The six groups here enumerated--Dakota, Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki,

Algonquin, Iroquois--made up the great body of the aborigines of North

America who at the time of the Discovery lived in the lower status of

barbarism. All made pottery of various degrees of rudeness. Their tools

and weapons were of the Neolithic type,--stone either polished or

accurately and artistically chipped. For the most part they lived in

stockaded villages, and cultivated maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes,

sunflowers, and tobacco. They depended for subsistence partly upon such

vegetable products, partly upon hunting and fishing, the women generally

attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase. _Horticulture_ is

an appropriate designation for this stage in which the ground is merely

scratched with stone spades and hoes. It is incipient agriculture, but

should be carefully distinguished from the _field agriculture_ in which

extensive pieces of land are subdued by the plough. The assistance of

domestic animals is needed before such work can be carried far, and it

does not appear that there was an approach to field agriculture in any

part of pre-Columbian America except Peru, where men were harnessed to

the plough, and perhaps occasionally llamas were used in the same

way.[52] Where subsistence depended upon rude horticulture eked out by

game and fish, it required a large territory to support a sparse

population. The great diversity of languages contributed to maintain the

isolation of tribes and prevent extensive confederation. Intertribal

warfare was perpetual, save now and then for truces of brief duration.

Warfare was attended by wholesale massacre. As many prisoners as could

be managed were taken home by their captors; in some cases they were

adopted into the tribe of the latter as a means of increasing its

fighting strength, otherwise they were put to death with lingering

torments.[53] There was nothing which afforded the red men such

exquisite delight as the spectacle of live human flesh lacerated with

stone knives or hissing under the touch of firebrands, and for elaborate

ingenuity in devising tortures they have never been equalled.[54]

Cannibalism was quite commonly practised.[55] The scalps of slain

enemies were always taken, and until they had attained such trophies the

young men were not likely to find favour in the eyes of women. The

Indian's notions of morality were those that belong to that state of

society in which the tribe is the largest well-established political

aggregate. Murder without the tribe was meritorious unless it entailed

risk of war at an obvious disadvantage; murder within the tribe was

either revenged by blood-feud or compounded by a present given to the

victim's kinsmen. Such rudimentary _wergild_ was often reckoned in

wampum, or strings of beads made of a kind of mussel shell, and put to

divers uses, as personal ornament, mnemonic record, and finally money.

Religious thought was in the fetishistic or animistic stage,[56] while

many tribes had risen to a vague conception of tutelar deities embodied

in human or animal forms. Myth-tales abounded, and the folk-lore of the

red men is found to be extremely interesting and instructive.[57] Their

religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No

well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine

men" were mere conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence.

[Footnote 52: See Humboldt, _Ansichten der Natur_, 3d ed.,

Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203.]

[Footnote 53: "Women and children joined in these fiendish

atrocities, and when at length the victim yielded up his life,

his heart, if he were brave, was ripped from his body, cut in

pieces, broiled, and given to the young men, under the belief

that it would increase their courage; they drank his blood,

thinking it would make them more wary; and finally his body was

divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething

pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were

all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs,

and dances." Jeffries Wyman, in _Seventh Report of Peabody

Museum_, p. 37. For details of the most appalling character,

see Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, pp. 176-182; Stone's

_Life of Joseph Brant_, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's _Plains of

the Great West_, p. 418, and _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 525-529;

Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_, pp. 387-391; and many

other places in Parkman's writings.]

[Footnote 54: One often hears it said that the cruelty of the

Indians was not greater than that of mediæval Europeans, as

exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the

Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due

discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and

ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a

definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or

perverted, gave it a very different character from torture

wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atrocities formerly

attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg,

etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustration of the

survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest barbarism: and the

Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited

cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol.

ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held

that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible

intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body,

the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the

Indian. See Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 536-538. Colonel

Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty

years, and writes with fairness and discrimination.

In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much

one of race as of occupation, except in so far as race is

moulded by long occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the

inheritance from our brute ancestors, is very strong in the

human race. Callousness to the suffering of others than self is

part of this brute-inheritance, and under the influence of

certain habits and occupations this germ of callousness may be

developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty. In the

lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a

large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in

which it comes home to everybody's door. This state of things

keeps alive the passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to

the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures,

as it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle

Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount of cruelty. The

change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a very

important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and

humanity of modern times. See my _Beginnings of New England_,

pp. 226-229. Something more will be said hereafter with

reference to the special causes concerned in the cruelty and

brutality of the Spaniards in America. Meanwhile it may be

observed in the present connection, that the Spanish

taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not

representative types of their own race to anything like the

same extent as the Indians who tortured Brébeuf or Crawford. If

the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly

Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among

barbarians as an Aristotle or a Beethoven. Indeed, though there

are writers who would like to prove the contrary, it may be

doubted whether that type has ever attained to perfection

except under the influence of Christianity.]

[Footnote 55: See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in

_Seventh Report of Peabody Museum_, pp. 27-37; cf. Wake,

_Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are

given by Mr. Parkman. In this connection it may be observed

that the name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal." It is an Algonquin

word, applied to this Iroquois tribe by their enemies in the

Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by

which the Mohawks called themselves was "Caniengas," or

"People-at-the-Flint." See Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_,

p. 173.]

[Footnote 56: For accounts and explanations of animism see

Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, London, 1871, 2 vols.; Caspari,

_Urgeschichte der Menschheit_, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols.;

Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, part i.; and my _Myths and

Mythmakers_, chap. vii.]

[Footnote 57: No time should be lost in gathering and recording

every scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. The American

Folk-Lore Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my

friend Mr. W. W. Newell, and organized January 4, 1888, is

already doing excellent work and promises to become a valuable

aid, within its field, to the work of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Of the _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, published for the

society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., nine numbers have

appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable

information. One may also profitably consult Knortz's _Märchen

und Sagen der nordamerikanischen Indianer_, Jena, 1871;

Brinton's _Myths of the New World_, N. Y., 1868, and his

_American Hero-Myths_, Phila., 1882; Leland's _Algonquin

Legends of New England_, Boston, 1884; Mrs. Emerson's _Indian

Myths_, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and criticisms of

much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore, may

be found in Curtin's _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.

12-27.]

But none of the characteristics of barbarous society above specified

will carry us so far toward realizing the gulf which divides it from

civilized society as the imperfect development of its domestic

relations. The importance of this subject is such as to call for a few

words of special elucidation.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Ancient Law.]

Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine published that magnificent

treatise on Ancient Law, which, when considered in all its potency of

suggestiveness, has perhaps done more than any other single book of our

century toward placing the study of history upon a scientific basis, he

began by showing that in primitive society the individual is nothing and

the state nothing, while the family-group is everything, and that the

progress of civilization politically has consisted on the one hand in

the aggregation and building up of family-groups through intermediate

tribal organizations into states, and on the other hand in the

disentanglement of individuals from the family thraldom. In other words,

we began by having no political communities larger than clans, and no

bond of political union except blood relationship, and in this state of

things the individual, as to his rights and obligations, was submerged

in the clan. We at length come to have great nations like the English or

the French, in which blood-relationship as a bond of political union is

no longer indispensable or even much thought of, and in which the

individual citizen is the possessor of legal rights and subject to legal

obligations. No one in our time can forget how beautifully Sir Henry

Maine, with his profound knowledge of early Aryan law and custom, from

Ireland to Hindustan, delineated the slow growth of individual ownership

of property and individual responsibility for delict and crime out of an

earlier stage in which ownership and responsibility belonged only to

family-groups or clans.

[Sidenote: The patriarchal family not primitive.]

[Sidenote: "Mother-right."]

[Sidenote: Primitive marriage.]

[Sidenote: The system of reckoning kinship through females only.]

