Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines

by Lewis Henry Morgan

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.