The writers on the conquest have failed to describe the Aztec house in such a manner that it can be fairly comprehended. They have also failed to explain the mode of life within it. But it can safely be said that most of these houses were large, far beyond any supposable wants of a single Indian family; that they were constructed, when on dry land, of adobe brick, and when in the water, of stone imbedded in some kind of mortar, and plastered over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white. Some also were constructed of a red porous stone. Some of these houses were built on three sides of a court, like those on the Chaco, but the court opened on a street or causeway. Others not unlikely surrounded an open court or quadrangle, which must have been entered through a gateway; but this is not clearly shown. The large houses were probably two stories high; an upper and a lower floor are mentioned in some cases, but rarely a third.

Communism in living in large households, the communism being confined to the household, was probably the rule of life among the ancient Mexicans at the time of the Conquest.

[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote 2 relocated to chapter end.]

Two of the houses in Mexico were more particularly noted by the soldiers of Cortes than others—that in which they were quartered, and that in which Montezuma lived. Neither can be said to have been described. I shall confine myself to these two structures.

Cortes made his first entry into Mexico in November, 1519, with four hundred and fifty Spaniards, according to Bernal Diaz, [Footnote: Diaz Conquest of Mex., ed. 1803, Keatinge's Trans., i, 181, 189. Herrera says, 300, ii, 327.] accompanied by a thousand Tlaxcallan allies. They were lodged in a vacant palace of Montezuma's late father, Diaz naively remarks, observing that "the whole of this palace was very light, airy, clean, and pleasant, the entry being through a great court." [Footnote: Diaz, I, 191.] Cortes, after describing his reception, informs us that Montezuma "returned along the street in the order already described, until he reached a very large and splendid palace in which we were to be quartered. He then took me by the hand and led me into a spacious saloon, in front of which was a court through which we had entered." [Footnote: Dispatches of Cortes, Folsom's Trans., p. 86.]

So much for the statements of two eye-witnesses. Herrera gathered some additional particulars. He states that "they came to a very large court, which was the wardrobe of the idols, and had been the house of Axayacatzin, Montezuma's father.... Being lodged in so large a house, that, though it seems incredible, contained so many capacious rooms, with bedchambers, that one hundred and fifty Spaniards could all lie single. It was also worth observing that though the house was so big, every part of it to the last corner was very clean, neat, matted, and hung with hangings of cotton and feather work of several colors, and had beds and mats with pavilions over them. No man of whatsoever quality having any other sort of bed, no other being used." [Footnote: History of America, ii, 330.] In the tidiness of these rooms we gain some evidence of the character of Aztec women.

Joint-tenement houses, and the mode of life they indicate, were at this time unknown in Europe. They belonged to a more ancient condition of society. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Spaniards, astonished at their magnitude, should have styled them palaces, and having been received with a great array by Montezuma, as the general commander of the Aztec forces, should have regarded him as a king, since monarchical government was the form with which they were chiefly acquainted. Suffice it then, to say that one of the great houses of the Aztecs was large enough to accommodate Cortes and his fourteen hundred and fifty men including Indian allies as they had previously been accommodated in one Cholulan house and elsewhere, on the way to Mexico. From New Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama there was scarcely a principal village in which an equal number could not have found accommodations in a single house. When it is found to be unnecessary to call it a palace in order to account for its size, we are led to the conclusion that an ordinary Aztec house was emptied of its inhabitants to make room for their unwelcome visitors. After their reception, Aztec hospitality supplied them with provisions. Mr. Bandelier has, in the article above referred to, explained this house in a very satisfactory manner as "the tecpan, or official house of the tribe." He says: "The house where the Spaniards were quartered was the 'tecpan,' or official house of the tribe, vacated by the official household for that purpose." In sallying forth to greet the newcomers at the dike, "Wrathy chief (Montezuma) acted simply as the representative of the tribal hospitality, extending unusual courtesies to unusual, mysterious, and therefore dreaded guests. Leaving these in possession of the 'tecpan,' he retired to another of the large communal buildings surrounding the central square, where the official business was, meanwhile, transacted. His return to the Spanish quarters, even if compulsory, had less in it to strike the natives than is commonly believed. It was a re-installation in old quarters, and therefore the 'Tlatocan (Council of Chiefs) itself felt no hesitancy in meeting there again, until the real nature of the dangerous visitors was ascertained, when the council gradually withdrew from the snare, leaving the unfortunate 'chief of men' in Spanish hands." [Footnote: 12 Annual Report of Peabody Museum, p. 680.]

We are next to consider the second so-called palace, that in which Montezuma lived, and the dinner of Montezuma which these soldiers witnessed, and which has gone into history as a part of the evidence that a monarchy of the feudal type existed in Mexico. They had but little time to make their observations, for this imaginary kingdom perished almost immediately, and the people, in the main, dispersed. The so-called palace of Montezuma is not described by Diaz, for the reason, probably, that there was nothing to distinguish it from a number of similar structures in the pueblo. Neither is it described by Cortes or the Anonymous Conqueror; Cortes merely remarking generally that "within the city his palaces were so wonderful that it is hardly possible to describe their beauty and extent; I can only say that in Spain there is nothing equal to them." [Footnote: Despatches, p. 121.]

Gothic cathedrals were then standing in Spain, the Alhambra in Grenada, and, without doubt, public and private buildings of dressed stone laid in courses. While the comparison was mendacious, we can understand the desire of the conqueror to magnify his exploits. Herrera, who came later and had additional resources, remarks that the palace in which Montezuma resided "had twenty gates, all of them to the square or market-place, and the principal streets, and three spacious courts, and in one of them a very large fountain.... There were many halls one hundred feet in length, and rooms of twenty-five and thirty, and one hundred baths. The timber-work was small, without nails, but very fine and strong, which the Spaniards much admired. The walls were of marble, jasper, porphyry, a black sort of stone with red veins like blood, white stone, and another sort that is transparent. The roofs were of wood, well wrought and carved.... The rooms were painted and matted, and many of them had rich hangings of cotton and coney wool, or of feather-work. The beds were not answerable to the grandeur of the house and furniture, being poor and wretched, consisting of blankets upon mats or on hay.... Few men lie in this palace, but there were one thousand women in it, and some say three thousand, which is reckoned most likely.... Montezuma took to himself the ladies that were the daughters of great men, being many in number." [Footnote: History of America, ii, 345.]

The external walls of the houses were covered with plaster. From the description it seems probable that in the interior of the large rooms the natural faces of the stone in the walls were seen here and there, some of the red porous stone, some of marble, and some resembling porphyry, for it is not supposable that they could cut this stone with flint implements. Large stones used on the inner faces of the walls might have been left uncovered, and thus have presented the mottled appearance mentioned. The Aztecs had no structures comparable with those of Yucatan. Their architecture resembles that of New Mexico wherever its features distinctly appear upon evidence that can be trusted. The best rooms found in the latter region are of thin pieces of sandstone prepared by fracture and laid up with a uniform face. Herrera had no occasion to speak of the use of marble and porphyry in the walls of this house in such a vague manner and upon more vague information. The reference to the thousand or more women as forming the harem of Montezuma is a gross libel.

Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft, the last of the long line of writers who have treated the affairs of the Aztecs, has put the finishing touch to this picture in the following language: "The principal palace of the king of Mexico was an irregular pile of low buildings enormous in extent, constructed of huge blocks of tetzontli, a kind of porous stone common to that country, cemented with mortar. The arrangement of the buildings was such that they enclosed three great plazas or public squares, in one of which a beautiful fountain incessantly played. Twenty great doors opened on the squares and on the streets, and over these was sculptured in stone the coat-of-arms of the king of Mexico, an eagle griping in his talons a jaguar. In the interior were many halls, and one in particular is said by a writer who accompanied Cortes, known as the Anonymous Conqueror, to have been of sufficient extent to contain three thousand men.... In addition to these were more than one hundred smaller rooms, and the same number of marble baths.... The walls and floors of halls and apartments were many of them faced with polished slabs of marble, jasper, obsidian, and white tecali; lofty columns of the same fine stones supported marble balconies and porticos, every inch and corner of which was filled with wondrous ornamental carving, or held a grinning, grotesquely sculptured head. The beams and casings were of cedar, cypress, and other valuable woods profusely carved and put together without nails.... Superb mats of most exquisite finish were spread upon the marble floors; the tapestry that draped the walls and the curtains that hung before the windows were made of a fabric most wonderful for its delicate texture, elegant designs, and brilliant colors; through the halls and corridors a thousand golden censers, in which burned precious spices and perfumes, diffused a subtle odor." [Footnote: Native Races of the Pacific States, ii, 160.]

