute for the first story of the house constructed of adobe bricks, which was usually from ten to twelve feet high, and closed up solid on the ground, externally. The gateways entering the square were protected, it may be supposed, with palisades of round timber set in the ground, each row of stakes commencing at the opposite ends of the embankments and contracting after passing each other to a narrow opening on the inside, which might be permanently closed. Indian tribes in a lower condition than the Mound-Builders were familiar with palisades. The inclosed square was thus completely protected by the long-houses standing upon these embankments and the gateways guarding the several entrances. The pueblo, externally, would present continuous ramparts of earth ten feet high, around an inclosed area, surmounted with timber-framed houses with walls sloping like the embankments, and coated with earth mixed with clay and gravel, rising ten or twelve feet above their summits; the two forming a sloping wall of earth twenty feet high. It seems extremely probable, for the reasons stated, that they raised these embankments as foundations, and planted their long-houses upon them, thus uniting the defensive principle with that of communism in living. Such houses would harmonize with the general plan of life of the American aborigines, and with the general type of their house architecture.

It is not necessary to know the exact form or internal plan of these houses in order to establish this hypothesis. It is sufficient to show that these embankments as restored were not only adapted, but admirably adapted, to joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American type. The restoration, Fig. 47, was drawn by my friend James G. Cutler, esq., of Rochester, architect, in accordance with the foregoing suggestions. It shows not only the feasibility of occupying these embankments with long houses, but also that each pueblo was designed by the Mound-Builders to be a fortress, able to resist assault with the appliances of Indian warfare. From the defensive character of the great houses of the Village Indian in general, this feature might have been expected to appear in the houses of the Mound-Builders.

In this restoration the houses are nearly triangular and of simple construction. Indians much ruder than they are supposed to have been, as the Minnitarees and Mandans, walled their houses with slabs of wood standing on a slope, and roofed them at a lower angle, covering both the sloping external walls and the roof with a "concrete of tough clay and gravel," a foot or more thick. Long triangular houses of the width of the summit of these embankments, with their doorways opening upon the square, and with the interior comparted in the form of stalls upon each side of a central passage way, would realize, with the inclosed court, some of the features and nearly all the advantages of the New Mexican pueblo houses. Occupying to the edge of the embankments, these of the Mound-Builders could not be successfully assailed from without either by Indian weapons or by fire; and within, their apartments would be as secure and capacious as those of the Village Indians in general at the period of their discovery. The inclosed court, which is of unusual size, is one of the remarkable features of the plan. It afforded a protected place for the villagers and a place of recreation for their children, as well as room for their drying-scaffolds, of which Mr. Cutler has introduced a number of the Minnetaree and Mandan model, and for gardens if they chose to use a part of the area for that purpose. They would also require room for a large accumulation of fuel for winter use. The only assailable points are the gateways, of which the embankments show seven. These undoubtedly were protected by rows of round timber set in the ground, and passing each other in such a manner as to leave a narrow opening, with a mound back of each, upon which archers could stand and shoot their arrows over the heads of those between them and the gateway in front. Such at least is the object which the presence of the mound in each case suggests.

In the engraving, Fig. 48, there is a ground plan of a section of one of the long-houses resting upon the restored embankment. It shows eight apartments upon opposite sides of the central passage, each nine feet wide by six feet deep, and surrounded by raised bunks used both for seats and beds. The passage is eight feet wide and runs through the house from end to end, with fire-pits in the center for each four apartments. In interior plan it is an exact transcript of the long-house of the Iroquois, and therefore adapted to the joint habitation of a large number of related families, and to the practice of communism.

Another section shows the embankment below the line A-B, which, as stated, is ten feet high upon a base thirty-seven feet wide, and with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide, which forms the floor of the house. Above this is a cross-section of the structure. Round posts six inches in diameter are set in the ground upon the lines of the central passage, defining also the several stalls. These posts, which rise eight feet above the level of the floor and are forked at the top, support string-pieces which run the length of the house. Against these, planks of split timber are placed so as to form a sloping external wall, and these are covered with clay and gravel a foot or more thick. A simpler method would be the use of poles set close together and sunk in the ground, afterwards coated in the same manner. Cross-pieces of round timber rest upon the stringers over each pair of posts. The roof over the central passage is formed independently of poles bracing against each other at the center from opposite sides. This is also covered with concrete or mud mortar. Openings through the roof are left over the fire-pits for the exit of the smoke. The principle of construction adopted is that employed in the dirt lodges of the Minnitarees and Mandans of the Upper Missouri. As thus restored, this pueblo of the Mound-Builders is not superior in the mechanism of the houses to those of the tribes named. [Footnote: There are some reasons for supposing that the Minnitarees are descendants of the Mound Builders.]