In all these brilliant studies Sir Henry Maine started with the

patriarchal family as we find it at the dawn of history among all

peoples of Aryan and Semitic speech,--the patriarchal family of the

ancient Roman and the ancient Jew, the family in which kinship is

reckoned through males, and in which all authority centres in the eldest

male, and descends to his eldest son. Maine treated this patriarchal

family as primitive; but his great book had hardly appeared when other

scholars, more familiar than he with races in savagery or in the lower

status of barbarism, showed that his view was too restricted. We do not

get back to primitive society by studying Greeks, Romans, and Jews,

peoples who had nearly emerged from the later period of barbarism when

we first know them.[58] Their patriarchal family was perfected in shape

during the later period of barbarism, and it was preceded by a much

ruder and less definite form of family-group in which kinship was

reckoned only through the mother, and the headship never descended from

father to son. As so often happens, this discovery was made almost

simultaneously by two investigators, each working in ignorance of what

the other was doing. In 1861, the same year in which "Ancient Law" was

published, Professor Bachofen, of Basel, published his famous book, "Das

Mutterrecht," of which his co-discoverer and rival, after taking

exception to some of his statements, thus cordially writes: "It remains,

however, after all qualifications and deductions, that Bachofen, before

any one else, discovered the fact that a system of kinship through

mothers only, had anciently everywhere prevailed before the tie of blood

between father and child had found a place in systems of relationships.

And the honour of that discovery, the importance of which, as affording

a new starting-point for all history, cannot be overestimated, must

without stint or qualification be assigned to him."[59] Such are the

generous words of the late John Ferguson McLennan, who had no knowledge

of Bachofen's work when his own treatise on "Primitive Marriage" was

published in 1865. Since he was so modest in urging his own claims, it

is due to the Scotch lawyer's memory to say that, while he was inferior

in point of erudition to the Swiss professor, his book is characterized

by greater sagacity, goes more directly to the mark, and is less

encumbered by visionary speculations of doubtful value.[60] Mr. McLennan

proved, from evidence collected chiefly from Australians and South Sea

Islanders, and sundry non-Aryan tribes of Hindustan and Thibet, that

systems of kinship in which the father is ignored exist to-day, and he

furthermore discovered unmistakable and very significant traces of the

former existence of such a state of things among the Mongols, the Greeks

and Phoenicians, and the ancient Hebrews. By those who were inclined to

regard Sir Henry Maine's views as final, it was argued that Mr.

McLennan's facts were of a sporadic and exceptional character. But when

the evidence from this vast archaic world of America began to be

gathered in and interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the

ground, and as to the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was

proved to be right. Throughout aboriginal America, with one or two

exceptions, kinship was reckoned through females only, and in the

exceptional instances the vestiges of that system were so prominent as

to make it clear that the change had been but recently effected. During

the past fifteen years, evidence has accumulated from various parts of

the world, until it is beginning to appear as if it were the patriarchal

system that is exceptional, having been reached only by the highest

races.[61] Sir Henry Maine's work has lost none of its value, only,

like all human work, it is not final; it needs to be supplemented by the

further study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some

parts of Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America. The

subject is, moreover, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads

incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command

are still inadequate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that

while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of

reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning

through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change

in the reverse direction; and that in ancient America the earlier system

was prevalent.

[Footnote 58: Until lately our acquaintance with human history

was derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among

which the Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us

back about as far as literature could take us. It was natural,

therefore, to suppose that the society of the times of Abraham

or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the wisest scholars reasoned

upon such an assumption. With vision thus restricted to

civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to

speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together

indiscriminately as "savages") according to any _à priori_ whim

that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries

of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of

the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The

state of society described in the book of Genesis had five

entire ethnical periods, and the greater part of a sixth,

behind it; and its institutions were, comparatively speaking,

modern.]

[Footnote 59: McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History,

comprising a reprint of Primitive Marriage_, etc. London, 1876,

p. 421.]

[Footnote 60: There is much that is unsound in it, however, as

is often inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into

a new field of inquiry.]

[Footnote 61: A general view of the subject may be obtained

from the following works: Bachofen, _Das Mutterrecht_,

Stuttgart, 1871, and _Die Sage von Tanaquil_, Heidelberg, 1870;

McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History_, London, 1876, and _The

Patriarchal Theory_, London, 1884; Morgan's _Systems of

Consanguinity_ (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol.

xvii.), Washington, 1871, and _Ancient Society_, New York,

1877; Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_,

Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, 5th

ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon, _La Mère chez certains

peuples de l'antiquité_, Paris, 1867, and _Les Origines de la

Famille_, Geneva, 1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen), _The Primitive

Family_, London, 1889. Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan

may be found in Maine's later works, _Early History of

Institutions_, London, 1875, and _Early Law and Custom_,

London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole

field is that in Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i.

pp. 621-797.]

[Sidenote: Original reason for the system.]

[Sidenote: The primeval human horde.]

[Sidenote: Earliest family-group: the clan.]

[Sidenote: "Exogamy."]

If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning kinship and

inheritance, so strange according to all our modern notions, the true

answer doubtless is that which was given by prudent ([Greek:

Pepnymenos]) Telemachus to the goddess Athene when she asked him to tell

her truly if he was the son of Odysseus:--"My mother says I am his son,

for my part, I don't know; one never knows of one's self who one's

father is."[62] Already, no doubt, in Homer's time there was a gleam of

satire about this answer, such as it would show on a modern page; but in

more primitive times it was a very serious affair. From what we know of

the ideas and practices of uncivilized tribes all over the world, it is

evident that the sacredness of the family based upon indissoluble

marriage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. If the sexual

relations of the Australians, as observed to-day,[63] are an improvement

upon an antecedent state of things, that antecedent state must have been

sheer promiscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, with Mr.

McLennan, that at the beginning of the lower status of savagery, long

since everywhere extinct, the family had not made itself distinctly

visible, but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.[64]

I have shown that the essential difference between this primeval human

horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual

but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the

lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde

into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful mental

plasticity made it more possible for a new generation to improve upon

the ideas and customs of its predecessors.[65] In these two concomitant

processes--the development of the family and the increase of mental

plasticity, or ability to adopt new methods and strike out into new

paths of thought--lies the whole explanation of the moral and

intellectual superiority of men over dumb animals. But in each case the

change was very gradual.[66] The true savage is only a little less

unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first

barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its

origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms,

instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are

to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for

supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But

it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in the ruder stages of

social development; and the kind of family-group that was first clearly

and permanently differentiated from the primeval horde was not at all

like what civilized people would recognize as a family. It was the

_gens_ or _clan_, as we find it exemplified in all stages from the

middle period of savagery to the middle period of barbarism. The _gens_

or _clan_ was simply--to define it by a third synonym--the _kin_; it was

originally a group of males and females who were traditionally aware of

their common descent reckoned in the female line. At this stage of

development there was quite generally though not universally prevalent

the custom of "exogamy," by which a man was forbidden to marry a woman

of his own clan. Among such Australian tribes as have been studied, this

primitive restriction upon promiscuity seems to be about the only one.

[Footnote 62: [Greek:

All' age moi tode eipe kai atrekeôs katalexon,

ei dê ex autoio tosos pais eis Odysêos.

ainôs gar kephalên te kai ommata kala eoikas

keinô, epei thama toion emisgometh' allêloisin,

prin ge ton es Troiên anabêmenai, entha per alloi

Argeiôn hoi aristoi eban koilês epi nêusin

ek tou d' out' Odysêa egôn idon out' eme keinos.

Tên d' au Têlemachos pepnymenos antion êuda

toigar egô toi, xeine, mal' atrekeôs agoreusô.

mêtêr men t' eme phêsi tou emmenai, autar egôge

ouk oid'; ou gar pô tis heon gonon autos anegnô.]

_Odyssey_, i. 206.]

[Footnote 63: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 213; Lubbock,

_Origin of Civilization_, p. 107; Morgan, _Ancient Society_,

part iii., chap. iii. "After battle it frequently happens among

the native tribes of Australia that the wives of the conquered,

of their own free-will, go over to the victors; reminding us of

the lioness which, quietly watching the fight between two

lions, goes off with the conqueror." Spencer, _Principles of

Sociology_, vol. i. p. 632.]