Upon this rhapsody it will be sufficient to remark that halls were entirely unknown in Indian architecture. Neither a hall, as that term is used by us, has ever been seen in an Indian house, nor has one been found in the ruins of any Indian structure. An external corridor has occasionally been found in ruins of houses in Central America. The great doors open on the squares and streets; Aztec window-curtains of delicate texture, marble baths and porticos, and floors of polished slabs of marble, as figments of a troubled imagination, recall the glowing description of the great kingdom of the Sandwich Islands—with its king, its cabinet ministers, its parliament, its army and navy, which Mark Twain has fitly characterized as "an attempt to navigate a sardine dish with Great Eastern machinery"; and it suggested also the Indian chief humorously mentioned by Irving as generously "decked out in cocked hat and military coat, in contrast with his breech clout and leathern leggins, being grand officer at top and ragged Indian at bottom." [Footnote: Bonneville, p. 34.] Whatever may be said by credulous and enthusiastic authors to decorate this Indian pueblo, its houses and its breech-cloth people, cannot conceal the "ragged Indian" therein by dressing him in a European costume.

On the seventh day after the entry into Mexico, Montezuma was induced by intimidation to leave the house in which he lived and take up his quarters with Cortes, where he was held a prisoner until his death, which occurred a few weeks later. Whatever was seen of his mode of life in his usual place of residence was practically limited to the five days between the coming of the Spaniards and his capture. Our knowledge of the facts is in the main derived from what these soldiers reported upon slight and imperfect means of observation. Bernal Diaz and Cortes have left us an extraordinary description, not of his residence, but of his daily life, and more particularly of the dinner, which will now be considered. It is worth the attempt to take up the pictures of these and succeeding authors, and see whether the real truth of the matter cannot be elicited from their own statements. There was undoubtedly a basis of facts underneath them, because without such a basis the superstructure could not have been created.

It may with reason be supposed that the Spaniards found Montezuma, with his gentile kindred, in a large joint-tenement house, containing perhaps fifty or a hundred families united in a communal household. The dinner they witnessed was the single daily meal of this household, prepared in a common cook-house from common stores, and divided at the kettle. The dinner of each person was placed in an earthen bowl, with which in his hand an Indian needed neither chair nor table, and, moreover, had neither the one nor the other. The men ate first, and by themselves, Indian fashion; and the women, of whom only a few were seen, afterwards and by themselves. On this hypothesis the dinner in question is susceptible of a satisfactory explanation.

It has been shown that each Aztec community of persons owned lands in common, from which they derived their support. Their mode of tillage and of distribution of the products, whatever it may have been, would have returned to each family or household, large or small, its rightful share. Communism in living in large households composed of related families springs naturally from such a soil. It may be considered a law of their condition, and, plainly enough, the most economical mode of life they could adopt until the idea of property had been sufficiently developed in their minds to lead to the division of lands among individuals with ownership in fee, and power of alienation. Their social system, which tended to unite kindred families in a common household, their ownership of lands in common, and their ownership, as a group, of a joint-tenement house, which would necessarily follow, would not admit a right in persons to sell, and thus to introduce strangers into the ownership of such lands or such houses. Lands and houses were owned and held under a common system which entered into their plan of life. The idea of property was forming in their minds, but it was still in that immature state which pertains to the Middle Status of barbarism. They had no money, but traded by barter of commodities; very little personal property, and scarcely anything of value to Europeans. They were still a breech-cloth people, wearing this rag of barbarism as the unmistakable evidence of their condition; and the family was in the syndyasmian or pairing form, with separation at any moment at the option of either party. It was the weakness of the family, its inability to face alone the struggle of life, which led to the construction of joint-tenement houses throughout North and South America by the Indian tribes; and it was the gentile organization which led them to fill these houses, on the principle of kin, with related families.

In a pueblo as large as that of Mexico, which was the largest found in America, and may possibly have contained thirty thousand inhabitants, there must have been a number of large communal houses of different sizes, from those that were called palaces, because of their size, to those filled by a few families. Degrees of prosperity are shown in barbarous as well as in civilized life in the quarters of the people. Herrera states that the houses of the poorer sort of people were "small, low, and mean," but that, "as small as the houses were, they commonly contained two, four, and six families." [Footnote: History of America, ii, 360.]

Wherever a household is found in Indian life, be the married pairs composing it few or many, that household practiced communism in living. In the largest of these houses it would not follow necessarily that all its inmates lived from common stores, because they might form several household groups in the same house; but in the large household of which Montezuma was a member, it is plain that it was fed from common stores prepared in a common cook-house, and divided from the kettle, in earthen bowls, each containing the dinner of a single person. Montezuma was supposed to be absolute master of Mexico, and what they saw at this dinner was interpreted with exclusive reference to him as the central figure. The result is remarkably grotesque. It was their own self-deception, without any assistance from the Aztecs. The accounts given by Diaz and Cortes, and which subsequent writers have built upon with glowing enthusiasm and free additions, is simply the gossip of a camp of soldiers suddenly cast into an earlier form of society, which the Village Indians of America, of all mankind, then best represented. That they could understand it was not to have been expected. Accustomed to monarchy and to privileged classes, the principal Aztec war-chief seemed to them quite naturally a king, and sachems and chiefs followed in their vision as princes and lords. But that they should have remained in history as such for three centuries is an amusing commentary upon the value of historical writings in general.

The dinner of Montezuma, witnessed within the five days named by the Spanish soldiers, comes down to us with a slender proportion of reliable facts. The accounts of Bernal Diaz and of Cortes form the basis of all subsequent descriptions [Footnote: The Anonymous Conqueror does not notice it.]. Montezuma was the central figure around whom all the others are made to move. A number of men, as Diaz states, were to be seen in the house and in the courts, going to and fro; a part of whom were thought to be chiefs in attendance upon Montezuma, and the remainder were supposed to be guards. Better proof of the use of guards is needed than the suggestion of Diaz. It implies a knowledge of military discipline unknown by Indian tribes. It was noticed that Indians went barefooted into the presence of Montezuma, which was interpreted as an act of servility and deference, although bare feet must have been the rule rather than the exception in Tenochtitlan. Diaz further informs us that "his cooks had upwards of thirty different ways of dressing meats, and they had earthen vessels so contrived as to keep them always hot. For the table of Montezuma himself above three hundred dishes were dressed, and for his guards above a thousand. Before dinner Montezuma would go out and inspect the preparations, and his officers would point out to him which were the best, and explain of what birds and flesh they were composed, and of these he would eat.... Montezuma was seated on a low throne or chair at a table proportionate to the height of his seat. The table was covered with white cloth and napkins, and four beautiful women presented him with water for his hands in vessels which they called xicales, with other vessels under them like plates to catch the water; they also presented him with towels. Then two other women brought him small cakes of bread, and when the king began to eat, a large screen of wood-gilt was placed before him, so that people should not during that time see him. The women having retired to a little distance, four ancient lords stood by the throne, to whom Montezuma from time to time spoke or addressed questions, and as a matter of particular favor gave to each of them a plate of that which he was eating.... This was served on earthenware of Cholula, red and black.... I observed a number of jars, about fifty, brought in filled with foaming chocolate, of which he took some which the women presented to him. During the time Montezuma was at dinner, two very beautiful women were busily employed making small cakes, with eggs and other things mixed therein. These were delicately white, and when made they presented them to him on plates covered with napkins. Also another kind of bread was brought to him in long loaves, and plates of cakes resembling wafers. After he had dined they presented to him three little canes, highly ornamented, containing liquid amber mixed with an herb they call tobacco; and when he had sufficiently viewed the singers, dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the smoke of one of these canes and then laid himself down to sleep; and thus his principal meal concluded. After this was over, all his guards and domestics sat down to dinner, and as near as I can judge, above a thousand plates of these eatables that I have mentioned were laid before them, with vessels of foaming chocolate, and fruit in immense quantity. For his women and various inferior servants, his establishment was a prodigious expense, and we were astonished, amid such a profusion, at the vast regularity that prevailed." [Footnote: History of the Conquest of Mexico, i, 198-202.] Diaz wrote his history more than thirty years after the conquest (he says he was writing it in 1568), [Footnote: ib., ii, 423.] which may serve to excuse him for implying the use of veritable chairs and a table where neither existed, and for describing the remainder as sitting down to dinner. Tezozomoc, who is followed by Herrera, says the table of Montezuma consisted of two skins. How they were fastened together and supported does not appear.