An elevation of a portion of one of the houses, on the court side, is also furnished, showing the embankment with a ladder resting upon it used as steps, and which could be taken up at night; also one of the doors by which the house was entered.

It is not necessary, as before suggested, that the actual form and structure of the houses of the Mound-Builders should be shown to establish the hypothesis that these embankments were the veritable sites of their houses. If it is made evident that the summit platforms of these embankments, when reformed from their own materials, would afford practicable sites for houses, which when constructed would have been comfortable dwellings adapted to the climate and to Indian life in the Middle Status of barbarism, this is all that can be required. The restoration of this pueblo establishes the affirmative of this proposition, with the superadded confirmation of that defensive character which marks all the house architecture of the Village Indians in New and Old Mexico and Central America.

With their undoubted advancement beyond the Iroquois and Minnitarees, the Mound-Builders may have constructed better houses upon these platform elevations than the plans indicate. No remains of adobes have been found in connection with these embankments, and nothing to indicate that walls of such brick had ever been raised upon them. The disintegrated mass would have shown itself in the form of the embankment after the lapse of many centuries. On the contrary, they were found in the precise form they would have assumed, under atmospheric influences, after structures of the kind described had perished, and the embankments had been abandoned for centuries.

These embankments, therefore, require triangular houses of the kind described, and long-houses, as well, covering their entire length. But the interior plan might have been different, for example, the passage way might have been along the exterior wall, and the stalls or apartments on the court side, and but half as many in number, and, instead of one continuous house in the interior, four hundred and fifty feet in length, it might have been divided into several, separated from each other by cross partitions. The plan of life, however, which we are justified in ascribing to them, from known usages of Indian tribes in a similar condition of advancement, would lead us to expect large households formed on the basis of kin, with the practice of communism in living in each household, whether large or small. There is a direct connection in principle between the platform elevations inclosing a large square on which the High Bank Pueblo was constructed, and the pyramidal platforms in Yucatan, smaller in diameter but higher in elevation, upon which were erected the most artistic houses constructed by the American aborigines. In the latter cases the central area rises to the common level of the embankments upon which the houses were constructed. The former has the security gained by a house-site above the level of the surrounding ground; and it represents about all the advance made by the Village Indians in the art of war above the tribes in a lower condition of barbarism. They placed their houses and homes in a position unassailable by the methods of Indian warfare.

There is some diversity, as would be expected, in the size of the squares inclosed by these embankments. They range from four hundred and fifty to seventeen hundred feet, the majority measuring between eight hundred and fifty and a thousand feet. Gateways are usually found at the four angles and at the center of each side. A comparison of the dimensions of twenty of these squares, figured in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," gives for the average nine hundred and thirty-seven feet. The aggregate length of the embankments shown in Fig. 46 is three thousand six hundred feet, which, at an average of ten feet for each apartment, would give three hundred and sixty upon each side of the passage way, or seven hundred and twenty in all. From this number should be deducted such as were used for storage, for doorways, and for public uses. Allowing two apartments for each family of five persons, the High Bank Pueblo would have accommodated from fifteen hundred to two thousand persons, living in the fashion of Indians, which is about the number of an average pueblo of the Village Indians. This result may be strengthened by comparing houses of existing Indian tribes. The Seneca-Iroquois village of Tiotohatton, two centuries ago, was estimated at a hundred and twenty houses. Taking the number at one hundred, with an average length of fifty feet, and it would give a lineal length of house-room of five thousand feet. It was the largest of the Seneca, and the largest of the Iroquois villages, and contained about two thousand inhabitants. A similar result is obtained by another comparison. The aggregate length of the apartments in the pueblo of Chettro Kettle, in New Mexico, now in ruins, including those in the several stories, is four thousand seven hundred feet. It contained probably about the same number of inhabitants.

The foregoing explanation of the uses of these embankments rests upon the defensive principle in the house architecture of the Village Indians, and upon a state of the family requiring joint tenement houses communistic in character. To both of these requirements this conjectural restoration of one of the pueblos of the Mound-Builders responds in a remarkable manner. In the diversified forms of the houses of the Village Indians, in all parts of America, the defensive principle is a constant feature. Among the Mound-Builders a rampart of earth ten feet high around a village would afford no protection, but surmounted with long-houses, the walls of which rose continuous with the embankments, the strength of these walls, though of timber coated with earth, would render a rampart thus surmounted and doubled in height a formidable barrier against Indian assault. The second principle, that of communism in living in joint-tenement houses, which is impressed not less clearly upon the houses of the Village Indians in general than upon the supposed houses of the Mound-Builders, harmonized completely with the first. From the two together sprang the house architecture of the American aborigines, with its diversities of form, and they seem sufficient for its interpretation. The Mound-Builders in their new area east of the Mississippi finding it impossible to construct joint tenement houses of adobe bricks to which they had been accustomed substituted solid embankments of earth in the place of the first story closed up on the ground and erected triangular houses upon them covered with earth. When circumstances compelled a change of plan, the second is not a violent departure from the first. There is a natural connection between them. Finally, it is deemed quite sufficient to sustain the interpretation given that these embankments were eminently adapted to the uses indicated, and that the pueblo as restored, and with its inclosed court, would have afforded to its inhabitants pleasant, protected and attractive homes.