[Footnote 64: The notion of the descent of the human race from

a single "pair," or of different races from different "pairs,"

is a curious instance of transferring modern institutions into

times primeval. Of course the idea is absurd. When the elder

Agassiz so emphatically declared that "pines have originated in

forests, heaths in heaths, grasses in prairies, bees in hives,

herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in nations" (_Essay

on Classification_, London, 1859, p. 58), he made, indeed, a

mistake of the same sort, so far as concerns the origin of Man,

for the nation is a still more modern institution than the

family; but in the other items of his statement he was right,

and as regards the human race he was thinking in the right

direction when he placed _multitude_ instead of _duality_ at

the beginning. If instead of that extremely complex and highly

organized multitude called "nation" (in the plural), he had

started with the extremely simple and almost unorganized

multitude called "horde" (in the singular), the statement for

Man would have been correct. Such views were hardly within the

reach of science thirty years ago.]

[Footnote 65: _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, part ii., chaps.

xvi., xxi., xxii.; _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.

306-319; _Darwinism, and other Essays_, pp. 40-49; _The Destiny

of Man_, §§ iii.-ix.]

[Footnote 66: The slowness of the development has apparently

been such as befits the transcendent value of the result.

Though the question is confessedly beyond the reach of science,

may we not hold that civilized man, the creature of an infinite

past, is the child of eternity, maturing for an inheritance of

immortal life?]

[Sidenote: Phratry and tribe.]

Throughout all the earlier stages of culture, and even into the

civilized period, we find society organized with the clan for its

ultimate unit, although in course of time its character becomes greatly

altered by the substitution of kinship in the paternal, for that in the

maternal line. By long-continued growth and repeated segmentation the

primitive clan was developed into a more complex structure, in which a

group of clans constituted a _phratry_ or brotherhood, and a group of

phratries constituted a _tribe_. This threefold grouping is found so

commonly in all parts of the world as to afford good ground for the

belief that it has been universal. It was long ago familiar to

historians in the case of Greece and Rome, and of our Teutonic

forefathers,[67] but it also existed generally in ancient America, and

many obscure points connected with the history of the Greek and Roman

groups have been elucidated through the study of Iroquois and Algonquin

institutions. Along with the likenesses, however, there are numerous

unlikenesses, due to the change of kinship, among the European groups,

from the female line to the male.

[Footnote 67: The Teutonic _hundred_ and Roman _curia_ answered

to the Greek _phratry_.]

[Sidenote: Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the family.]

This change, as it occurred among Aryan and Semitic peoples, marked one

of the most momentous revolutions in the history of mankind. It probably

occurred early in the upper period of barbarism, or late in the middle

period, after the long-continued domestication of animals had resulted

in the acquisition of private property (_pecus, peculium, pecunia_) in

large amounts by individuals. In primitive society there was very little

personal property except in weapons, clothing (such as it was), and

trinkets. Real estate was unknown. Land was simply _occupied_ by the

tribe. There was general communism and social equality. In the Old

World the earliest instance of extensive "adverse possession" on the

part of individuals, as against other individuals in the clan-community,

was the possession of flocks and herds. Distinctions in wealth and rank

were thus inaugurated; slavery began to be profitable and personal

retainers and adherents useful in new ways. As in earlier stages the

community in marital relations had been part of the general community in

possessions, so now the exclusive possession of a wife or wives was part

of the system of private property that was coming into vogue. The man of

many cattle, the man who could attach subordinates to him through

motives of self-interest as well as personal deference, the man who

could defend his property against robbers, could also have his separate

household and maintain its sanctity. In this way, it is believed,

indissoluble marriage, in its two forms of monogamy and polygamy,

originated. That it had already existed sporadically is not denied, but

it now acquired such stability and permanence that the older and looser

forms of alliance, hitherto prevalent, fell into disfavour. A natural

result of the growth of private wealth and the permanence of the marital

relation was the change in reckoning kinship from the maternal to the

paternal line. This change was probably favoured by the prevalence of

polygamy among those who were coming to be distinguished as "upper

classes," since a large family of children by different mothers could be

held together only by reckoning the kinship through the father. Thus, we

may suppose, originated the patriarchal family. Even in its rudest form

it was an immense improvement upon what had gone before, and to the

stronger and higher social organization thus acquired we must largely

ascribe the rise of the Aryan and Semitic peoples to the foremost rank

of civilization.[68]

[Footnote 68: Fenton's _Early Hebrew Life_, London, 1880, is an

interesting study of the upper period of barbarism; see also

Spencer, _Princip. of Sociol._, i. 724-737.]

It is not intended to imply that there is no other way in which the

change to the male line may have been brought about among other peoples.

The explanation just given applies very well to the Aryan and Semitic

peoples, but it is inapplicable to the state of things which seems to

have existed in Mexico at the time of the Discovery.[69] The subject is

a difficult one, and sometimes confronts us with questions much easier

to ask than to answer. The change has been observed among tribes in a

lower stage than that just described.[70] On the other hand, as old

customs die hard, no doubt inheritance has in many places continued in

the maternal line long after paternity is fully known. Symmetrical

regularity in the development of human institutions has by no means been

the rule, and there is often much difficulty in explaining particular

cases, even when the direction of the general drift can be discerned.

[Footnote 69: See below, p. 122.]

[Footnote 70: As among the Hervey Islanders; Gill, _Myths and

Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 36. Sir John Lubbock would

account for the curious and widely spread custom of the

_Couvade_ as a feature of this change. _Origin of

Civilization_, pp. 14-17, 159; cf. Tylor, _Early Hist. of

Mankind_, pp. 288, 297.]

[Sidenote: The exogamous clan in ancient America.]

In aboriginal America, as already observed, kinship through females only

was the rule, and exogamy was strictly enforced,--the wife must be taken

from a different clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether monogamous or

polygamous, seems to have been unknown. The marriage relation was

terminable at the will of either party.[71] The abiding unit upon which

the social structure was founded was not the family but the exogamous

clan.

[Footnote 71: "There is no embarrassment growing out of

problems respecting the woman's future support, the division of

property, or the adjustment of claims for the possession of the

children. The independent self-support of every adult healthy

Indian, male or female, and the gentile relationship, which is

more wide-reaching and authoritative than that of marriage,

have already disposed of these questions, which are usually so

perplexing for the white man. So far as personal maintenance is

concerned, a woman is, as a rule, just as well off without a

husband as with one. What is hers, in the shape of property,

remains her own whether she is married or not. In fact,

marriage among these Indians seems to be but the natural mating

of the sexes, to cease at the option of either of the

interested parties." Clay MacCauley, "The Seminole Indians of

Florida", in _Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,

Washington, 1887, p. 497. For a graphic account of the state of

things among the Cheyennes and Arrapahos, see Dodge, _Our Wild

Indians_, pp. 204-220.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with social

life.]

I have been at some pains to elucidate this point because the house-life

of the American aborigines found visible, and in some instances very

durable, expression in a remarkable style of house-architecture. The

manner in which the Indians built their houses grew directly out of the

requirements of their life. It was an unmistakably characteristic

architecture, and while it exhibits manifold unlikenesses in detail,

due to differences in intelligence as well as to the presence or absence

of sundry materials, there is one underlying principle always manifest.

That underlying principle is adaptation to a certain mode of communal

living such as all American aborigines that have been carefully studied

are known to have practised. Through many gradations, from the sty of

the California savage up to the noble sculptured ruins of Uxmal and

Chichen-Itza, the principle is always present. Taken in connection with

evidence from other sources, it enables us to exhibit a gradation of

stages of culture in aboriginal North America, with the savages of the

Sacramento and Columbia valleys at the bottom, and the Mayas of Yucatan

at the top; and while in going from one end to the other a very long

interval was traversed, we feel that the progress of the aborigines in

crossing that interval was made along similar lines.[72]

[Footnote 72: See Morgan's _Houses and House-Life of the

American Aborigines_, Washington, 1881, an epoch-making book of

rare and absorbing interest.]

[Illustration: Seneca-Iroquois long house.]

[Illustration: Ground-plan of long house.]

[Sidenote: The long houses of the Iroquois.]