The statements in the Despatches of Cortes, as they now appear, are an improvement upon Diaz, the pitch being on a higher key. He remarks that Montezuma "was served in the following manner: Every day, as soon as it was light, six hundred nobles and men of rank were in attendance at the palace, who either sat or walked about in the halls and galleries, and passed their time in conversation, but without entering the apartment where his person was. The servants and attendants of these nobles remained in the courtyards, of which there were two or three of great extent, and in the adjoining street, which was also very spacious. They all remained in attendance from morning till night; and when his meals were served, the nobles were likewise served with equal profusion, and their servants and secretaries also had their allowance. Daily his larder and wine-cellar were open to all who wished to eat or drink. The meals were served by three or four hundred youths, who brought in an infinite number of dishes; indeed, whenever he dined or supped the table was loaded with every kind of flesh, fish, fruits and vegetables that the country produced. As the climate is cold, they put a chafing-dish with live coals under every plate and dish, to keep them warm. The meals were served in a large hall in which Montezuma was accustomed to eat, and the dishes quite filled the room, which was covered with mats and kept very clean. He sat on a small cushion, curiously wrought of leather. During the meal there were present, at a little distance from him, five or six elderly caciques, to whom he presented some of the food. And there was constantly in attendance one of the servants, who arranged and handed the dishes, and who received from others whatever was wanted for the supply of the table. Both at the beginning and end of every meal, they furnished water for the hands, and the napkins used on these occasions were never used a second time, and this was the case also with the plates and dishes, which were not brought again, but new ones in place of them; it was the same with the chafing-dishes." [Footnote: Despatches of Cortes, Folsom's Trans, p. 123]

Since cursive writing was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for two reasons; firstly, because the level of the streets and courts was but four feet above the level of the water, which made cellars impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine. An acid beer (pulque), made by fermenting the juice of the maguey, was a common beverage of the Aztecs, but it is hardly supposable that even this was used at dinner. It will he noticed that according to this account the dinner was served to all at the same time, Montezuma and several chiefs eating at one end of the room, but no mention is made of the manner in which the remainder ate. The six hundred men (or less) who remained about the house and courts during the day, we may well suppose, were, with their families, joint residents and joint proprietors with Montezuma of the establishment. Two or three structures are mingled in these descriptions, which were probably entirely distinct in their uses.

Herrera gathered up the subsequent growth of the story, which undoubtedly made a great sensation in Europe as a part of the picture of life in the New World; and embellished it from sheer delight in a marvelous tale. The few facts stated by Bernal Diaz, expressing the interpretation of the Spanish soldiers, were fruitful seeds planted three hundred years ago, which the imaginations of enthusiastic authors have developed into a glowing and picturesque narrative. The principal part of Herrera'a account runs as follows: "Montezuma did always eat alone, and so great a quantity of meat was served up to his table, such great variety, and so richly dressed, that there was sufficient for all the prime men of his household. His table was a cushion, or two pieces of colored leather; instead of a chair, a little low stool, made of one piece, the seat hollowed out, carved and painted in the best manner that could be; the table-cloth, napkins, and towels of very fine cotton as white as snow, and never served any more than once, being the fees of the proper officers. The meat was brought in by four hundred pages, all gentlemen, sons of lords, and set down together in a hall; the king went thither, and with a rod, or his hand, pointed to what he liked, and then the sewer set it upon the chafing-dishes that it might not be cold; and this he never failed to do, unless the steward at any time very much recommended to him some particular dishes. Before he sat down, twenty of the most beautiful women came and brought him water to wash his hands, and when seated the sewer did shut a wooded rail that divided the room, lest the nobility that went to see him dine should encumber the table, and he alone set on and took off the dishes, for the pages neither came near nor spoke a word. Strict silence was observed, none daring to speak unless it was some jester, or the person of whom he asked a question. The sewer was always upon his knees and barefooted, attending him without lifting up his eyes. No man with shoes on was to come into the room upon pain of death. The sewer also gave him drink in a cup of several shapes, sometimes of gold, and sometimes of silver, sometimes of gourd, and sometimes of the shells of fishes." [Footnote: Solis, thinking a cocoanut shell altogether too plain, embellishes the shell with jewels: "He had cups of gold, and salvers of the same; and sometimes he drank out of cocoas and natural shells very richly set with jewels."—History of the Conquest of Mexico, Lond., ed. 1738, Townshend's Trans., I, 417.]

"Six ancient lords attended at a distance, to whom he gave some dishes of what he liked best, which they did eat there with much respect. He had always music of flutes, reeds, horns, shells, kettle-drums, and other instruments, nothing agreeable to the ears of the Spaniards.... There were always at dinner dwarfs, crooked and other deformed persons, to provoke laughter, and they did eat of what was left at the further end of the hall, with the jesters and buffoons. What remained was given to three thousand Indians, that were constantly upon guard in the courts and squares, and therefore there were always three thousand dishes of meat and as many cups of liquor; the larder and cellar were never shut, by reason of their continual carrying in and out. In the kitchen they dressed all sorts of meat that were sold in the market, being a prodigious quantity, besides what was brought in by hunters, tenants, and tributaries. The dishes and all utensils were all of good earthenware, and served the king but once. He had abundance of vessels of gold and silver, yet made no use of them, because they should not serve twice." [Footnote: History of America, ii, 336.] Further on, and out of its place, Herrera gives us what seems to have been a call of the scattered household to dinner. "When it was dinner-time," he remarks, "eight or ten men whistled very loud, beating the kettle-drums hard, as it were to warn those that were to dance after dinner; then the dancers came, who, to entertain their great sovereign, were all to be men of quality, clad as richly as they could, with costly mantles, white, red, green, yellow, and some of several colors." [Footnote: ib., 443.]

The four women of Diaz who brought water to Montezuma have now increased to twenty; but, as the Spanish writers claimed a wide latitude in the matter of numbers, fivefold is not, perhaps, unreasonable, especially as it did not occur to Herrera that Diaz may, at the outset, have quadrupled the actual number. The "three or four hundred youths" who brought in the dinner, according to Cortes, settle down under Herrera to "four hundred pages, all gentlemen, sons of lords"; and here we must recognize the discrimination of the historian in that he found the highest number stated by Cortes fully adequate to the occasion. Two other things may be noticed: shoes have disappeared from all Indian feet in the face of a terrific penalty, and three thousand hungry Indians stand in peaceful quietude, while their dinner grows cold upon the floor, as Montezuma eats alone in solitary grandeur. No American Indian could be made to comprehend this picture. It lacks the realism of Indian life, and embodies an amount of puerility of which the Indian nature is not susceptible. Europeans and Americans may rise to the height of the occasion because their mental range is wider, and their imaginations have fed more deeply upon nursery tales. Diaz had contented himself with saying that Montezuma "had two hundred of his nobility on guard in apartments adjoining his own," [Footnote: History of the Conquest of Mexico, I, 198.] in whom may be recognized his fellow-householders; but Cortes generously increased the number to "six hundred nobles and men of rank," who appeared at daylight and remained in attendance during the day. Neither number, however, was quite sufficient to meet the conceptions of the historiographer of Spain, and accordingly three thousand, all guards, were adopted by Herrera as a suitable number to give eclat to Montezuma's dinner. If any man conversant with Indian character could show by what instrumentality five hundred Indians could be kept together twelve hours in attendance upon any human being from a sense of duty, he would add something to our knowledge of the Red Race; and could he prove further that they had actually waited, in the presence of as many earthen bowls, smoking with their several dinners, while their war-chief in the same room was making his repast alone, the verifier would thereby endow the Indian character with an element of forbearance he has never since been known to display. The block of wood hollowed out for a stool or seat may be accepted, for it savors of the simplicity of Indian art. That the Aztecs had napkins of coarse texture, woven by hand, is probable; as also that they were white, because cotton is white.

Imagination might easily expand a napkin into a table-cloth, provided a table existed to spread it upon; but in this case, without duly considering the relation between the two, the table-cloth has been created, but the table refuses to appear. The napkin business, therefore, seems to have been slightly overdone. Finally, the call of the scattered household to dinner by kettle-drums and whistling savors too strongly of Indian ways and usages to be diverted into a summons to the dancers, as Herrera suggests. This Aztec dinner-call, on a scale commensurate with a large communal household, would have been lost to history but for the special use discerned in it to decorate a tale. It recognizes the loitering habits of an Aztec household, and perhaps the irregularity of the dinner-hour.