With respect to the large circular inclosures, adjacent to and communicating with the squares, it is not necessary that we should know their object. The one attached to the High Bank Pueblo contains twenty acres of land, and doubtless subserved some useful purpose in their plan of life. The first suggestion which presents itself is, that as a substitute for a fence it surrounded the garden of the village in which they cultivated their maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco. At the Minnetaree village a similar inclosure may now be seen by the side of the village surrounding their cultivated land, consisting partly of hedge and partly of stakes, the open prairie stretching out beyond. We cannot know all the necessities that attended their mode of life; although houses, gardens, food, and raiment were among those which must have existed.

There is another class of circular embankments, about two hundred and fifty feet in diameter, connected with each other in some cases by long and low parallel embankments, as may be seen in Fig 46. Undoubtedly they were for some useful purpose, which may or may not be divined correctly, but a knowledge of which is not necessary to our hypothesis respecting the principal embankments. It may be suggested as probable that the Mound-Builders were organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes. If this were the case, the phratries would need separate places for holding their councils and for performing their religious observances. These ring embankments suggest the circular estufas found in connection with the New Mexican pueblos, two, four, and sometimes five at one pueblo. The circles were adapted to open-air councils, after the fashion of the American Indian tribes. As there are two of these connected with each other, and two not connected, it is not improbable that the Mound-Builders at this village were organized in two and perhaps four phratries, and that they performed their religious ceremonies and public business in these open estufas.

[Footnote: The solid rectangular platforms found at Marietta, Ohio, and at several places in the Gulf region, are analogous to those in Yucatan. They are an advance upon the ring inclosures, and were probably designed for religious uses. That the Mound Builders were at one time accustomed to adobe brick is proven by their presence at Seltzertown, in the State of Mississippi, forming a part of the wall of a mound. (See Foster's Pre-Historic Races of the U.S., p. 112.)]

Practice of Cremation.—Among other works are the conical mounds, which are numerous, found in or near circular embankments. They vary in height from five to ten and twenty feet; with one, the Grave Creek Mound, seventy feet high. They are classified by Squier and Davis, who surveyed and examined them, into "Mounds of Sacrifice," "Mounds of Sepulture," and "Mounds of Observation." The first kind only in which the so-called altars are found will be noticed.

At the center of each of the mounds of this class, and on the ground level there was found a bed of clay artificially formed into a shallow basin and then hardened by fire These basins have been termed "altars" by Squier and Davis in their work on the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." Mr. Squier remarks in a resume of this work published separately that "some are round others elliptical and others square or parallelograms.... The usual dimensions are from five to eight feet." [Footnote: Trans. Am Eth Soc]



At Mound City on the Scioto River there is a group of twenty six mounds in one inclosure an engraving of one of which taken from Mr. Squier's paper is shown in Fig 49. It is seven feet high by fifty five feet base and contained the artificial clay basin in question. 'F' is the basin which is round, and measures from c to d nine feet, and from a to e five feet. The height from b to e is twenty inches, and the dip of the curve a to e is nine inches. "The body of the altar," Mr. Squier remarks, "is burned throughout, though in a greater degree within the basin where it was so hard as to resist the blow of a heavy hatchet, the instrument rebounding as if struck upon a rock. The basin, or hollow of the altar, was filled up even full with dry ashes, intermingled with which were some fragments of pottery.... One of the vases, taken in fragments from the mound, has been very nearly restored. The sketch B presents its outlines and the character of its ornaments. Its height is six, and its greatest diameter eight inches.... Above the deposit of ashes, and covering the entire basin, was a layer of silvery or opaque mica in sheets overlapping each other, and immediately over the center of the basin was heaped a quantity of human bones, probably the amount of a single skeleton, in fragments. The position of these is indicated by O in the section. The layer of mica and calcined bones, it should be remarked to prevent misapprehension, was peculiar to this individual mound, and not found in any other of the class." [Footnote: Observations, etc, Trans Am Eth Soc ii p 161] Calcined bones, however, were found in three out of some twenty mounds of this class examined. [Footnote: Ane Monte pp. 157, 159]

The question now recurs, what was the use of the basin of clay, and what the object of the mound itself? The terms "altars" and "mounds of sacrifice," employed in describing them, imply that human sacrifices were offered on these "altars," "upon which glowed the sacrificial fires." [Footnote: Ib, p. 15]

