[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.]