Passing over the descriptions of Sahagun, Clavigero, and Prescott, who have kindled into enthusiasm over this dinner of Montezuma, Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft shall be allowed to furnish us with the very latest version. "Every day," he remarks, "from sunrise until sunset the antechambers of Montezuma's palace in Mexico were occupied by six hundred noblemen and gentlemen, who passed their time lounging about and discussing the gossip of the day in low tones, for it was considered disrespectful to speak loudly or make any noise within the palace limits. They were provided with apartments in the palace, and took their meals from what remained of the superabundance of the royal table, as did after them their own servants, of whom each person of quality was entitled to from one to thirty according to his rank. These retainers, numbering two or three thousand, filled several outer courts during the day. The king took his meals alone in one of the largest halls of the palace.... He was seated upon a low leather cushion, upon which were thrown various soft skins, and his table was of a similar description, except that it was larger and rather higher, and was covered with white cotton cloths of the finest texture. The dinner-service was of the finest ware of Cholula, and many of the goblets were of gold and silver, or fashioned with beautiful shells. He is said to have possessed a complete service of solid gold, but as it was considered below a king's dignity to use anything at table twice, Montezuma, with all his extravagance, was obliged to keep this costly dinner-set in the temple. The bill of fare comprised everything edible of fish, flesh, and fowl that could be procured in the empire or imported beyond it. Relays of couriers were employed in bringing delicacies from afar.... There were cunning cooks among the Aztecs, and at these extravagant meals there was almost as much variety in the cookery as in the matter cooked. Sahagun gives a most formidable list of roast, stewed, and broiled dishes, of meat, fish, and poultry, seasoned with many kinds of herbs, of which, however, that most frequently mentioned is chile. He further describes many kinds of bread, all bearing a more or less close resemblance to the Mexican tortilla ... then tamales of all kinds, and many other curious messes, such as frog spawn and stewed ants, cooked with chile.... Each dish was kept warm on a chafing-dish placed under it. Writers do not agree as to the exact quantity of food served up at each meal, but it must have been immense, since the lowest number of dishes given is three hundred and the highest three thousand. They were brought into the hall by four hundred pages of noble birth, who placed their burdens upon the matted floor and retired noiselessly. The king then pointed out such viands as he wished to partake of, or left the selection to his steward, who doubtless took pains to study the likes and dislikes of the royal palate. The steward was a functionary of the highest rank and importance; he alone was privileged to place the designated delicacies before the king upon the table; he appears to have done duty both as royal carver and cup-bearer; and, according to Torquemada, to have done it barefooted and on his knees. [Footnote: The 'cup-bearer' agrees reasonably well with the 'window-curtains.'] Everything being in readiness, a number of the most beautiful of the king's women entered, bearing water in round vessels called Xicales, for the king to wash his hands in, and towels that he might dry them, other vessels being placed upon the ground to catch the drippings. Two other women at the same time brought him some small loaves of a very delicate kind of bread, made of the finest maize flour, beaten up with eggs. This done, a wooden screen, carved and gilt, was placed before him that no one might see him while eating. There were always present five or six aged lords, who stood near the royal chair barefooted and with bowed heads. To these, as a special mark of favor, the king occasionally sent a choice morsel from his own plate. During the meal the monarch amused himself by watching the performances of his jugglers and tumblers, whose marvellous feats of strength and dexterity I shall describe in another place; at other times there was dancing, accompanied by singing and music.... The more solid food was followed by pastry, sweetmeats, and a magnificent dessert of fruit. The only beverage drank was chocolate, of which about fifty jars were provided; it was taken with a spoon, finely wrought of gold or shell, from a goblet of the same material. Having finished his dinner, the king again washed his hands in water brought to him, as before, by the women. After this, several painted and gilt pipes were brought, from which he inhaled, through his mouth or nose, as best suited him, the smoke of a mixture of liquid amber and an herb called tobacco. This siesta over, he devoted himself to business, and proceeded to give audience to foreign ambassadors or deputations from cities in the empire, and to such of his lords and ministers as had business to transact with him." [Footnote: Native Races of the Pacific States, ii, 174-178.]

In this account, although founded upon those of Diaz and Cortes, and showing nothing essentially new, we have the final growth of the story to the present time, but without any assurance that the limits of its possible expansion have been reached. The purification of our aboriginal history, by casting out the mass of trash with which it is so heavily freighted, is forced upon us to save American intelligence from deserved disgrace. Whatever may be said of the American aborigines in general, or of the Aztecs in particular, they were endowed with common sense in the matter of their daily food, which cost them labor, forethought, and care to provide. The picture of Indian life here presented is simply impossible. Village Indians in the Middle Status of barbarism were below the age of tables and chairs for dinner service; neither had they learned to arrange a dinner to be eaten socially at a common table, or even to share their dinner with their wives and children. Their joint-tenement houses, their common stores, their communism in living, and the separation of the sexes at their meals, are genuine Indian customs and usages which explain this dinner. It was misconceived by the Spaniards quite naturally, and with the grotesque results herein presented; but there is no excuse for continuing this misconception in the presence of known facts accessible to all.

There is no doubt whatever that Montezuma was treated with great consideration by all classes of persons. Indians respect and venerate their chiefs. As their principal war-chief, Montezuma held the highest official position among them. He is represented as amiable, generous, and manly, although unnerved by the sudden appearance and the novel and deadly arms of the Spaniards. He had charge of the reception and entertainment of Cortes and his men, who requited him savagely for his hospitality and kindness. But when his home-life is considered, he fared no better than his fellow-householders, sharing with them their common dinner. These accounts, when divested of their misconceptions, render it probable that Montezuma was living with his gentle kinsmen in a house they owned in common; and that what the Spaniards saw was a dinner in common by this household, which, with the women and children, may have numbered from five hundred to a thousand persons. When the scattered members of the household had been summoned, the single daily meal was brought in by a number of persons from the common cook-house in earthen bowls and dishes, and set down upon the floor of an apartment used as a place for dinner in the fashion of Indians. Indians as they were, they doubtless took up these bowls one by one, each containing the dinner of one person divided at the kettle. They ate standing, or it may be sitting upon the floor, or upon the ground in the open court. Indians as they were, the men ate first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards. After dinner was over, they were diverted, probably, with music and dancing, and made themselves merry, as well-fed Indians are apt to do. That the same dinner, conducted in a similar manner, occurred at all the houses in the pueblo, large and small, once a day, there can scarcely be a doubt.

The dinner of Montezuma which has gone into history, and been read for three centuries with wonder and admiration, is an excellent illustration of the slender material out of which American aboriginal history has been made. It shows, moreover, as a warning, what results flow from great misconceptions through the constructive faculty of authors.

A confederacy of three Indian tribes, speaking dialects of the same language, was precisely what the Spaniards found in Mexico, and this was all they found. They had no occasion in their accounts to advance a step beyond this simple fact. A satisfactory explanation of this confederacy can be found in similar Indian confederacies. It was a growth from the common institutions of the Indian family. Underneath these delusive pictures a council of chiefs is revealed, which was the natural and legitimate instrument of government under Indian institutions. No other form of government was possible among them. They had, beside, which was an equally legitimate part of this system, an elective and deposable war-chief (Teuchtli), the power to elect and to depose being held by a fixed constituency ever present, and ready to act when occasion required. The Aztec organization stood plainly before the Spaniards as a confederacy of Indian tribes. Nothing but the grossest perversion of obvious facts could have enabled Spanish writers to fabricate the Aztec monarchy out of a democratic organization.

Without ascertaining the unit of their social system, if organized in gentes, as they probably were, and without gaining any knowledge of the organization that did exist, they boldly invented for the Aztecs a monarchy, with high feudal characteristics, out of the reception of Cortes by their principal war-chief, and such other flimsy materials as Montezuma's dinner. This misconception has stood, through American indolence, quite as long as it deserves to stand.

Since the foregoing was written, the investigations of Mr. Bandelier "On the Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans" have been published. With the new light thus thrown upon the subject, this chapter should have been re-written. He shows that the Aztecs were composed of twenty gentes or clans. "The existence of twenty autonomous consanguine groups is thus revealed, and we find them again at the time of the conquest, while their last vestiges were perpetuated until after 1690, when Fray Augustin de Vetancurt mentions four chief quarters with their original Indian names, comprising and subdivided into twenty 'barrios'. Now the Spanish word 'barrio' is equivalent to the Mexican term 'calpulli.' Both indicate the kin, localized and settled with the view to permanence." [Footnote: Twelfth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, 1880, p. 591.]

This organization, as was to have been expected, lies at the foundation of their social system. He names the following as among the rights, duties, and obligations of the kinship:

I. The kin claimed the right to name its members.

II. It was the duty of the kin to educate or train its members to every branch of public life.

III. The kin had the right to regulate and to control marriage.

IV. It was one of the attributes of the kin to enjoy common burial.

V. The right of the kin to 'separate worship' appears not only established within the kin's territory, but it is also recognized even at the central medicine-lodge of the tribe.

VI. The kin was obligated to protect and defend the persons and property of its members, and to resent and punish any injury done to them, as if it were a crime committed against the kin itself.

VII. The kin had the right to elect its officers, as well as the right to remove or depose them for misbehavior.

[Footnote: Twelfth Ann. Rept. Peabody Museum, pp. 615-638.]

