Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines

by Lewis Henry Morgan

"The regular time for meeting in the estufa is the last day of December, annually, for the election of officers for the ensuing year. The cacique, governor, and principal men nominate candidates, and the election decides. There may also be a fourth nomination of candidates, that is, by the people. In the election, all adult males vote; the officers first, and then the general public. The officers elected are at the present time sworn in by the United States Territorial officials."

In this simple government we have a fair sample, in substance and in spirit, of the ancient government of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Some modification of the old system may be detected in the limitation of officers below the grade of cacique to one year. From what is known of the other pueblos in New Mexico, that of Taos is a fair example of all of them in governmental organization at the present time. They are, and always were, essentially republican, which is in entire harmony with Indian institutions. I may repeat here what I have ventured to assert on previous occasions, that the whole theory of governmental and domestic life among the Village Indians of America from Zunyi to Cuzco can still be found in New Mexico.

The representation of a room in this pueblo, Fig. 28, is from a sketch by Mr. Galbraith, who accompanied Major Powell's party to New Mexico.

What Mr. Miller refers to as "property rights and titles" and "ownership in fee" of land, is sufficiently explained by the possessory right which is found among the northern Indian tribes. The limitations upon its alienation to an Indian from another pueblo, or to a white man, not to lay any stress upon the absence of written titles or conveyances of land which have been made possible by Spanish and American intercourse, show very plainly that their ideas respecting the ownership of the absolute title to land, with power to alienate to whomsoever the person pleased, were entirely above their conception of property and its uses. All the ends of individual ownership and of inheritance were obtained through a mere right of possession, while the ultimate title remained in the tribe. According to the statement of Mr. Miller, if the father dies, his land is divided between his widow and children, and if a woman, her land is divided equally between her sons and daughters. This is an important statement, because, assuming its correctness, it shows inheritance of children from both father and mother, a total departure from the principles of gentile inheritance. In 1878 I visited the Taos pueblo. I could not find among them the gens or clan, [Footnote: Mr. Baudelier has since ascertained that they are organized in gentes.] and from lack of time did not inquire into their property regulations or rules of inheritance. The dozen large ovens I saw while there near the ends or in front of the two buildings, each of which was equal to the wants of more than one family, were adopted from the Spanish. They not unlikely had some connection with the old principle of communism.

It will prove a very difficult undertaking to ascertain the old mode of life three hundred and fifty years ago in New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America, as it was then in full vitality, a natural outgrowth of Indian institutions. The experiment to recover this lost condition of Indian society has not been tried. The people have been environed with civilization during the latter portion of this period, and have been more or less affected by it from the beginning. Their further growth and development was arrested by the advent of European civilization, which blighted their more feeble culture. Since their discovery they have steadily declined in numbers, and they show no signs of recovery from the shock produced by their subjugation. Among the northern tribes, who were one Ethnical Period below the Pueblo Indians, their social organization and their mode of life have changed materially under similar influences since the period of discovery. The family has fallen more into the strictly monogamian form, each occupying a separate house; communism in living in large households has disappeared, the organization into gentes has in many cases fallen out or been rudely extinguished by external influences; and their religious usages have yielded. We must expect to find similar and even greater changes among the Village Indians of New Mexico. The white race were upon them in Mexico and New Mexico a hundred years earlier than upon the Indian tribes of the United States. But, as if to stimulate investigation into their ancient mode of life, some of these tribes have continued through all these years to live in the same identical houses occupied by their forefathers in 1540 at Acoma, Jemez, and Taos. These pueblos were contemporary with the pueblo of Mexico captured by Cortez in 1520. The present inhabitants are likely to have retained some part of the old plan of life, or some traditionary knowledge of what it was. They must retain some of the usages and customs with respect to the ownership and inheritance of sections of these houses, and of the limitations upon the power of sale that they should not pass out of the kinship. The same also with respect to sections of the village garden. All the facts with respect to their ancient usages and mode of life should be ascertained, so far as it is now possible to do so from the present inhabitants of these pueblos. The information thus given will serve a useful purpose in explaining the pueblos in ruins In Yucatan and Central America, as well as on the San Juan, the Chaco, and the Gila.

At the time of their discovery the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico generally worshiped the sun as their principal divinity. Although under constraint they became nominally Roman Catholic, they still retain, in fact, their old religious beliefs. Mr. Miller has sent me some information upon this subject concerning the pueblos of Taos, Jemez, and Zia.