There is no propriety, I respectfully submit, in the use of either of these terms, or in the conclusions they would force us to adopt Human sacrifices were unknown in the Lower Status of barbarism; but they were introduced in the Middle Status, when the first organized priesthood, distinguished by their apparel, appears. In parts of Mexico, and, it is claimed, in parts of Central America, these atrocious rites were performed, but they were unknown in New Mexico, and, without better evidence than these miscalled altars afford, they cannot be fastened upon the Mound-Builders. Moreover, these clay beds were not adapted to the barbarous work. Wherever human sacrifices are known to have occurred among the American aborigines, the place was an elevated mound platform, in the nature of a temple, as the Teocalli of Mexico, and the raised altar or sacrificial stone stood before the idol in whose worship the rites were performed. There is neither a temple nor an idol, but a hollow bed of clay covered by a mound raised in honor over the ashes of a deceased chief, for assuredly such a mound would not have been raised over the ashes of a victim. Indians never exchanged prisoners of war. Adoption or burning at the stake was the alternative of capture; but no mound was ever raised over the burned remains. Human sacrifices seem to have originated in an attempt to utilize the predetermined death of prisoners of war in the service of the gods, until slavery finally offered a profitable substitute, in the Upper Status of barbarism.

Another use suggests itself for this artificial basin more in accordance with Indian usages and customs, namely, that cremation of the body of a deceased chief was performed upon it, after which the mound in question was raised over his ashes in accordance with Indian custom.

Cremation was practiced by the Village Indians only among the American aborigines. It was not general even among them, burial in the ground being the common usage; but it was more or less general in the case of chiefs. The mode of cremation varied in different areas, but the full particulars are not given in any instance. In Nicaragua the body of a deceased chief of the highest grade was wrapped in clothes and suspended by ropes before a fire until the body was baked to dryness; then, after keeping it a year, it was taken to the market-place, where they burned it, believing that the smoke went "to the place where the dead man's soul was." [Footnote: Herrera's Hist. America, ii, 133.] From this or some similar conceit the practice of cremation probably originated.

THE PROBABLE NUMBERS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

There are no reasons for supposing, from the number of their villages, that the Mound-Builders were a numerous people. My friend, Prof. Charles Whittlesey, in a discussion of the rate of increase of the human race, estimates them at 500,000. [Footnote: Trans. Am. Ass. for the Adv. of Science, 1873, p. 320.]

With thanks for the moderateness of the estimate, one-third of that number would have been more satisfactory. Dense populations, an expression sometimes applied to the Mound-Builders, have never existed without either flocks and herds, or field agriculture with the use of the plow. In some favored areas, where the facilities for irrigation were unusual, a considerable population has been developed upon horticulture; but no traces of irrigating canals have been found in connection with the works of the Mound-Builders. Furthermore, it was unnecessary in their areas. Transplanted from a comparatively mild to a cold climate, they must have found the struggle for existence intensified. Like the Cibolans in 1540, it was doubtless at all times equally true of them, that "they had barely provisions enough for themselves." And yet there is no cereal equal to maize in the rich reward it returns even for poor cultivation. It grows in the hill, can be eaten green as well as ripe, and is hardy and prolific. At the same time, while it can be made the basis of human subsistence, it is not sufficient of itself for the maintenance of vigorous, healthful life. Vegetables and game were requisite to complete the supply of food. The difficulties in the way of production set a limit to their numbers. These also explain the small number of their settlements in the large areas over which they spread. Although they found native copper on the south shore of Lake Superior, and beat it into chisels and a species of pointed spade, the number of copper tools found is small, much too small to lead to the supposition that it sensibly influenced their cultivation. A pick pointed with a stone chisel, a spade of wood, and a triangular piece of flint set in a wooden handle and used as a knife, were as perfect implements as they were able to command. Horticulture practiced thus rudely was necessarily of limited productiveness.

The idea has been advanced that "the condition of society among the Mound-Builders was not that of freemen, or, in other words, that the state possessed absolute power over the lives and fortunes of its subjects." [Footnote: Foster's Pre-historic Races, etc., p. 386.]

It is a sufficient answer to this remarkable passage that a people unable to dig a well or build a dry stone wall must have been unable to establish political society, which was necessary to the existence of a state.

From the absence of all traditionary knowledge of the Mound-Builders among the tribes found east of the Mississippi, an inference arises that the period of their occupation was ancient. Their withdrawal was probably gradual, and completed before the advent of the ancestors of the present tribes, or simultaneous with their arrival. It seems more likely that their retirement from the country was voluntary than that they were expelled by an influx of wild tribes. If their expulsion had been the result of a protracted warfare, all remembrance of so remarkable an event would scarcely have been lost among the tribes by whom they were displaced. A warm climate was necessary for the successful maintenance of the highest form of Village Indian life. In the struggle for existence in this cold climate Indian arts and ingenuity must have been taxed quite as heavily to provide clothing as food. It is therefore not improbable that the attempt to transplant the New Mexican type of village life into the valley of the Ohio proved a failure, and that after great efforts, continued through centuries of time, it was finally abandoned by their withdrawal, first into the gulf region through which they entered, and, lastly, from the country altogether.