He also regards the four "brotherhoods" who occupied the four quarters of the pueblo as probably phratries. [Footnote: ib., p. 584.] He also shows that the government was under the control of a council, Tlatocan, composed of a body of chiefs. [Footnote: ib., p. 646, et seq.]

One of the most interesting results of this investigation is the discovery of a class of persons unattached to any gens, "outcasts from the bond of kinship." [Footnote: ib., p. 608, et seq.] Such a class grows up in every gentile society, when as far advanced as the Aztecs were. It finds its analogue in the Roman Plebeians. This remarkable essay will abundantly repay a careful study.

When we have learned to speak of the American Indians in language adapted to Indian life and Indian institutions, they will become comprehensible. So long as we apply to their social organizations and domestic institutions terms adapted to the organizations and to the institutions of civilized society, we caricature the Indians and deceive ourselves. There was neither a political society, nor a state, nor any civilization in America when it was discovered; and, excluding the Eskimos, but one race of Indians, the Red Race.

[Relocated Footnote 1: In the Despatches of Cortes the term King "El rey" is not used in speaking of Montezuma, but Senhor and cacique.

The Valley of Mexico, including the adjacent mountain slopes and excluding the area covered by water, was about equal to the State at Rhode Island, which contains thirteen hundred square miles; an insignificant area for a single American Indian tribe. But the confederacy had subdued a number of tribes southward and southeastward from the valley as far as Guatemala, and placed them under tribute. Under their plan of government it was impossible to incorporate these tribes in the Aztec confederacy; the barrier of language furnished an insuperable objection; and they were left to govern themselves through their own chiefs, and according to their own usages and customs. As they were neither under Aztec government nor Aztec usages, there is no occasion to speak of them as a part of the Aztec confederacy or even as an appendage of its government. The power of the confederacy did not extend a hundred miles beyond the Pueblo of Mexico on the west, northwest, north, northeast, or east sides, in each of which directions they were confronted by independent and hostile tribes.

The population of the three confederate tribes was confined to the valley, and did not probably exceed two hundred and fifty thousand souls, including the Moquiltes, Xochomileos, and Chaleans, if it equaled that number, which would give nearly twice the present population of New York to the square mile, and a greater population to the square mile than Rhode Island now contains. The Spanish estimates of Indian populations were gross exaggerations. Those who claim a greater population for the Valley of Mexico than that indicated will be bound to show how a barbarous people, without flocks and herds and without field agriculture, could have sustained in equal areas a larger number of inhabitants than a civilized people armed with these advantages.]

[Relocated Footnote 2: My learned friend, Mr. Ad. F. Bandelier, of Highland, Ill., has arrived at the same conclusion, substantially, as stated in the conclusion of his recent "Memoir on the Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans," 12th Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. Cambridge, 1880, p. 699.

"Taking all this together, and adding it to the results of our investigations into the military organization of the ancient Mexicans, as well as of their communal mode of holding and enjoying the soil, we feel authorized to conclude that the social organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans was a military democracy, originally based upon communism in living."]



CHAPTER XI.

RUINS OF HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF YUCATAN AND CENTRAL AMERICA.

At the epoch of their discovery, Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala were probably more thickly peopled than any other portion of North America of equal area; and their inhabitants were more advanced than the remaining aborigines. Their pueblos were planted along the rivers and streams, often quite near each other, and presented the same picture of occupation and of village life which might have been seen at the same time in the valley of the Rio Grande, of the Rio Chaco, and probably of the San Juan, and, at a still earlier period, of the Scioto. They consisted of a single great house, or of a cluster of houses near each other, forming one pueblo or village. In some cases, four or more structures were grouped together upon the same elevated platform; and where there were several of these platforms, each surmounted with one or more edifices, one of them was devoted to religious, and a portion of another to social and public uses. But there is no reason for supposing, from any ruins yet found, or from what is known of the people historically, that any one pueblo contained, at most, ten thousand inhabitants. No one tribe, or confederacy of tribes, had risen to supremacy within either of these areas by the consolidation of surrounding tribes. They were found, on the contrary, in the same state of subdivision and independence which invariably accompanies the gentile organization. Confederacies in all probability existed among such contiguous pueblos as spoke the same dialect, as the Cibolans were probably confederated, and as the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and Tlacopans are known to have been. Such confederacies, however, could not have reached beyond a common language of the tribes confederated.

The great houses of stone of the Village Indians within the areas named, and particularly in Yucatan and Central America, have done more than all other considerations to give to them their present position in the estimation of mankind. They are the highest constructive works of the Indian tribes. It may also be again suggested that, from the beginning, a false interpretation has been put upon this architecture, from a failure to understand its object and uses, or the condition and plan of domestic life of the people who occupied these structures. The design and object for which these edifices were constructed still await an intelligent explanation.

The highest type of architecture which then existed among the aborigines in any part of America was found in the regions named; particularly in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Honduras. Speaking of Yucatan, Herrera remarks that "the language is everywhere the same," the Maya being the language of its principal tribes, but "the whole country," he continues, "is divided into eighteen districts." [Footnote: History of America, l. c., iv, 161.]

If this reference is to a classification by tribes, it shows that the Mayas had fallen, by the process of segmentation, into this number of independent groups; the pueblos in each district being united under one government for mutual defense. It seems probable, however, that the group was smaller than a tribe. It is difficult in some cases to determine, from Herrera's language, whether he refers to native or Spanish divisions. In like manner, speaking of Chiapas, he remarks, that "this province is divided into four nations of different languages, which are the Chiapanecans, the Toques, the Zelsales, and the Quelenes, all of which differ in some particulars.... There are in it twenty-five towns, the chief of them called Tecpatlan, i.e., (among the Toques).... The nation of Zelsales has thirteen towns.... the Quelnes have twenty-five towns." [Footnote: ib., iv, 189.]

Sixty-three pueblos in three of the four tribes who occupied the small territory of Chiapas is a very large number, except on the supposition that each pueblo consisted usually of a single great house, like those in New Mexico, which is probable; but even then it seems excessive. It tends, however, to show the mode of occupation and settlement of the Village Indians in general. They planted their pueblos on the water-courses, where such existed, each tribe or subdivision of a tribe gathering in a cluster of houses, four or five in number, or in a single house; and, as may he inferred from the descriptions of Las Casas, so near together on the same rivulet that had not the native forest obstructed the view they would have been in sight of each other for miles along its banks. The scattered ruins of these pueblos in Yucatan at the present time, often consisting of a single large structure, confirms this view.

The tropical region of Yucatan and Central America, then as now, was undoubtedly covered with forests, except the limited clearings around the pueblos, and, apart from these pueblos, substantially uninhabited. Field agriculture was of course unknown, as they had neither domestic animals nor plows; but the Indians cultivated maize, beans, squashes, pepper, cotton, cacao, and tobacco in garden beds, and exercised some care over certain native fruits; cultivation tending to localize them in villages. Herrera remarks of the Village Indians of Honduras that "they sow thrice a year, and they were wont to grub up great woods with hatchets made of flint." [Footnote: History of America, iv., 133.]

Without metallic implements to subdue the forest, or even with copper axes, such as were found among the Aztecs, a very small portion only of the country would have been brought under cultivation, and that confined mainly to the margins of the streams.

Las Casas, bishop of Chiapas, who was in Yucatan and Chiapas about 1539, after remarking of the people of the former country that they were "better civilized in morals and in what belongs to the good order of societies than the rest of the Indians," proceeds as, follows: "The pretence of subjecting the Indians to the government of Spain is only made to carry on the design of subjecting them to the dominion of private men, who make them all their slaves". [Footnote: An Account of the First Voyages, etc., in America, Lond. ed., Trans., p. 52.]

And, again, he quotes from a letter of the bishop of St. Martha to the King of Spain, to this effect: "To redress the grievances of this province, it ought to be delivered from the tyranny of those who ravage it, and committed to the care of persons of integrity, who will treat the inhabitants with more kindness and humanity; for if it be left to the mercy of the governors, who commit all sorts of outrages with impunity, the province will be destroyed in a very short time." [Footnote: ib., p. 61.]

There are two material questions which require priority of consideration: First, whether or not the houses now in ruins in Yucatan and Central America were occupied at the time of the Spanish conquest; and, second, whether or not the present Indians of the country are the descendants of the people who constructed them. There is no basis whatever for the negative of either proposition; but it is assumed by those who regard the so-called palace at Palenque and the Governor's House at Uxmal as the ancient residences of Indian potentates that great cities which once surrounded them have perished, and, further, that these ruins have an antiquity reaching far back of the Spanish conquest.

Mr. Stephens adopts the conclusion "that at the time of the conquest, and afterwards, the Indians were living in and occupied these very cities." [Footnote: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, ii, 348, 375.]