"Before the Spaniards forced their religion upon the people, the pueblo of Taos had the Sun for their God, and worshiped the Sun as such. They had periodical assemblages of the authorities and the people in the estufas for offering prayers to the Sun, to supplicate him to repeat his diurnal visits, and to continue to make the maize, beans, and squashes grow for the sustenance of the people. 'The Sun and God,' said the governor (Mirabal) to me, 'are the same. We believe really in the Sun as our God, but we profess to believe in the God and Christ of the Catholic Church and of the Bible. When we die, we go to God in Heaven. I do not know whether Heaven is in the Sun, or the Sun is Heaven. The Spaniards required us to believe in their God, and we were compelled to adopt their God, their church, and their doctrines, willing or unwilling. We do not know that under the American Government we may exercise any religion we choose, and that the National Government and the church government are wholly disconnected. We have very great respect and reverence for the Sun. We fear that the Sun will punish us now, or at some future time, if we do evil. The modern pueblos have the Sun religion really, but they profess the Christian religion, of which they know nothing but what the Catholic religion teaches. They always believed that Montezuma would come again as the messiah of the pueblo. The Catholic religion has been so long outwardly practiced by the people that it could not now, they think, be easily laid aside, and the old Sun religion be established, because it is looked upon as established by the law of the land, and therefore necessarily practiced. Nevertheless, the Indians will always follow and practice, as they do, both religions. If,' said the governor, 'one Indian here at this pueblo were to declare that he intended to renounce and abandon the religion of his fathers (the worship of the Sun) and adopt the Christian religion as his only faith, and another Indian were to declare that he intended to repudiate the Christian religion and adopt and practice only the Sun religion, the former would be expelled the pueblo, and his property would be confiscated, but the other would be allowed to remain with all his rights.'

"There are three old men in the pueblo whose duty it is to impart the traditions of the people to the rising generation. These traditions are communicated to the young men according to their ages and capacities to receive and appreciate them. The Taos Indians have a tradition that they came from the north; that they found other Indians at this place (Taos) living also in a pueblo; that these they ejected after much fighting, and took and have continued to occupy their place. How long ago this was they cannot say, but it must have been a long time ago. The Indians driven away lived here in a pueblo, as the Taos Indians now do."

Mr. Miller also communicates a conversation had with Juan Jose, a native of Zia, and Jose Miguel, a native of Pecos, but then (December, 1877) a resident of the pueblo of Jemez, which he wrote down at the time, as follows: "Before the Spaniards came, the religion of Jemez, Pecos and Zia, and the other pueblos, was the Montezuma religion. A principal feature of this religion was the celebration of Dances at the pueblo. In it, God was the sun. Seh-un-yuh was the land the Pueblo Indians came from, and to it they went when dead. This country (Seh-un-yuh) was at Great Salt Lake. They cannot say whether this lake was the place where the Mormons now live, but it was to the north. Under this great lake there was a big Indian Pueblo, and it is there yet. [Footnote: The Iroquois have a similar tradition of the ancient existence of an Indian village under Otsego Lake in New York.] The Indian dances were had only when prescribed by the cacique. The Pueblo Indians now have two religions, that of Montezuma, and the Roman Catholic. The Sun, Moon, and Stars were Gods, of which the greatest and most potent was the Sun; but greater than he was Montezuma. In time of drought, or actual or threatened calamity, the Pueblo Indians prayed to Montezuma, and also to the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The old religion (that of Montezuma) is believed in all the New Mexican pueblos. They practice the Catholic religion ostensibly; but in their consciences and in reality the old religion is that of the pueblos. The tenets of the old religion are preserved by tradition, which the old men communicate to the young in the estufas. At church worship the Pueblo Indians pray to God, and also to Montezuma and the Sun; but at the dances they pray to Montezuma and the Sun only. During an actual or threatened calamity the dances are called by the cacique. They have two Gods; the God of the Pueblos, and the God of the Christians. Montezuma is the God of the Pueblo."

This account of the Sun worship of the Taos Indians, in which is intermingled that of Montezuma, and the further account of the worship of Montezuma at the pueblos of Zia and Jemez, with the recognition of the worship of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, are both interesting and suggestive. It is probable that Sun worship is the older of the two, while that of Montezuma, as a later growth, remained concurrent with the other in all the New Mexican pueblos without superseding it. In this supernatural person, known to them as Montezuma, who was once among them in bodily human form, and who left them with a promise that he would return again at a future day, may be recognized the Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem, the Ha-yo-went'-ha of the Iroquois. It is in each case a ramification of a widespread legend in the tribes of the American aborigines, of a personal human being, with supernatural powers, an instructor of the arts of life; an example of the highest virtues, beneficent, wise, and immortal.