The principle was first studied and explained by Mr. Morgan in the case

of the famous "long houses" of the Iroquois. "The long house ... was

from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted

of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which was

strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted

with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered

over, both sides and roof, with long strips of elm bark tied to the

frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the sides

and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark shingles

between them, the two frames being tied together. The interior of the

house was comparted[73] at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each

chamber entirely open like a stall upon the passageway which passed

through the centre of the house from end to end. At each end was a

doorway covered with suspended skins. Between each four apartments, two

on a side, was a fire-pit in the centre of the hall, used in common by

their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would contain twenty

apartments and accommodate twenty families, unless some apartments were

reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy, and tidily-kept

habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each

apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended their strings of

corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of dried squashes

and pumpkins. Spaces were contrived here and there to store away their

accumulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule, was occupied by

related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same

gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to

other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely

predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised

by cultivation by any member of the household ... was for the common

benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household."[74]

[Footnote 73: This verb of Mr. Morgan's at first struck me as

odd, but though rarely used, it is supported by good authority;

see _Century Dictionary_, s. v.]

[Footnote 74: The Iroquois ceased to build such houses before

the beginning of the present century. I quote Mr. Morgan's

description at length, because his book is out of print and

hard to obtain. It ought to be republished, and in octavo, like

his _Ancient Society_, of which it is a continuation.]

"Over every such household a matron presided, whose duty it was to

supervise its domestic economy. After the single daily meal had been

cooked at the different fires within the house, it was her province to

divide the food from the kettle to the several families according to

their respective needs. What remained was placed in the custody of

another person until she again required it."[75]

[Footnote 75: Lucien Carr, "On the Social and Political

Position of Woman among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes," _Reports of

Peabody Museum_, vol. iii. p. 215.]

[Sidenote: Summary divorce.]

Not only the food was common property, but many chattels, including the

children, belonged to the gens or clan. When a young woman got married

she brought her husband home with her. Though thenceforth an inmate of

this household he remained an alien to her clan. "If he proved lazy and

failed to do his share of the providing, woe be to him. No matter how

many children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at

any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such

orders it would not be healthful for him to disobey; the house would be

too hot for him; and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or

grandmother [of his wife] he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was

often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other....

The female portion ruled the house."[76]

[Footnote 76: This was not incompatible with the subjection of

women to extreme drudgery and ill-treatment. For an instructive

comparison with the case among the tribes of the Far West, see

Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, chap. xvi.]

[Sidenote: Hospitality.]

Though there was but one freshly-cooked meal, taken about the middle of

the day, any member of the household when hungry could be helped from

the common stock. Hospitality was universal. If a person from one of the

other communal households, or a stranger from another tribe (in time of

peace), were to visit the house, the women would immediately offer him

food, and it was a breach of etiquette to decline to eat it. This custom

was strictly observed all over the continent and in the West India

Islands, and was often remarked upon by the early discoverers, in whose

minds it was apt to implant idyllic notions that were afterward rudely

disturbed. The prevalence of hospitality among uncivilized races has

long been noted by travellers, and is probably in most cases, as it

certainly was in ancient America, closely connected with communism in

living.

[Sidenote: Structure of the clan.]

The clan, which practised this communism, had its definite organization,

officers, rights, and duties. Its official head was the "sachem," whose

functions were of a civil nature. The sachem was elected by the clan and

must be a member of it, so that a son could not be chosen to succeed his

father, but a sachem could be succeeded by his uterine brother or by his

sister's son, and in this way customary lines of succession could and

often did tend to become established. The clan also elected its

"chiefs," whose functions were military; the number of chiefs was

proportionate to that of the people composing the clan, usually one

chief to every fifty or sixty persons. The clan could depose its sachem

or any of its chiefs. Personal property, such as weapons, or trophies,

or rights of user in the garden-plots, was inheritable in the female

line, and thus stayed within the clan. The members were reciprocally

bound to help, defend, and avenge one another. The clan had the right of

adopting strangers to strengthen itself. It had the right of naming its

members, and these names were always obviously significant, like Little

Turtle, Yellow Wolf, etc.; of names like our Richard or William, with

the meaning lost, or obvious only to scholars, no trace is to be found

in aboriginal America. The clan itself, too, always had a name, which

was usually that of some animal,--as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon, and a rude

drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or primitive

heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this emblem. The

clan had its own common religious rites and common burial place. There

was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there were

instances, indeed, of its being composed entirely of women, whose

position was one of much more dignity and influence than has commonly

been supposed. Instances of squaw sachems were not so very rare.[77]

[Footnote 77: Among the Wyandots there is in each clan a

council composed of four squaws, and this council elects the

male sachem who is its head. Therefore the tribal council,

which is the aggregate of the clan-councils, consists one fifth

of men and four fifths of women. See Powell, "Wyandot

Government: a Short Study of Tribal Society," in _First Annual

Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1881, pp.

59-69; and also Mr. Carr's interesting essay above cited.]

[Sidenote: Origin and structure of the phratry.]

The number of clans in a tribe naturally bore some proportion to the

populousness of the tribe, varying from three, in the case of the

Delawares, to twenty or more, as in the case of the Ojibwas and Creeks.

There were usually eight or ten, and these were usually grouped into two

or three phratries. The phratry seems to have originated in the

segmentation of the overgrown clan, for in some cases exogamy was

originally practised as between the phratries and afterward the custom

died out while it was retained as between their constituent clans.[78]

The system of naming often indicates this origin of the phratry, though

seldom quite so forcibly as in the case of the Mohegan tribe, which was

thus composed:[79]--

I. WOLF PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 1. Wolf, 2. Bear, 3. Dog, 4. Opossum.

II. TURTLE PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 5. Little Turtle, 6. Mud Turtle, 7. Great Turtle, 8. Yellow

Eel.

III. TURKEY PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 9. Turkey, 10. Crane, 11. Chicken.

Here the senior clan in the phratry tends to keep the original

clan-name, while the junior clans have been guided by a sense of kinship

in choosing their new names. This origin of the phratry is further

indicated by the fact that the phratry does not always occur; sometimes

the clans are organized directly into the tribe. The phratry was not so

much a governmental as a religious and social organization. Its most

important function seems to have been supplementing or reinforcing the

action of the single clan in exacting compensation for murder; and this

point is full of interest because it helps us to understand how among

our Teutonic forefathers the "hundred" (the equivalent of the phratry)

became charged with the duty of prosecuting criminals. The Greek phratry

had a precisely analogous function.[80]

[Footnote 78: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific

States_, vol. i. p. 109.]

[Footnote 79: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, p. 16.]

[Footnote 80: See Freeman, _Comparative Politics_, p. 117;

Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 98-104; Grote, _History of

Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 74, 88. It is interesting to compare

Grote's description with Morgan's (_Anc. Soc._, pp. 71, 94) and

note both the closeness of the general parallelism and the

character of the specific variations.]

[Sidenote: Structure of the tribe.]

The Indian tribe was a group of people distinguished by the exclusive

possession of a dialect in common. It possessed a tribal name and

occupied a more or less clearly defined territory; there were also

tribal religious rites. Its supreme government was vested in the council

of its clan-chiefs and sachems; and as these were thus officers of the

tribe as well as of the clan, the tribe exercised the right of investing

them with office, amid appropriate solemnities, after their election by

their respective clans. The tribal-council had also the right to depose

chiefs and sachems. In some instances, not always, there was a head

chief or military commander for the tribes, elected by the tribal

council. Such, was the origin of the office which, in most societies of

the Old World, gradually multiplied its functions and accumulated power

until it developed into true kingship. Nowhere in ancient North America

did it quite reach such a stage.

[Sidenote: Cross-relationships between clans and tribes: the Iroquois

Confederacy.]