The Tlascalans practiced cremation, but it was generally limited to the chiefs. [Footnote: Herrera's Hist. America, ii, 302.] It was the same among the Aztecs. "Others were burnt and the ashes buried in the temples, but they were all interred with whatever things of value they possessed." [Footnote: ib., iii, 220.] The Mayas of Yucatan came nearer the Romans in the practice, for they preserved the ashes in earthen vessels. "The dead were much lamented," remarks Herrera, "in silence by day and with dismal shrieks by night.... filling their mouths with ground wheat [maize] that they might not want food in the other world.... The bodies of their lords were burnt and their ashes put into large vessels, over which temples were built. Some made wooden statues of their parents, and leaving an hollow in the necks of them, put in their ashes and kept them among their idols with great veneration." [Footnote: ib., iv, 175.] In New Mexico cremation is occasionally practiced at the present time.

That the Mound-Builders should have had this custom, in view of its prevalence among the Village Indians, would afford no cause of surprise. I think we may, not without reason, recognize in this artificial basin of clay a cremation bed, upon which the body was placed in a sitting posture, covered with fuel, and then burned—in some cases partially, and in others until every vestige of the body had been burned to ashes—after which, or even before the burning, a mound was raised over them as a mark of honor and respect. These mounds have yielded a large number of copper and stone implements, pipes, fragments of water jars, and other articles usually entombed with the remains of the dead. It seems to have been their method of cremation; and it must be admitted to be quite as respectable as any known form of this strange practice of a large portion of the human race.

[Relocated Footnote: "The snow and cold are wont to be great," Coronado remarks in his relation, "for so say the inhabitants of the country; and it is very likely so to be, both in respect of the manner of the country and of the fashion of their houses, and their furs and other things, which the people have to defend them from cold.... They have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool.... In this country there are certain skins, well dressed, and they dress them and paint them when they kill their oxen [buffaloes], for so they say themselves."—Hakluyt's Coll. of Voyages, Lond. ed., 1600, iii, 377.]



CHAPTER X.

HOUSES OF THE AZTECS OR ANCIENT MEXICANS.

The first accounts of the pueblo of Mexico created a powerful sensation in Europe. In the West India Islands the Spanish discoverers found small Indian tribes under the government of chiefs, but on the continent, in the Valley of Mexico, they found a confederacy of three Indian tribes under a more advanced but similar government. In the midst of the valley was a large pueblo, the largest in America, surrounded with water, approached by causeways; in fine, a water-girt fortress impregnable to Indian assault. This pueblo presented to the Spanish adventurers the extraordinary spectacle of an Indian society lying two ethnical periods back of European society, but with a government and plan of life at once intelligent, orderly, and complete. There was aroused an insatiable curiosity for additional particulars, which has continued for three centuries, and which has called into existence a larger number of works than were ever before written upon any people of the same number and of the same importance.

The Spanish adventurers who captured the pueblo of Mexico saw a king in Montezuma, lords in Aztec chiefs, and a palace in the large joint-tenement house occupied, Indian fashion, by Montezuma and his fellow-householders. It was, perhaps, an unavoidable self-deception at the time, because they knew nothing of the Aztec social system. Unfortunately it inaugurated American aboriginal history upon a misconception of Indian life which has remained substantially unquestioned until recently. The first eye-witnesses gave the keynote to this history by introducing Montezuma as a king, occupying a palace of great extent crowded with retainers, and situated in the midst of a grand and populous city, over which, and much beside, he was reputed master. But king and kingdom were in time found too common to express all the glory and splendor the imagination was beginning to conceive of Aztec society; and emperor and empire gradually superseded the more humble conception of the conquerors. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote 1 relocated to chapter end.]