He also regarded the present Indians of the country as the descendants of those in possession at the time of the conquest. He might have added that as the Maya was the language of the aborigines of Yucatan at the epoch of the discovery, and is now the language of the greater part of the natives who have not lost their original speech, there was no ground for either supposition. Herrera remarks of the inhabitants of Yucatan, that the "people were then found living together very politely in towns, kept very clean ... and the reason of their living so close together was because of the wars which exposed them to the danger of being taken, sold, and sacrificed; but the wars of the Spaniards made them disperse." [Footnote: History of America, iv, 168.] This last statement is very significant. Mr. Stephens, whose works and whose observations are in the main so valuable, is responsible to no small extent for the delusive inferences which have been drawn from the architecture of Yucatan, Honduras, and Chiapas. If he had repressed his imagination and confined himself to what he found, namely, certain Indian pueblos built of dressed stone, and in good architecture, which are sufficiently remarkable just as they are, in ruins, and had omitted altogether such terms as "palaces" and great cities, his readers would have escaped the deceptive conclusions with respect to the actual condition of society among the aborigines which his terminology and mode of treatment were certain to suggest.

It is sufficiently ascertained that within a few years after the conquest of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America were overrun by military adventurers whose rapacity and violence drove the harmless and timid Village Indians from their pueblos into the forests; thus destroying in a few years a higher culture than the Spaniards were able to substitute in its place. Nothing can be plainer, I think, than this additional fact, that all there ever was of Palenque, Uxmal, Copan, and other Indian pueblos in these areas, building for building and stone for stone, is there now in ruins.

There are reasons for believing, from the more advanced condition of their house architecture, that Yucatan was inhabited by Village Indians from an earlier, and for a much longer, period than the valley of Mexico. The traditions of the Yzaes of Chichenisa, possibly Chichen Itza, and of the Cocomes of Mayapan, related by Herrera, [Footnote: History of America, iv, 162, 163, 165.] claim a more ancient occupation of Yucatan than the Aztec traditions claim for the occupation of the valley of Mexico. The type of village life among the American aborigines was adapted to a warm climate, and presented in this area its highest exemplification.

The notices of the great houses in Yucatan are brief and general in the Spanish histories. Speaking of its eighteen districts, Herrera remarks that "in all of them were so many, and such stately stone buildings, that it was amazing, and the greatest wonder is, that having no use of any metal, they were able to raise such structures, which seem to have been temples, for their houses were always of timber and thatched." [Footnote: ib., iv, 162.]

This last statement is not only at variance with a previous one quoted above, but is another of the numerous misconceptions which impair so greatly the value of the Spanish histories. The people undoubtedly resided in these houses, which were adapted to such a use only, and were also in the nature of fortresses, thus proving the insecurity in which they lived. Some portion of the tribe may have resided in inferior and common habitations in the vicinity of these pueblos, and under their protection; but the great houses of stone were built for residences and not for temples, and were the homes of the body of the people. There were many of these pueblos, nearly all of them composed of one or two large structures, sprinkled over the face of the country in eligible situations after the manner of Village Indian life. The same adaptation to communism in living in large households is found impressed upon all the houses now in ruins in these areas. They are joint-tenement houses of the American type, and very similar to those still found in New Mexico and on the San Juan. At the epoch of the Spanish conquest, they were occupied pueblos, and were deserted by the Indians to escape the rapacity of Spanish military adventurers by whom they were oppressed and abused beyond Indian endurance. Instances are mentioned by Herrera where large numbers destroyed themselves to escape the exactions of Spanish masters, whom they were unable to resist. [Footnote: History of America, III, 346.]

The numerous pueblos in ruins scattered through the forests of Yucatan and southward are so many monuments of Spanish misrule, oppression, and rapacity.

The most extensive group of ruins in Yucatan is that at Uxmal. Its several structures are known as the "Governor's House"; the "House of the Nuns," which consists of four disconnected buildings, facing the four sides of a court; the "House of the Pigeons," consisting of two quadrangles; the "House of the Turtles"; the "House of the Old Woman"; and the "House of the Dwarf", with some trace of smaller buildings of inconsiderable size, and one or two pyramidal elevations unoccupied by structures. Of these, the "Governor's House" may have been the Tecan, or Official House of the Tribe, from the unusual size of the central rooms The "House of the Dwarf" was probably designed for the observance of religious rites. The remaining structures were evidently the residence portions of the pueblo.

Among the Aztecs, three kinds of houses were distinguished: 1. Calli, the ordinary dwelling house, of which the "House of the Nuns" is an example. 2. Ticplantlacalk, the "Stone House," which contained council halls, etc., of which the "Governor's House" is an example. 3. Teocalli, "House of God," such as the "House of the Dwarf." The estufas in New Mexican pueblos took the place of the last two in Mexico and Yucatan.

Ground plans of the principal structures will be given for comparison with those in New Mexico. The pyramidal elevations on which they stand are situated quite near each other, and form one Indian pueblo. The houses are constructed of stone laid in courses, and dressed to a uniform surface, with the upper half of the exterior walls decorated with grotesque ornaments cut on the faces of the stone. Foster states that "these structures are composed of a soft coralline limestone of comparatively recent geological formation, probably of the Tertiary period." [Footnote: Prehistoric Races of the United States, p 398]

The so-called idols at Copan are the largest stones worked by the Central Americans. They are about eleven feet high by three feet wide and three feet deep, each face being covered with sculptures and hieroglyphics. In a field near the ruins, and near each other, are nine of these elaborately ornamented statues. By the side of each is a so called altar, about six feet square and four feet high, made of separate stone. These Idols and Altars have been supposed to have some relation to their religious system, with human sacrifices in the background. From their situation and character it may be conjectured that we have here the Copan cemetery, and that these idols are the grave-posts, and these altars are the graves of Copan chiefs. The type of both may still be seen in Nebraska in the grave-posts and grave-mounds by their side, of Iowas and Otoes, and formerly in all parts of the United States east of the Mississippi. If Mr. Stephens had opened one of these altars he would, if this conjecture is well taken, have found within or under it an Indian grave, and perhaps a skeleton, with the personal articles usually entombed beside the dead. It was customary among the Northern Indians for the chosen friend of the decedent, with whom he formed this peculiar tie, to erect his grave-post, representing the chief exploits of the departed upon one side, with ideographs and his own upon the opposite side. "The stone," Mr. Stephens observes, "of which all these altars and statues are made, is a soft grit-stone." [Footnote: Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, 1-153.] Norman had previously described the material used as a "fine concrete limestone." [Footnote: Rambles in Yucatan, p 126.]

Elsewhere, with respect to the nature of the tools for cutting this stone, he remarks that "flint was undoubtedly used." [Footnote: ib., p 184] Stephens makes a similar statement. The exact size of the stones used is not given, but they were not large. Norman remarks of Chichen Itza that "the stones are cut in parallelopipeds of about twelve inches in length and six in breadth, the interstices filled up with the same materials of which the terraces are composed." [Footnote: Rambles in Yucatan p 127] He also speaks of "huge blocks of hewn stone used in the doorways." [Footnote: ib. p. 128]

A soft coralline limestone could be easily worked with flint implements when first taken from the quarry, and would harden after exposure to the air. The size and nature of the stones used is some evidence of limited advancement in solid stone architecture.

These structures, as reproduced in engravings by Stephens and Catherwood, may well excite surprise and admiration for the taste, skill, and industry they display, and the degree of progress they reveal. When rightly understood, they will enable us to estimate the extent of the progress actually made, which was truly remarkable for a people still in barbarism, and no further advanced than the Middle Status.



We have seen that the style of architecture in New Mexico brought the Indians to the house tops as the common place of living. At first suggested for security, it became in time a settled habit of life. The same want was met in Yucatan and Chiapas by a new expedient namely a pyramidal platform or elevation of earth twenty, thirty and forty feet high upon the level summits of which their great houses were erected. These platforms were made still higher for small buildings. A natural elevation being when practicable selected the top was leveled or raised by artificial means, the sides made rectangular and sloping and faced on the four sides with a dry stone wall, the ascent being made by a flight of stone steps. It was not uncommon to find two such platforms and sometimes three, one above the other, as shown in the figure. These platforms, called terraces, were the gathering and the lounging places, of the inhabitants.