Among the greater part of the aborigines no higher form of social

structure was attained than the tribe. There were, however, several

instances of permanent confederation, of which the two most interesting

and most highly developed were the League of the Iroquois, mentioned

above, and the Mexican Confederacy, presently to be considered. The

principles upon which the Iroquois league was founded have been

thoroughly and minutely explained by Mr. Morgan.[81] It originated in a

union of five tribes composed of clans in common, and speaking five

dialects of a common language. These tribes had themselves arisen

through the segmentation of a single overgrown tribe, so that portions

of the original clans survived in them all. The Wolf, Bear, and Turtle

clan were common to all the five tribes; three other clans were common

to three of the five. "All the members of the same gens [clan], whether

Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Senecas, were brothers and

sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common

[female] ancestor, and they recognized each other as such with the

fullest cordiality. When they met, the first inquiry was the name of

each other's gens, and next the immediate pedigree of each other's

sachems; after which they were able to find, under their peculiar system

of consanguinity, the relationship in which they stood to each other....

This cross-relationship between persons of the same gens in the

different tribes is still preserved and recognized among them in all its

original force. It explains the tenacity with which the fragments of the

old confederacy still cling together."[82] Acknowledged consanguinity

is to the barbarian a sound reason, and the only one conceivable, for

permanent political union; and the very existence of such a confederacy

as that of the Five Nations was rendered possible only through the

permanence of the clans or communal households which were its ultimate

units. We have here a clue to the policy of these Indians toward the

kindred tribes who refused to join their league. These tribes, too, so

far as is known, would seem to have contained the same clans. After a

separation of at least four hundred years the Wyandots have still five

of their eight clans in common with the Iroquois. When the Eries and

other tribes would not join the league of their kindred, the refusal

smacked of treason to the kin, and we can quite understand the deadly

fury with which the latter turned upon them and butchered every man,

woman, and child except such as they saw fit to adopt into their own

clans.

[Footnote 81: In his _League of the Iroquois_, Rochester, 1851,

a book now out of print and excessively rare. A brief summary

is given in his _Ancient Society_, chap. v., and in his _Houses

and House-Life_, pp. 23-41. Mr. Morgan was adopted into the

Seneca tribe, and his life work was begun by a profound and

exhaustive study of this interesting people.]

[Footnote 82: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 33. At the period of

its greatest power, about 1675, the people of the confederacy

were about 25,000 in number. In 1875, according to official

statistics (see table appended to Dodge's _Plains of the Great

West_, pp. 441-448), there were in the state of New York 198

Oneidas, 203 Onondagas, 165 Cayugas, 3,043 Senecas, and 448

Tuscaroras,--in all 4,057. Besides these there were 1,279

Oneidas on a reservation in Wisconsin, and 207 Senecas in the

Indian Territory. The Mohawks are not mentioned in the list.

During the Revolutionary War, and just afterward, the Mohawks

migrated into Upper Canada (Ontario), for an account of which

the reader may consult the second volume of Stone's _Life of

Brant_. Portions of the other tribes also went to Canada. In

New York the Oneidas and Tuscaroras were converted to

Christianity by Samuel Kirkland and withheld from alliance with

the British during the Revolution; the others still retain

their ancient religion. They are for the most part farmers and

are now increasing in numbers. Their treatment by the state of

New York has been honourably distinguished for justice and

humanity.]

[Sidenote: Structure of the confederacy.]

Each of the Five Tribes retained its local self-government. The supreme

government of the confederacy was vested in a General Council of fifty

sachems, "equal in rank and authority." The fifty sachemships were

created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes; whenever a

vacancy occurred, it was filled by the clan electing one of its own

members; a sachem once thus elected could be deposed by the clan-council

for good cause; "but the right to invest these sachems with office was

reserved to the General Council." These fifty sachems of the confederacy

were likewise sachems in their respective tribes, "and with the chiefs

of these tribes formed the council of each, which was supreme over all

matters pertaining to the tribe exclusively." The General Council could

not convene itself, but could be convened by any one of the five tribal

councils. The regular meeting was once a year in the autumn, in the

valley of Onondaga, but in stirring times extra sessions were frequent.

The proceedings were opened by an address from one of the sachems, "in

the course of which he thanked the Great Spirit [i. e. Ioskeha, the

sky-god] for sparing their lives and permitting them to meet together;"

after this they were ready for business. It was proper for any orator

from among the people to address the Council with arguments, and the

debates were sometimes very long and elaborate. When it came to voting,

the fifty sachems voted by tribes, each tribe counting as a unit, and

unanimity was as imperative as in an English jury, so that one tribe

could block the proceedings. The confederacy had no head-sachem, or

civil chief-magistrate; but a military commander was indispensable, and,

curiously enough, without being taught by the experience of a Tarquin,

the Iroquois made this a dual office, like the Roman consulship. There

were two permanent chieftainships, one in the Wolf, the other in the

Turtle clan, and both in the Seneca tribe, because the western border

was the most exposed to attack.[83] The chiefs were elected by the clan,

and inducted into office by the General Council; their tenure was during

life or good behaviour. This office never encroached upon the others in

its powers, but an able warrior in this position could wield great

influence.

[Footnote 83: Somewhat on the same principle that in mediæval

Europe led an earl or count, commanding an exposed border

district or _march_ to rise in power and importance and become

a "margrave" [_mark_ + _graf_ = march-count] or "marquis."

Compare the increase of sovereignty accorded to the earls of

Chester and bishops of Durham as rulers of the two principal

march counties of England.]

[Sidenote: The "Long House."]

Such was the famous confederacy of the Iroquois. They called it the Long

House, and by this name as commonly as any other it is known in history.

The name by which they called themselves was Hodenosaunee, or "People of

the Long House." The name was picturesquely descriptive of the long and

narrow strip of villages with its western outlook toward the Niagara,

and its eastern toward the Hudson, three hundred miles distant. But it

was appropriate also for another and a deeper reason than this. We have

seen that in its social and political structure, from top to bottom and

from end to end, the confederacy was based upon and held together by the

gentes, clans, communal households, or "long houses," which were its

component units. They may be compared to the hypothetical indestructible

atoms of modern physics, whereof all material objects are composed. The

whole institutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group of ideas and

habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and incapable of

imagining any other form of organization than the clan held together by

the tie of a common maternal ancestry. The house architecture was as

much a constituent part of the fabric as the council of sachems. There

is a transparency about the system that is very different from the

obscurity we continually find in Europe and Asia, where different strata

of ideas and institutions have been superimposed one upon another and

crumpled and distorted with as little apparent significance or purpose

as the porches and gables of a so-called "Queen Anne" house.[84]

Conquest in the Old World has resulted in the commingling and manifold

fusion of peoples in very different stages of development. In the New

World there has been very little of that sort of thing. Conquest in

ancient America was pretty much all of the Iroquois type, entailing in

its milder form the imposition of tribute, in its more desperate form

the extermination of a tribe with the adoption of its remnants into the

similarly-constituted tribe of the conquerors. There was therefore but

little modification of the social structure while the people, gradually

acquiring new arts, were passing through savagery and into a more or

less advanced stage of barbarism. The symmetry of the structure and the

relation of one institution to another is thus distinctly apparent.

[Footnote 84: For instance, the whole discussion in Gomme's

_Village Community_, London, 1890, an excellent book, abounds

with instances of this crumpling.]

The communal household and the political structure built upon it, as

above described in the case of the Iroquois, seem to have existed all

over ancient North America, with agreement in fundamental

characteristics and variation in details and degree of development.

There are many corners as yet imperfectly explored, but hitherto, in so

far as research has been rewarded with information, it all points in the

same general direction. Among the tribes above enumerated as either in

savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, so far as they have been

studied, there seems to be a general agreement, as to the looseness of

the marriage tie the clan with descent in the female line, the phratry,

the tribe, the officers and councils, the social equality, the community

in goods (with exceptions already noted), and the wigwam or house

adapted to communal living.

[Illustration: View, Cross-section, and Ground-plan of Mandan round

house.]

[Sidenote: Circular houses of the Mandans.]

