To the Village Indians of North and South America, whose indigenous culture had advanced them far into, and near the end of, the Middle Period of barbarism, our attention naturally turns for the transitional history of the gentes. The archaic constitution of the gens has been shown; its latest phases remain to be presented in the gentes of the Greeks and Romans; but the intermediate changes, both of descent and inheritance, which occurred in the Middle Period, are essential to a complete history of the gentile organization. Our information is quite ample with respect to the earlier and later condition of this great institution, but defective with respect to the transitional stage. Where the gentes are found in any tribe of mankind in their latest form, their remote ancestors must have possessed them in the archaic form; but historical criticism demands affirmative proofs rather than deductions. These proofs once existed among the Village Indians. We are now well assured that their system of government was social and not political. The upper members of the series, namely, the tribe and the confederacy, meet us at many points; with positive evidence of the gens, the unit of the system, in a number of the tribes of Village Indians. But we are not able to place our hands upon the gentes among the Village Indians in general with the same precise information afforded by the tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism. The golden opportunity was presented to the Spanish conquerers and colonists, and lost, from apparent inability to understand a condition of society from which civilized man had so far departed in his onward progress. Without a knowledge of the unit of their social system, which impressed its character upon the whole organism of society, the Spanish histories fail entirely in the portrayal of their governmental institutions.
A glance at the remains of ancient architecture in Central America and Peru sufficiently proves that the Middle Period of barbarism was one of great progress in human development, of growing knowledge, and of expanding intelligence. It was followed by a still more remarkable period in the Eastern hemisphere after the invention of the process of making iron had given that final great impulse to human progress which was to bear a portion of mankind into civilization. Our appreciation of the grandeur of man’s career in the Later Period of barbarism, when inventions and discoveries multiplied with such rapidity, would be intensified by an accurate knowledge of the condition of society in the Middle Period, so remarkably exemplified by the Village Indians. By a great effort, attended with patient labor, it may yet be possible to recover a large portion at least of the treasures of knowledge which have been allowed to disappear. Upon our present information the conclusion is warrantable that the American Indian tribes were universally organized in gentes at the epoch of European discovery, the few exceptions found not being sufficient to disturb the general rule.
CHAPTER VII. - THE AZTEC CONFEDERACY.
Misconception of Aztec Society.—Condition of Advancement.—Nahuatlac Tribes.—Their Settlement in Mexico.—Pueblo of Mexico founded, A. D., 1325.—Aztec Confederacy Established, A. D., 1426.—Extent of Territorial Domination.—Probable Number of the People.—Whether or not the Aztecs were organized in Gentes and Phratries.—The Council of Chiefs.—Its probable Functions.—Office held by Montezuma.—Elective in Tenure.—Deposition of Montezuma.—Probable Functions of the Office.—Aztec Institutions essentially Democratical—The Government a Military Democracy.
The Spanish adventurers, who captured the Pueblo of Mexico, adopted the erroneous theory that the Aztec government was a monarchy, analogous in essential respects to existing monarchies in Europe. This opinion was adopted generally by the early Spanish writers, without investigating minutely the structure and principles of the Aztec social system. A terminology not in agreement with their institutions came in with this misconception which has vitiated the historical narrative nearly as completely as though it were, in the main, a studied fabrication. With the capture of the only stronghold the Aztecs possessed, their governmental fabric was destroyed, Spanish rule was substituted in its place, and the subject of their internal organization and polity was allowed substantially to pass into oblivion.[197]
The Aztecs and their confederate tribes were ignorant of iron and consequently without iron tools; they had no money, and traded by barter of commodities; but they worked the native metals, cultivated by irrigation, manufactured coarse fabrics of cotton, constructed joint-tenement houses of adobe-bricks and of stone, and made earthenware of excellent quality. They had, therefore, attained to the Middle Status of barbarism. They still held their lands in common, lived in large households composed of a number of related families; and, as there are strong reasons for believing, practiced communism in living in the household. It is rendered reasonably certain that they had but one prepared meal each day, a dinner; at which they separated, the men eating first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards. Having neither tables nor chairs for dinner service they had not learned to eat their single daily meal in the manner of civilized nations. These features of their social condition show sufficiently their relative status of advancement.
In connection with the Village Indians of other parts of Mexico and Central America, and of Peru, they afforded the best exemplification of this condition of ancient society then existing on the earth. They represented one of the great stages of progress toward civilization in which the institutions derived from a previous ethnical period are seen in higher advancement, and which were to be transmitted, in the course of human experience, to an ethnical condition still higher, and undergo still further development before civilization was possible. But the Village Indians were not destined to attain the Upper Status of barbarism so well represented by the Homeric Greeks.