The edifices in the regions named are almost invariably but one story high, and but two rooms deep, the walls being carried up vertically to an equal height on the sides and ends, and terminating in a flat roof. The doorways opened upon the platform area or terrace when the building was single, and where it was carried around the four aides of an inclosed court they opened usually upon the court. As their elevation above the level of the surrounding area invested them with the character of fortresses, they were defended on the line or edge of the terrace-walls, or, rather, at the head of the flight of steps by means of which the summit-level was reached. Neither adobe brick, nor rubble masonry, nor timber roofs could withstand the tropical climate, with its pouring rains during a portion of the year. Stone walls and a vaulted ceiling were indispensable to a permanent structure. There were, doubtless, pueblos of timber-framed houses with thatched roofs here and there in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Honduras, as there were further south toward the Isthmus; but the prevailing material used was stone, as the number of small pueblos in ruins still attest. Upon these elevated platforms they enjoyed the same security as the Village Indians of New Mexico upon their roof-tops and within the walls of their houses. They were also raised above the flight of the mosquitoes and flies, the scourge of this hot region. Considering the surrounding conditions, single-storied houses upon raised platforms was a natural suggestion, harmonizing with a style of architecture, the communal character of which was predetermined by their social condition. For the details of this architecture reference must be made to published works, which are easily accessible, its general features and the principles from which they sprang being the only subjects within the scope of this inquiry.

The front elevation of the Governor's House at Uxmal, shown in the engraving, and which was taken from Stephens' work, will answer as a sample of the whole. It stands upon the upper of three platforms, of which the lowest is five hundred and seventy-five feet long, fifteen feet broad to the base of the middle platform, and three feet high. The second is five hundred and forty-five feet long, two hundred and fifty feet broad to the base of the upper platform, and twenty feet high. The third is three hundred and sixty feet long, thirty feet broad in front of the edifice, and nineteen feet high. The upper one is formed upon the back half of the middle platform, of which last Mr. Stephens observes that "this great terrace was not entirely artificial. The substratum was a natural rock, and showed that advantage had been taken of a natural elevation as far as it went, and by this means some portion of the immense labor of constructing the terrace had been saved." [Footnote: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, i, 128.]

The three terraces with their sloping walls are shown in the engraving, the house standing upon an elevation forty-two feet above the surrounding area. The ascent from terrace to terrace was made by flights of stone steps, which are not distinctly shown. When newly constructed and inhabited, this structure, from its commanding situation, its great size, and conspicuous terraces, must have presented a striking appearance. It is doubtful whether any of the Aryan tribes, when in the Middle Status of barbarism, have produced houses superior to those in Yucatan.

The house is symmetrical in structure, three hundred and twenty-two feet long, thirty-nine feet deep, and about twenty-five feet high. It has eleven doorways, besides two small openings in front, and contains twenty-two apartments, two of which are each sixty feet long. The rear wall is solid, and in the central part is nine feet thick. A parallel wall through the center divides the interior into two rows of apartments, of which those in front are eleven feet six inches deep and twenty-three feet high to the top of the arch, and those back of them are thirteen feet deep and twenty-two feet high. Both inside and out the walls are of dressed stone laid in courses. No drawings of the rooms in the Governor's House are furnished in Mr. Stephens' work. The back rooms are dark, excepting the light received through the front doorway.

"The House of the Nuns," says Mr. Stephens, "is quadrangular, with a court yard in the center. It stands on the highest of three terraces. The lowest is three feet high and twenty feet wide; the second, twelve feet high and forty-five feet wide; and the third, four feet high and five feet wide, extending the whole length of the front of the building. The front [building] is two hundred and seventy-nine feet long, and above the cornice, from one end to the other, is ornamented with sculpture. In the centre is a gateway ten feet eight inches wide, spanned by the triangular arch, and leading to the courtyard. On each side of this gateway are four doorways with wooden lintels opening to apartments averaging twenty four feet long, ten feet wide, seventeen feet high to the top of the arch, but having no connection with each other. The building that forms the right or eastern side of the quadrangle measures one hundred and fifty-eight feet long; that on the left is one hundred and seventy-three feet long, and the range opposite, or at the end of the quadrangle measures two hundred and sixty-four feet. These three ranges have no doorways outside but the exterior of each is a dead wall, and above the cornice all are ornamented with the same rich and elaborate sculptures." [Footnote: Incidents of travel in Yucatan, i, 299.]



Altogether, these four structures contain seventy-six apartments, which vary in size from twenty to thirty feet long, and from ten to twelve feet wide. There are twenty single apartments, and twenty five pairs of apartments, half of which, as in the Governor's House, are dark, except as they are lighted from the doorways connecting with the rooms in front. In the fifth structure, not described, there are six pairs of similar apartments. In the building on the right there are six rooms connecting with each other, one of which, the frost room, is shown in Fig. 54. This number of connecting rooms is so unusual in Yucatan architecture as to attract attention. Each of the four edifices would accommodate from six hundred to one thousand persons, after the fashion of Village Indians.

In this view of the interior of a room in the House of the Nuns, Fig. 54, which was taken from Stephens' work, is shown the form of the triangular ceiling common in all the edifices in Yucatan and Chiapas. It is a triangular arch above the line of the exterior cornice, without a keystone, and with the faces of the stones beveled, and forming a perfect vault over each apartment. But it has this peculiarity, that a space a foot or more wide in the center is carried up vertically about two feet, and covered with a cap of stone, so that the side walls which form the vaulted ceiling do not come together so as to rest against each other. The mechanical principle is the same as in the New Mexican arch, but is here applied in a more extended and more difficult scale. It is the most remarkable feature in this architecture, mechanically considered. When we come to know that this vaulted ceiling was constructed over a core of solid masonry within the chamber, afterwards removed—which was the fact—it will be seen that these Indian masons and architects were still feeling their way experimentally to a scientific knowledge of the art of arts. A projecting cornice or median entablature is seen above the doorway on the exterior face of the wall, which balances somewhat the interior inward projection of the ceiling as it rises, and, since the wall is carried up flush with the cornice, the down-weight of the super-incumbent mass sustained the masonry. The room shown is thirty-three feet long, thirteen wide, and twenty-three feet high to the cap-stone, and the room communicating with it is of the same width, and nine feet long. The apartments back of these are of corresponding size. [Footnote: Incidents of Travel, etc., i, 308.]

There were originally lintels of hard sapote wood over the doorways, upon the decay of which a portion of the masonry has fallen. Those over the doorways through the partition walls are found in place. The proof of the comparatively modern date of these structures is conclusive from these facts alone.

It will be observed that there are six single apartments in the building on the right of the "House of Nuns" which have no connection with the remaining rooms of the building, and that the others are in pairs, a back room connecting with the one in front, and neither with any others. It seems to show very plainly, in the plan of the house itself, that it was designed to be occupied by distinct groups composed of related families, each group a large household by itself. If the communal principle in living existed in fact among them, its expression in the interior arrangement of the house, and in this form, might have been expected. This striking and significant feature runs through all the structures, in these areas, of which ground-plans have been obtained.

The triangular ceiling, in effect is an attempt to extend the lintel in sections across the vault of a chamber in the place of joists, and, so far as the writer is aware, the only attempt ever made by any barbarous people to form a ceiling of stone over ordinary residence rooms. In a wall and ceiling formed in this manner, and carried up several feet above the apex of the triangular arch, there would be no lateral thrust outward of the masonry.

It should be stated that there are neither fire-place, chimneys, nor windows in any of these houses; neither have any been found, so far as the writer is aware, in any ancient structure in Yucatan or Central America. Fires were not needed for warmth; but since they were for cooking, it shows very plainly that no cooking was done within these houses. A presumption at once arises that their inmates prepared their food in the open court, or on the middle terrace, by household groups, making a common stock of their provisions, and dividing from the earthen cauldron, like the Iroquois. The communistic character of these houses is shown by their great size, and by the separation of the rooms, generally in pairs, having no connection with the remainder of the house. Each pair of rooms would accommodate several married pairs with their children; and so would each single apartment, according to the mode of life of the Village Indians. Moreover, communism in living appears to have been a law of man's condition both in the Lower and in the Middle Status of barbarism. Among the Iroquois, one regular meal each day was all their mode of life permitted; hunger being allayed by hominy kept constantly prepared, or such other food as their domestic resources allowed. It is not probable that the Aborigines of Yucatan were able to superadd either a regular breakfast or a supper. These belong to the more highly developed house-keeping of the monogamian family in civilization.

Another custom, usual in the Lower Status of barbarism, seems to have been continued in the Middle Status; namely, of the men eating first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards. Without a knowledge of tables or of chairs, the dinner was of necessity a solitary affair between the person and his earthen bowl or platter. The time, however, for the dinner was the same to all the men, and afterwards to the women and children. Herrera, in his summary of the habits of the people of Yucatan, drops the remark incidentally, that at their festivals the women "did eat apart from the men." This is precisely what would have been expected had nothing been said on the subject. [Footnote: History of America, iv, 175.]