A psychological fact, which deserves a moment's notice, is revealed by these works, written as they were with a desire for the truth and without intending to deceive. These writers ought to have known that every Indian tribe in America was an organized society, with definite institutions, usages, and customs, which, when ascertained, would have perfectly explained its government, the social relations of the people, and their plan of life. Indian society could be explained as completely and understood as perfectly as the civilized society of Europe or America by finding its exact organization. This, strange to say, was never attempted, or at least never accomplished, by any one of these numerous and voluminous writers. To every author, from Cortes and Bernal Diaz to Brasseur de Bourbourg and Hubert H. Bancroft, Indian society was an unfathomable mystery, and their works have left it a mystery still. Ignorant of its structure and principles, and unable to comprehend its peculiarities, they invoked the imagination to supply whatever was necessary to fill out the picture. When the reason, from want of facts, is unable to understand and therefore unable to explain the structure of a given society, imagination walks bravely in and fearlessly rears its glittering fabric to the skies. Thus in this case, we have a grand historical romance, strung upon the conquest of Mexico as upon a thread; the acts of the Spaniards, the pueblo of Mexico, and its capture, are historical, while the descriptions of Indian society and government are imaginary and delusive. These picturesque tales have been read with wonder and admiration, as they successively appeared, for three hundred and fifty years; though shown to be romances, they will continue to be read as Robinson Crusoe is read, not because they are true, but because they are pleasing. The psychological revelation is the eager, undefinable interest aroused by any picture of ancient society. It is felt by every stranger when he first walks the streets of Pompeii, and, standing within the walls of its roofless houses, strives to picture to himself the life and the society which flourished there eighteen hundred years ago. In Mexico the Spaniards found an organized society several thousand years further back of their own than Pompeian society, in its arts, institutions, and state of advancement. It was this revelation of a phase of the ancient life of mankind which possessed and still possesses such power to kindle the imagination and inspire enthusiasm. It caught the imagination and overcame the critical judgment of Prescott, our most charming writer; it ravaged the sprightly brain of Brasseur de Bourbourg, and it carried up in a whirlwind our author at the Golden Gate.

The commendation these works have received from critical journals reveals with painful distinctness the fact that we have no science of American ethnology. Such a science, resting as it must upon verified facts, and dealing with the institutions, arts and inventions, usages and customs, languages, religious beliefs, and plan of government of the Indian tribes, would, were it fairly established, command as well as deserve the respect of the American people. With the exception of an amateur here and there, American scholars have not been willing to devote themselves to so vast a work. It may be truly said at this moment that the structure and principles of Indian society are but partially known, and that the American Indian himself is still an enigma among us. The question is still before us as a nation whether we will undertake the work of furnishing to the world a scientific exposition of Indian society, or leave it as it now appears, crude, unmeaning, unintelligible, a chaos of contradictions and puerile absurdities. With a field of unequaled richness and of vast extent, with the same Red Race in all the stages of advancement indicated by three great ethnical periods, namely the Status of savagery, the Lower Status of barbarism, and the Middle Status of barbarism, [Footnote: See ante, page 43, note, for a definition of proposed ethnical or culture periods, and Ancient Society, chapter 1, "Ethnical Periods."] more persons ought to be found willing to work upon this material for the credit of American scholarship. It will be necessary for them to do as Herodotus did in Asia and Africa, to visit the native tribes at their villages and encampments, and study their institutions as living organisms, their condition, and their plan of life. When this has been done from the region of the Arctic Sea to Patagonia, Indian society will become intelligible, because its structure and principles will be understood. It exhibits three distinct phases, each with a culture peculiar to itself, lying back of civilization, and back of the Upper Status of barbarism, having very little in common with European society of three hundred years ago, and very little in common with American society of to-day. Its institutions, inventions, and customs find no analogues in those of civilized nations, and cannot be explained in terms adapted to such a society. Our later investigators are doing their work more and more on the plan of direct visitation, and I make no doubt a science of American ethnology will yet come into existence among us and rise high in public estimation from the important results it will rapidly achieve. Precisely what is now needed is the ascertainment and scientific treatment of this material.

After so general a condemnation of Spanish and American writers, so far as they represent Aztec society and government, some facts and some reasons ought to be presented to justify the charge. Recognizing the obligation, I propose to question the credibility of so much of the second volume of "The Native Races" and of so much of other Spanish histories as relate to two subjects—the character of the house in which Montezuma resided, which is styled a palace; and the account of the celebrated dinner of Montezuma, which is represented as the daily banquet of an imperial potentate. Neither subject, considered in itself, is of much importance; but if the accounts in these two particulars are found to be fictitious and delusive, a breach will be made in a vital section of the fabric of Aztec romance, now the most deadly encumbrance upon American ethnology.

It may be premised that there is a strong probability, from what is known of Indian life and society, that the house in which Montezuma lived was a joint-tenement house of the aboriginal American model, owned by a large number of related families, and occupied by them in common as joint proprietors; that the dinner in question was the usual single daily meal of a communal household, prepared in a common cook-house from common stores, and divided, Indian fashion, from the kettle; and that all the Spaniards found in Mexico was a simple confederacy of three Indian tribes, the counterpart of which was found in all parts of America.

It may be premised further that the Spanish adventures who thronged to the New World after its discovery found the same race of Red Indians in the West India Islands, in Central and South America, in Florida, and in Mexico.

[Footnote: "But among all the other inhabitants of America there is such a striking similitude in the form of their bodies, and the qualities of their minds, that notwithstanding the diversities occasioned by the influence of climate, or unequal progress in improvement, we must pronounce them to be descended from one source."— Robertson's History of America, Law's ed., p. 69.]