The extreme of variation consistent with adherence to the common

principle was to be found in the shape and material of the houses. Those

of the savage tribes were but sorry huts. The long house was used by the

Powhatans and other Algonquin tribes. The other most highly developed

type may be illustrated by the circular frame-houses of the

Mandans.[85] These houses were from forty to sixty feet in diameter. A

dozen or more posts, each about eight inches in diameter, were set in

the ground, "at equal distances in the circumference of a circle, and

rising about six feet above the level of the floor." The tops of the

posts were connected by horizontal stringers; and outside each post a

slanting wooden brace sunk in the ground about four feet distant served

as a firm support to the structure. The spaces between these braces were

filled by tall wooden slabs, set with the same slant and resting against

the stringers. Thus the framework of the outer wall was completed. To

support the roof four posts were set in the ground about ten feet apart

in the form of a square, near the centre of the building. They were from

twelve to fifteen feet in height, and were connected at the top by four

stringers forming a square. The rafters rested upon these stringers and

upon the top of the circular wall below. The rafters were covered with

willow matting, and upon this was spread a layer of prairie grass. Then

both wall and roof, from the ground up to the summit, were covered with

earth, solid and hard, to a thickness of at least two feet. The rafters

projected above the square framework at the summit, so as to leave a

circular opening in the centre about four feet in diameter. This hole

let in a little light, and let out some of the smoke from the fire which

blazed underneath in a fire-pit lined with stone slabs set on edge.

The only other aperture for light was the doorway, which was a kind of

vestibule or passage some ten feet in length. Curtains of buffalo robes

did duty instead of doors. The family compartments were triangles with

base at the outer wall, and apex opening upon the central hearth; and

the partitions were hanging mats or skins, which were tastefully fringed

and ornamented with quill-work and pictographs.[86] In the lower Mandan

village, visited by Catlin, there were about fifty such houses, each

able to accommodate from thirty to forty persons. The village, situated

upon a bold bluff at a bend of the Missouri river, and surrounded by a

palisade of stout timbers more than ten feet in height, was very strong

for defensive purposes. Indeed, it was virtually impregnable to Indian

methods of attack, for the earth-covered houses could not be set on fire

by blazing arrows, and just within the palisade ran a trench in which

the defenders could securely skulk, while through the narrow chinks

between the timbers they could shoot arrows fast enough to keep their

assailants at a distance. This purpose was further secured by rude

bastions, and considering the structure as a whole one cannot help

admiring the ingenuity which it exhibits. It shows a marked superiority

over the conceptions of military defence attained by the Iroquois or any

other Indians north of New Mexico. Besides the communal houses the

village contained its "medicine lodge," or council house, and an open

area for games and ceremonies. In the spaces between the houses were

the scaffolds for drying maize, buffalo meat, etc., ascended by

well-made portable ladders. Outside the village, at a short distance on

the prairie, was a group of such scaffolds upon which the dead were left

to moulder, somewhat after the fashion of the Parsees.[87]

[Footnote 85: Morgan, _Houses and House-life_, pp. 126-129;

Catlin's _North Amer. Indians_, i. 81 _ff._]

[Footnote 86: Catlin, i. 83.]

[Footnote 87: Catlin, i. 90.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Indians of the pueblos,--in the middle status of

barbarism.]

We are now prepared to understand some essential points in the life of

the groups of Indians occupying the region of the Cordilleras, both

north and south of the Isthmus of Darien, all the way from Zuñi to

Quito. The principal groups are the Moquis and Zuñis of Arizona and New

Mexico, the Nahuas or Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, the Mayas, Quichés,

and kindred peoples of Central America; and beyond the isthmus, the

Chibchas of New Granada, and sundry peoples comprised within the domain

of the Incas. With regard to the ethnic relationships of these various

groups, opinion is still in a state of confusion; but it is not

necessary for our present purpose that we should pause to discuss the

numerous questions thus arising. Our business is to get a clear notion

in outline of the character of the culture to which these peoples had

attained at the time of the Discovery. Here we observe, on the part of

all, a very considerable divergence from the average Indian level which

we have thus far been describing.

This divergence increases as we go from Zuñi toward Cuzco, reaching its

extreme, on the whole, among the Peruvians, though in some respects the

nearest approach to civilization was made by the Mayas. All these

peoples were at least one full ethnical period nearer to true

civilization than the Iroquois,--and a vast amount of change and

improvement is involved in the conception of an entire ethnical period.

According to Mr. Morgan, one more such period would have brought the

average level of these Cordilleran peoples to as high a plane as that of

the Greeks described in the Odyssey. Let us now observe the principal

points involved in the change, bearing in mind that it implies a

considerable lapse of time. While the date 1325, at which the city of

Mexico was founded, is the earliest date in the history of that country

which can be regarded as securely established, it was preceded by a long

series of generations of migration and warfare, the confused and

fragmentary record of which historians have tried--hitherto with scant

success--to unravel. To develop such a culture as that of the Aztecs out

of an antecedent culture similar to that of the Iroquois must of course

have taken a long time.

[Sidenote: Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with adobe.]

It will be remembered that the most conspicuous distinctive marks of the

grade of culture attained by the Cordilleran peoples were two,--the

cultivation of maize in large quantities by irrigation, and the use of

adobe-brick or stone in building. Probably there was at first, to some

extent, a causal connection between the former and the latter. The

region of the Moqui-Zuñi culture is a region in which arid plains become

richly fertile when water from neighbouring cliffs or peaks is

directed down upon them. It is mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump

or well, which seem to have been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal

Americans of whatever grade. The change of occupation involved in

raising large crops of corn by the aid of sluices would facilitate an

increase in density of population, and would encourage a preference for

agricultural over predatory life. Such changes would be likely to favour

the development of defensive military art. The Mohawk's surest defence

lay in the terror which his prowess created hundreds of miles away. One

can easily see how the forefathers of our Moquis and Zuñis may have come

to prefer the security gained by living more closely together and

building impregnable fortresses.

[Sidenote: Possible origin of adobe architecture.]

The earthen wall of the Mandan, supported on a framework of posts and

slabs, seems to me curiously and strikingly suggestive of the incipient

pottery made by surrounding a basket with a coating of clay.[88] When it

was discovered how to make the earthen bowl or dish without the basket,

a new era in progress was begun. So when it was discovered that an

earthen wall could be fashioned to answer the requirements of

house-builders without the need of a permanent wooden framework, another

great step was taken. Again the consequences were great enough to make

it mark the beginning of a new ethnical period. If we suppose the

central portion of our continent, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys,

to have been occupied at some time by tribes familiar with the Mandan

style of building; and if we further suppose a gradual extension or

migration of this population, or some part of it, westward into the

mountain region; that would be a movement into a region in which timber

was scarce, while adobe clay was abundant. Under such circumstances the

useful qualities of that peculiar clay could not fail to be soon

discovered. The simple exposure to sunshine would quickly convert a

Mandan house built with it into an adobe house; the coating of earth

would become a coating of brick. It would not then take long to

ascertain that with such adobe-brick could be built walls at once light

and strong, erect and tall, such as could not be built with common clay.

In some such way as this I think the discovery must have been made by

the ancestors of the Zuñis, and others who have built pueblos. After the

pueblo style of architecture, with its erect walls and terraced stories,

had become developed, it was an easy step, when the occasion suggested

it, to substitute for the adobe-brick coarse rubble-stones embedded in

adobe. The final stage was reached in Mexico and Yucatan, when soft

coralline limestone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel and laid

in courses with adobe-mortar.

[Footnote 88: See above, p. 25.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Cushing at Zuñi.]

The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most interesting

structures in the world. Several are still inhabited by the descendants

of the people who were living in them at the time of the Spanish

Discovery, and their primitive customs and habits of thought have been

preserved to the present day with but little change. The long sojourn

of Mr. Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, in the Zuñi pueblo, has

already thrown a flood of light upon many points in American

archæology.[89] As in the case of American aborigines generally, the

social life of these people is closely connected with their

architecture, and the pueblos which are still inhabited seem to furnish

us with the key to the interpretation of those that we find deserted or

in ruins, whether in Arizona or in Guatemala.

[Footnote 89: See his articles in the _Century Magazine_, Dec.,

1882, Feb., 1883, May, 1883; and his papers on "Zuñi Fetiches,"

_Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, ii. 9-45; "A Study of

Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth," id. iv.