There are some proofs bearing directly upon the question of the ancient practice of communism in these Uxmal houses. They are found in the present usages of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, the descendants of the builders of these houses, which they may reasonably be supposed to have derived from their ancestors. At Nohcacab, a short distance east of the ruins of Uxmal, there was a settlement of Maya Indians, whose communism in living was accidentally discovered by Mr. Stephens, when among them to employ laborers. He remarks as follows: "Their community consists of a hundred labradores or working men; their lands are held in common, and the products are shared by all. Their food is prepared at one hut, and every family sends for its portion; which explains a singular spectacle we had seen on our arrival [in 1841], a procession of women and children, each carrying an earthen bowl containing a quantity of smoking hot broth, all coming down the same road, and dispersing among different huts.... From our ignorance of the language, and the number of other and more pressing matters claiming our attention, we could not learn all the details of their internal economy but it seemed to approximate that improved state of association which is sometimes heard of among us; and as thus has existed for an unknown length of time, and can no longer be considered experimental, Owen and Fourier might perhaps take lessons from them with advantage.... I never before regretted so much my ignorance of the Maya language." [Footnote: Incidents of Travel, etc., ii, 14.]

A hundred working men indicate a total of five hundred persons who were then depending for their daily food upon a single fire, and a single cooking-house, the provisions being supplied from common stores, and divided from the kettle. It is not unlikely a truthful picture of the mode of life in the House of the Nuns, and in the Governor's House at the period of European discovery. Each group practising communism, for convenience and for economy, may have included all the inmates of a single house, or its occupants may have subdivided into lesser groups; but the presumption is in favor of the larger. Evidence has elsewhere been adduced of the existence of the organization into gentes among the Mayas, with descent in the male line, from which it may be inferred that the occupation of these houses was on the basis of gentile kinship among the families in each, the fathers and their children belonging to the same gens, and the wives and mothers to other gentes. All the facts seem to indicate that communism in living was practiced among the Village Indians in general upon a scale then unknown in other parts of the world, because they alone represented the culture and mode of life of the Middle Status of barbarism. The dinner of Montezuma, before considered, is an illustration.



Near Uxmal are the interesting ruins of Zayi, which present a new feature in Yucatan house architecture. Upon a low eminence are three independent structures, the second within and above the first or lowest, and the third within and above the second, presenting the appearance, in the distance, of a single quadrangular edifice in three receding stories. But each stands on a separate terrace, and is built against the one within, which rises above it, except the inner one, a single edifice occupying the summit. The outer quadrangle stands on the lowest terrace. The measurements of the several buildings are indicated on the plan. Together they contain eighty-seven apartments, assuming the parts in ruins to have corresponded with the parts preserved. The rooms, as usual, are either single or in pairs. An external staircase upon the front and rear sides interrupts the buildings on these sides from the lower terrace to the upper. The dots in the apertures indicate columns, which are found in this and several other structures. In case of attack, the outer quadrangle was not defensible; but its inhabitants could retire to the second terrace above, and defend their fortress at the head of the staircases, which were the only avenues of approach except by scaling the outer quadrangle, a very improbable undertaking.



Attention has been called to this pueblo, which would accommodate two thousand or more persons, for a special reason. It seems to furnish conclusive proof of the manner in which these great edifices were erected in order to construct the peculiar triangular stone ceiling, which is the striking characteristic of this architecture.

To understand the problem, the annexed cross-section of a single room will afford some aid by showing the relations of the walls to the chamber and its ceiling. The chamber, with its vaulted ceiling, was constructed over a solid core of masonry, laid simultaneously with the walls, which was removed after the latter had seasoned and settled. It tends to show that with small stones of the size used, about a foot long and six inches thick, the triangular ceiling as it projected toward the center in rising, required the interior support of a core to insure the possibility of construction by their methods. Once put together over such a core and carried up several feet above the top of the arch, the down weight of the superincumbent mass would articulate and hold the masonry together. It shows further that the essential feature of the arch is wanting in this contrivance.

The proof of this assertion is found in the actual presence of the unremoved core in one of these edifices in all of its apartments. Mr. Stephens found every room of the back building on the second terrace filled with masonry from bottom to top, left precisely as it was when the building was finished. He remarks that "the north half of the second range has a curious and unaccountable feature. It is called the Casa Cerrada, or 'closed house,' having ten doorways, all of which are blocked up on the inside with stone and mortar.... In front of several were piles of stones which they [his workmen] had worked out from the doorways, and under the lintels were holes through which we were able to crawl inside; and here we found ourselves in apartments finished with walls and ceilings like all the others, but filled up, except so far as they had been emptied by the Indians, with solid masses of mortar and stone. There were ten of these apartments in all, two hundred and twenty feet long and ten feet deep, which thus being filled up made the whole building a solid mass; and the strangest feature was that the filling up of the apartments must have been simultaneous with the erection of the buildings; for, as the filling in rose above the tops of the doorways, the men who performed it never could have entered to their work through the doors. It must have been done as the walls were built, and the ceiling must have closed over a solid mass." [Incidents of Travel, etc., ii, 22.]

It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Stephens that the masonry within each room was a core, without which a vaulted chamber in this form could not have been constructed with their knowledge of the art of building. It shows the rudeness of their mechanical resources as well as the real condition of the art among them, but at the same time increases our appreciation of their originality, ingenuity, and industry. They were working their way upward experimentally in architecture, as all other peoples have done, having richly earned the right to point with pride to these structures as extraordinary memorials of the progress they had made.

An important conclusion follows, namely, that this "closed house" was the last, in the order of time, erected in this pueblo, and had not been emptied of its core and brought into use when the Spanish irruption forced the people to abandon this pueblo. It would fix the period of its construction at or after A. D. 1520, thus settling the question of its modern date and removing one of the delusions concerning the antiquity of the ruins in Yucatan and Central America. This structure is as much decayed as any other in Yucatan. There are many other structures even better preserved than this.

A brief reference to Palenque will conclude this notice, but without dealing with the facts as fully as they deserve. There are four or five pyramidal elevations at this pueblo quite similar in plan and general situation with those at Uxmal. One is much the largest, and the structures upon it are called the "Palace." It has generally been regarded as the paragon of American Indian architecture. As a palace implies a potentate for its occupation, a character who never existed and could not exist under their institutions, it has been a means of self-deception with respect to the condition of the Aborigines which ought to be permanently discarded. Several distinct buildings are here grouped upon one elevated terrace, and are more or less connected. Altogether they are two hundred and twenty-eight feet long, front and rear, and one hundred and eighty feet deep, occupying not only the four sides of a quadrangle, but the greater part of what originally was, in all probability, an open court. The use of the interior court for additional structures shows a decadence of architecture and of ethnic life in the people, because it implies an unwillingness to raise a new pyramidal site to gain accommodations for an increased number of people. Thus to appropriate the original court so essential for light and air as well as room, and which is such a striking feature in the general plan of the architecture of the Village Indians, was a departure from the principles of this architecture. Nearly all the edifices in Yucatan and Central America agree in one particular, namely, in being constructed with three parallel walls with partition walls at intervals, giving two rows of apartments under one roof, usually, if not invariably, flat. Where several are grouped together on the same platform, as at Palenque, they are severally under independent roofs, and the spaces between, called courts, are simply open lanes or passageways between the structures. An inspection of the ground plan of the Palenque ruins in the folio volume of Dupaix, or in the work of Mr. Stephens, will be apt to mislead unless this feature of the architecture is kept in mind. There are in reality seven or eight distinct edifices crowded together upon the summit level of the platform. Mr. Stephens speaks of it as one structure. "The building," he remarks, "was constructed of stone, and the whole front was covered with stucco and painted.... The doorways have no doors, nor are there the remains of any.... The tops of the doorways were all broken. They had evidently been square, and over every one were large niches in the wall on each side, in which the lintels had been laid. These lintels had all fallen, and the stones above formed broken natural arches." [Footnote: Central America, &c., ii, 310-312.]

The interior walls in two rooms shown by engravings were plastered over. Architecturally, Palenque is inferior to the House of the Nuns; but it is more ornamental. It also has one peculiar feature not generally found in the Yucatan structures, namely, a corridor about nine feet wide, supposed to have run around the greater part of the exterior on the four sides. The exterior walls of these corridors rest on a series of piers, and the central or next parallel wall is unbroken, except by one doorway on each of three sides and two in the fourth, thus forming a narrow promenade. One of the interior buildings consists of two such corridors, but wider, on opposite sides of a central longitudinal wall. All the rooms in the several edifices are large. In one of the open spaces is a tower about thirty feet square, rising three stories. The Palenque structures are quite remarkable, standing upon an artificial eminence about forty feet high, and large enough to accommodate three thousand people living in the fashion of Village Indians.