In their mode of life and means of subsistence, in their weapons, arts, usages, and customs, in their institutions, and in their mental and physical characteristics, they were the same people in different stages of advancement. No distinction of race was observed, and none in fact existed. They were broken up into numerous independent tribes, each under the government of a council of chiefs. Among the more advanced tribes, confederacies existed, which represented the highest stage their governmental institutions had attained. In some of them, as in the Aztec confederacy, they had a principal war-chief, elected for life or during good behavior, who was the general commander of the military bands. His powers were those of a general, and necessarily arbitrary when in the field. Behind this war-chief—noticed, it is true, by Spanish writers, but without explaining or even ascertaining its functions—was the council of chiefs, "the great council without whose authority," Acosta remarks, Montezuma "might not do anything of importance". [Footnote: The Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, Lond. ed., 1604, Grimstone's Trans., p. 485.]

The civil and military powers of the government were in a certain sense coordinated between the council of chiefs and the military commander. The government of the Aztec confederacy was essentially democratic, because its organization and institutions were so. If a more special designation is needed, it will be sufficient to describe it as a military democracy.

The Spaniards who overran Mexico and Peru gave a very different interpretation of these two organizations. Having found, as they supposed, two absolute monarchies with feudal characteristics, the history of American Indian institutions was cast in this mold. The chief attention of Europeans in the sixteenth century was directed to these two governments, to which the affairs of the numerous remaining tribes and confederacies were made subordinate. Subsequent history has run in the same grooves for more than three centuries, striving diligently to confirm that of which confirmation was impossible. The generalization was perhaps proper enough, that if the institutions of the Aztecs and Peruvians, such well-advanced Indian tribes, culminated in monarchy, those of the Indian tribes generally were essentially monarchical, and therefore those of Mexico and Peru should represent the institutions of the Red Race.

It may be premised, finally, that the histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements, and utensils, fabrics, food, and raiment, and things of a similar character. But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to reject them in these respects, and commence anew; using any facts they may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society. It was a calamity to the entire Red Race that the achievements of the Village Indians of Mexico and Central America, in the development of their institutions, should have suffered a shipwreck so nearly total. The only remedy for the evil done them is to recover, if possible, a knowledge of their institutions, which alone can place them in their proper position in the history of mankind.

In order to understand so simple an event in Indian life as Montezuma's dinner, it is necessary to know certain usages and customs, and even certain institutions of the Indian tribes generally, which had a direct bearing upon the dinner of every Indian in America at the epoch of the Spanish conquest. Although it may seem strange to the reader, it requires a knowledge of several classes of facts to comprehend this dinner, such as: 1. The organization in gentes, phratries, and tribes. 2. The ownership of lands in common. 3. The law of hospitality. 4. The practice of communism in living. 5. The communal character of their houses. 6. Their custom of having but one prepared meal each day, a dinner. 7. Their separation at meals, the men eating first, and the women and children afterwards. These several topics have been considered in previous chapters.

Not a vestige of the ancient pueblo of Mexico (Tenochtitlan) remains to assist us to a knowledge of its architecture. Its structures, which were useless to a people of European habits, were speedily destroyed to make room for a city adapted to the wants of a civilized race. We must seek for its characteristics in contemporary Indian houses which still remain in ruins, and in such of the early descriptions as have come down to us, and then leave the subject with but little accurate knowledge. Its situation, partly on dry land and partly in the waters of a shallow artificial pond formed by causeways and dikes, led to the formation of streets and squares, which were unusual in Indian pueblos, and gave to it a remarkable appearance. "There were three sorts of broad and spacious streets," Herrera remarks; "one sort all water with bridges, another all earth, and a third of earth and water, there being a space to walk along on land and the rest for canoes to pass, so that most of the streets had walks on the sides and water in the middle". [Footnote: History of America, ii, 361.]

Many of the houses were large, far beyond the supposable wants of a single Indian family. They were constructed of adobe brick and of stone, and plastered over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white; and some were constructed of a red porous stone. In cutting and dressing this stone flint implements were used. [Footnote: Clavigero, ii, 238.]