473-521; see also Mrs. Stevenson's paper, "Religious Life of a

Zuñi Child," id. v. 539-555; Sylvester Baxter, "An Aboriginal

Pilgrimage," _Century Magazine_, Aug., 1882.]

[Illustration: Pueblo Hungo Pavie. Chaco Cañon N. M.]

[Sidenote: Typical structure of the pueblo.]

In the architecture of the pueblos one typical form is reproduced with

sundry variations in detail. The typical form is that of a solid block

of buildings making three sides of an extensive rectangular enclosure

or courtyard. On the inside, facing upon the courtyard, the structure

is but one story in height; on the outside, looking out upon the

surrounding country, it rises to three, or perhaps even five or six

stories. From inside to outside the flat roofs rise in a series of

terraces, so that the floor of the second row is continuous with the

roof of the first, the floor of the third row is continuous with the

roof of the second, and so on. The fourth side of the rectangle is

formed by a solid block of one-story apartments, usually with one or two

narrow gateways overlooked by higher structures within the enclosure.

Except these gateways there is no entrance from without; the only

windows are frowning loop-holes, and access to the several apartments is

gained through skylights reached by portable ladders. Such a structure

is what our own forefathers would have naturally called a "burgh," or

fortress; it is in one sense a house, yet in another sense a town;[90]

its divisions are not so much houses as compartments; it is a

joint-tenement affair, like the Iroquois long houses, but in a higher

stage of development.

[Footnote 90: Cf. [Greek: oikos], "house," with Latin _vicus_,

"street" or "village," Sanskrit _vesa_, "dwelling-place,"

English _wick_, "mansion" or "village."]

[Illustration: Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie.]

[Sidenote: Pueblo society.]

So far as they have been studied, the pueblo Indians are found to be

organized in clans, with descent in the female line, as in the case of

the ruder Indians above described. In the event of marriage the young

husband goes to live with his wife, and she may turn him out of doors if

he deserves it.[91] The ideas of property seem still limited to that

of possessory right, with the ultimate title in the clan, except that

portable articles subject to individual ownership have become more

numerous. In government the council of sachems reappears with a

principal sachem, or cacique, called by the Spaniards "gobernador."

There is an organized priesthood, with distinct orders, and a ceremonial

more elaborate than those of the ruder Indians. In every pueblo there is

to be found at least one "estufa," or council-house, for governmental or

religious transactions. Usually there are two or three or more such

estufas. In mythology, in what we may call pictography or rudimentary

hieroglyphics, as well as in ordinary handicrafts, there is a marked

advance beyond the Indians of the lower status of barbarism, after

making due allowances for such things as the people of the pueblos have

learned from white men.[92]

[Footnote 91: "With the woman rests the security of the

marriage ties; and it must be said, in her high honour, that

she rarely abuses the privilege; that is, never sends her

husband 'to the home of his fathers,' unless he richly deserves

it." But should not Mr. Cushing have said "home of his

mothers," or perhaps, of "his sisters and his cousins and his

aunts?" For a moment afterward he tells us, "To her belong all

the children; and descent, including inheritance, is on her

side." _Century Magazine_, May, 1883, p. 35.]

[Footnote 92: For example, since the arrival of the Spaniards

some or perhaps all of the pueblos have introduced chimneys

into their apartments; but when they were first visited by

Coronado, he found the people wearing cotton garments, and

Franciscan friars in 1581 remarked upon the superior quality of

their shoes. In spinning and weaving, as well as in the

grinding of meal, a notable advance had been made.]

[Illustration: Restoration of Pueblo Bonito.]

[Illustration: Pueblo Peñasca Blanca.]

[Sidenote: Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley.]

[Sidenote: The Moqui pueblos.]

[Sidenote: The cliff pueblos.]

From the pueblos still existing, whether inhabited or in ruins, we may

eventually get some sort of clue to the populations of ancient towns

visited by the Spanish discoverers.[93] The pueblo of Zuñi seems to have

had at one time a population of 5,000, but it has dwindled to less than

2,000. Of the ruined pueblos, built of stone with adobe mortar, in the

valley of the Rio Chaco, the Pueblo Hungo Pavie contained 73 apartments

in the first story, 53 in the second, and 29 in the third, with an

average size of 18 feet by 13; and would have accommodated about 1,000

Indians. In the same valley Pueblo Bonito, with four stories, contained

not less than 640 apartments, with room enough for a population of

3,000; within a third of a mile from this huge structure stood Pueblo

Chettro Kettle, with 506 apartments. The most common variation from the

rectangular shape was that in which a terraced semicircle was

substituted for the three terraced sides, as in Pueblo Bonito, or the

whole rectangular design was converted into an ellipse, as in Pueblo

Peñasca Blanca. There are indications that these fortresses were not in

all cases built at one time, but that, at least in some cases, they grew

by gradual accretions.[94] The smallness of the distances between those

in the Chaco valley suggests that their inhabitants must have been

united in a confederation; and one can easily see that an actual

juxtaposition or partial coalescence of such communities would have

made a city of very imposing appearance. The pueblos are always found

situated near a river, and their gardens, lying outside, are easily

accessible to sluices from neighbouring cliffs or mesas. But in some

cases, as the Wolpi pueblo of the Moquis, the whole stronghold is built

upon the summit of the cliff; there is a coalescence of communal

structures, each enclosing a courtyard, in which there is a spring for

the water-supply; and the irrigated gardens are built in terrace-form

just below on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From this curious

pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary cliff-houses found

in the Chelly, Mancos, and McElmo cañons, and elsewhere,--veritable

human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the perpendicular rock,

accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous climb; places of

refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by more barbarous

invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas marks of

careful building and tasteful adornment.[95]

[Footnote 93: At least a better one than Mr. Prescott had when

he naively reckoned five persons to a household, _Conquest of

Mexico_, ii. 97.]

[Footnote 94: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, chap. vii.]

[Footnote 95: For careful descriptions of the ruined pueblos

and cliff-houses, see Nadaillac's _Prehistoric America_, chap.

v., and Short's _North Americans of Antiquity_, chap. vii. The

latter sees in them the melancholy vestiges of a people

gradually "succumbing to their unpropitious surroundings--a

land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its

scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin--the Apaches."]

[Sidenote: Pueblo of Zuñi.]

The pueblo of Zuñi is a more extensive and complex structure than the

ruined pueblos on the Chaco river. It is not so much an enormous

communal house as a small town formed of a number of such houses crowded

together, with access from one to another along their roof-terraces.

Some of the structures are of adobe brick, others of stone embedded in

adobe mortar and covered with plaster. There are two open plazas or

squares in the town, and several streets, some of which are covered ways

passing beneath the upper stories of houses. The effect, though not

splendid, must be very picturesque, and would doubtless astonish and

bewilder visitors unprepared for such a sight. When Coronado's men

discovered Zuñi in 1540, although that style of building was no longer a

novelty to them, they compared the place to Granada.

[Sidenote: Pueblo of Tlascala.]

Now it is worthy of note that Cortes made the same comparison in the

case of Tlascala, one of the famous towns at which he stopped on his

march from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. In his letter to the emperor

Charles V., he compared Tlascala to Granada, "affirming that it was

larger, stronger, and more populous than the Moorish capital at the time

of the conquest, and quite as well built."[96] Upon this Mr. Prescott

observes, "we shall be slow to believe that its edifices could have

rivalled those monuments of Oriental magnificence, whose light aerial

forms still survive after the lapse of ages, the admiration of every

traveller of sensibility and taste. The truth is that Cortes, like

Columbus, saw objects through the warm medium of his own fond

imagination, giving them a higher tone of colouring and larger

dimensions than were strictly warranted by the fact." Or, as Mr.