The fact that the houses were plastered externally leads us to infer that they had not learned to dress stone and lay them in courses. It is not certainly established that they had learned the use of a mortar of lime and sand. In the final attack and capture, it is said that Cortes, in the course of seventeen days, destroyed and leveled three-quarters of the pueblo, which demonstrates the flimsy character of the masonry. Some of the houses were constructed on three sides of a court, like those on the Rio Chaco in New Mexico, others probably surrounded an open court or quadrangle, like the House of the Nuns at Uxmal; but this is not clearly shown. The best houses were usually two stories high, an upper and lower floor being mentioned. The second story receded from the first, probably in the terraced form. Clavigero remarks that "the houses of the lords and people of circumstance were built of stone and lime. They consisted of two floors, having halls, large court-yards, and the chambers fitly disposed; the roofs were flat and terraced; the walls were so well whitened, polished, and shining that they appeared to the Spaniards when at a distance to have been silver. The pavement or floor was plaster, perfectly level, plain, and smooth.... The large houses of the capital had in general two entrances, the principal one to the street, the other to the canal. They had no wooden doors to their houses." [Footnote: History of Mexico, ii, 232.]

The house was entered through doorways from the street, or from the court, on the ground-floor. Not a house in Mexico is mentioned by any of the early writers as occupied by a single family. They were evidently joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American model, each occupied by a number of families ranging from five and ten to one hundred, and perhaps in some cases two hundred families in a house.

Before considering the house architecture of the Aztecs, it remains to notice, briefly, the general character of the houses of the Village Indians within the areas of Spanish visitation. They were joint-tenement houses, usually, of the American model, adapted to communism in living, like those previously described, and will aid us to understand the houses of the pueblo of Mexico.

Herrera, speaking of the natives of Cuba, remarks that "they had caciques and towns of two hundred houses, with several families in each of them, as was usual in Hispaniola". [Footnote: ib., ii, 15.]

The Cubans were below the Sedentary Indians. In Yucatan, the houses of the Mayas, and of the tribes of Guatemala, Chiapas, and Honduras, remain in ruins to speak for themselves, and will form the subject of the ensuing chapter. On the march to Mexico, Cortez and his men, "being come down into the plain, took up their quarters in a country house that had many apartments." [Footnote: ib., ii, 320.]

"At Iztapalapa he was entertained in a house that had large courts, upper and lower floors and very delightful gardens. The walls were of stone, the timber work well wrought, there were many and spacious rooms, hung with cotton hangings extraordinary rich in their way." [Footnote: "History of America", 325.]

His accommodations in the pueblo of Mexico will elsewhere be noticed. After the capture of the pueblo Alvaredo was sent southward with two hundred foot and forty horse to the province of Tututlepec on the Pacific. "When he arrived the lord of Tututlepec offered to quarter the Spaniards in his palace which was very magnificent."

"In 1525 Cortez made his celebrated march to Guatemala with one hundred and fifty horse, the same number of foot, and three hundred Indians. Being well received in the city of Apoxpalan, Cortez and all the Spaniards with their horses were quartered in one house, the Mexicans being dispersed into others, and all of them plentifully supplied with provisions during their stay. The first 'palace' described by Herrera was discovered by Balboa somewhere in the present Costa Rica, and Comagre has gone into history as its proprietor. This palace was more remarkable and better built than any that had been yet seen on the islands or the little that was then known of the continent, being one hundred and fifty paces in length and eighty in breadth founded on very large posts inclosed by a stone wall with timber intermixed at the top and hollow spaces so beautifully wrought that the Spaniards were amazed at the sight of it and could not express the manner and curiosity of it. There were in it several chambers and apartments and one that was like a buttery and full of such provisions as the country afforded, as bread, venison, swine's flesh, &c. There was another large room like a cellar full of earthen vessel containing several sorts of white and red liquors made of Indian wheat etc. The noticeable fact in this description is the two chambers containing provisions and stores for the household which was undoubtedly the case with all of those named. Zempoala near Vera Cruz is described as a very large town with stately buildings of good timber work and every house had a garden with water so that it looked like a terrestrial paradise.... The scouts advancing on horseback came to the great square and courts where the prime houses were, which having been lately new plastered over, were very light, the Indians being extraordinary expert at that work", [Footnote: History of America, ii, 211.] and further states that "the houses were built of 'lime and stone'."

These pueblos were generally small, consisting of three or four large joint-tenement houses, with other houses smaller in size, the different grades of houses representing the relative thrift and prosperity of the several groups by whom they were owned and occupied. It is doubtful whether there was a single pueblo in North America, with the exception of Tlascala, Cholula, Tezcuco, and Mexico, which contained ten thousand inhabitants. There is no occasion to apply the term "city" to any of them. None of the Spanish descriptions enable us to realize the exact form and structure of these houses, or their relations to each other in forming a pueblo. But for the pueblos, occupied or in ruins, in New Mexico, and the more remarkable pueblos in ruins in Yucatan and Central America, we would know very little concerning the house architecture of the Sedentary Village Indians. It is evident from the citations made that the largest of these joint-tenement houses would accommodate from five hundred to a thousand or more people, living in the fashion of Indians; and that the courts were probably quadrangles, formed by constructing the building on three sides of an inclosed space, as in the New Mexican pueblos, or upon the four sides, as in the House of the Nuns, at Uxmal.