Bandelier puts it, when it comes to general statements about numbers

and dimensions, "the descriptions of the conquerors cannot be taken as

facts, only as the expression of feelings, honestly entertained but

uncritical." From details given in various Spanish descriptions,

including those of Cortes himself, it is evident that there could not

have been much difference in size between Tlascala and its neighbour

Cholula. The population of the latter town has often been given as from

150,000 to 200,000; but, from elaborate archæological investigations

made on the spot in 1881, Mr. Bandelier concludes that it cannot have

greatly exceeded 30,000, and this number really agrees with the

estimates of two very important Spanish authorities, Las Casas and

Torquemada, when correctly understood.[97] We may therefore suppose that

the population of Tlascala was about 30,000. Now the population of the

city of Granada, at the time of its conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella,

is said by the greatest of Spanish historians[98] to have been about

200,000. It would thus appear that Cortes sometimes let his feelings run

away with him; and, all things considered, small blame to him if he did!

In studying the story of the Spanish conquest of America, liberal

allowance must often be made for inaccuracies of statement that were

usually pardonable and sometimes inevitable.

[Footnote 96: "La qual ciudad ... es muy mayor que Granada, y

muy mas fuerte, y de tan buenos edificios, y de mucha mas

gente, que Granada tenia al tiempo que se gaño." Cortes,

_Relacion segunda al Emperador_, ap. Lorenzana, p. 58, cited in

Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 401 (7th ed.,

London, 1855).]

[Footnote 97: See Bandelier's _Archæological Tour in Mexico_,

Boston, 1885, pp. 160-164. Torquemada's words, cited by

Bandelier, are "Quando entraron los Españoles, dicen que tenia

mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta ciudad." _Monarquía Indiana_,

lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 281. A prolific source of error is the

ambiguity in the word _vecinos_, which may mean either

"inhabitants" or "householders." Where Torquemada meant 40,000

inhabitants, uncritical writers fond of the marvellous have

understood him to mean 40,000 houses, and multiplying this

figure by 5, the average number of persons _in a modern

family_, have obtained the figure 200,000. But 40,000 houses

peopled after the old Mexican fashion, with at least 200

persons in a house (to put it as low as possible), would make a

city of 8,000,000 inhabitants! Las Casas, in his _Destruycion

de las Indias_, vii., puts the population of Cholula at about

30,000. I observe that Llorente (in his _Oeuvres de Las Casas_,

tom. i. p. 38) translates the statement correctly. I shall

recur to this point below, vol. ii. p. 264.]

[Footnote 98: Mariana, _Historia de España_, Valencia, 1795,

tom. viii. p. 317.]

But when Cortes described Tlascala as "quite as well built" as Granada,

it is not at all likely that he was thinking about that exquisite

Moorish architecture which in the mind of Mr. Prescott or any cultivated

modern writer is the first thing to be suggested by the name. The

Spaniards of those days did not admire the artistic work of "infidels;"

they covered up beautiful arabesques with a wash of dirty plaster, and

otherwise behaved very much like the Puritans who smashed the

"idolatrous" statues in English cathedrals. When Cortes looked at

Tlascala, and Coronado looked at Zuñi, and both soldiers were reminded

of Granada, they were probably looking at those places with a

professional eye as fortresses hard to capture; and from this point of

view there was doubtless some justice in the comparison.

[Sidenote: The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite pueblo.]

In the description of Tlascala by the Spaniards who first saw it, with

its dark and narrow streets, its houses of adobe, or "the better sort"

of stone laid in adobe mortar, and its flat and terraced roofs, one is

irresistibly reminded of such a pueblo as Zuñi. Tlascala was a town of

a type probably common in Mexico. In some respects, as will hereafter

appear, the city of Mexico showed striking variations from the common

type. Yet there too were to be seen the huge houses, with terraced

roofs, built around a square courtyard; in one of them 450 Spaniards,

with more than 1,000 Tlascalan allies, were accommodated; in another,

called "Montezuma's palace," one of the conquerors, who came several

times intending to see the whole of it, got so tired with wandering

through the interminable succession of rooms that at length he gave it

up and never saw them all.[99] This might have happened in such a

building as Pueblo Bonito; and a suspicion is raised that Montezuma's

city was really a vast composite pueblo, and that its so-called palaces

were communal buildings in principle like the pueblos of the Chaco

valley.

[Footnote 99: "Et io entrai piu di quattro volte in una casa

del gran Signor non por altro effetto che per vederla, et ogni

volta vi camminauo tanto che mi stancauo, et mai la fini di

vedere tutta." _Relatione fatta per un gentil' huomo del Signor

Fernando Cortese_, apud Ramusio, _Navigationi et Viaggi_,

Venice, 1556, tom. iii. fol. 309.]

[Sidenote: Natural mistake of the Spanish discoverers.]

[Sidenote: Contrast between feudalism and gentilism.]

[Sidenote: Change from gentile society to political society.]

Of course the Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand

the meaning of what they saw. It dazed and bewildered them. They knew

little or nothing of any other kind of society than feudal monarchy, and

if they made such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a "king" (i. e.

feudal king) or "emperor," and the clan-chiefs "lords" or "noblemen," if

they supposed that these huge fortresses were like feudal castles and

palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. Such misconceptions were

common enough before barbarous societies had been much studied; and many

a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and splendour about him

that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages of history as a

mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of feudalism.[100]

Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed unavoidable,

found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature; and then the

use of wrong names and titles bore fruit in what one cannot properly

call a theory but rather an incoherent medley of notions about barbaric

society. Nothing could be further from _feudalism_, in which the

relation of landlord and tenant is a fundamental element, than the

society of the American aborigines, in which that relation was utterly

unknown and inconceivable. This more primitive form of society is not

improperly called _gentilism_, inasmuch as it is based upon the gens or

clan, with communism in living, and with the conception of individual

ownership of property undeveloped. It was gentilism that everywhere

prevailed throughout the myriads of unrecorded centuries during which

the foremost races of mankind struggled up through savagery and

barbarism into civilization, while weaker and duller races lagged behind

at various stages on the way. The change from "gentile" society to

political society as we know it was in some respects the most important

change that has occurred in human affairs since men became human. It

might be roughly defined as the change from personal to territorial

organization. It was accomplished when the stationary clan became

converted into the township, and the stationary tribe into the small

state;[101] when the conception of individual property in land was fully

acquired; when the tie of physical kinship ceased to be indispensable as

a bond for holding a society together; when the _clansman_ became a

_citizen_. This momentous change was accomplished among the Greeks

during a period beginning shortly before the first Olympiad (B. C.

776), and ending with the reforms of Kleisthenes at Athens (B. C. 509);

among the Romans it was accomplished by the series of legislative

changes beginning with those ascribed to Servius Tullius (about B. C.

550), and perfected by the time of the first Punic War (B. C. 264-241).

In each case about three centuries was required to work the change.[102]

If now the reader, familiar with European history, will reflect upon the

period of more than a thousand years which intervened between the date

last named and the time when feudalism became thoroughly established, if

he will recall to mind the vast and powerful complication of causes

which operated to transform civil society from the aspect which it wore

in the days of Regulus and the second Ptolemy to that which it had

assumed in the times of Henry the Fowler or Fulk of Anjou, he will begin

to realize how much "feudalism" implies, and what a wealth of experience

it involves, above and beyond the change from "gentile" to "civil"

society. It does not appear that any people in ancient America ever

approached very near to this earlier change. None had fairly begun to

emerge from gentilism; none had advanced so far as the Greeks of the

first Olympiad or the Romans under the rule of the Tarquins.

[Footnote 100: When Pocahontas visited London in 1616 she was

received at court as befitted a "king's daughter," and the old

Virginia historian, William Stith (born in 1689), says it was a

"constant tradition" in his day that James I. "became jealous,

and was highly offended at Mr. Rolfe for marrying a princess."

The notion was that "if Virginia descended to Pocahontas, as it

might do at Powhatan's death, at her own death the kingdom

would be vested in Mr. Rolfe's posterity." Esten Cooke's

_Virginia_, p. 100. Powhatan (i. e. Wahunsunakok, chief of the

Powhatan tribe) was often called "emperor" by the English

settlers. To their intense bewilderment he told one of them

that his office would descend to his [maternal] brothers, even

though he had sons living. It was thought that this could not

be true.]