ANCIENT MEXICO—CLIMATE AND PRODUCTS—PRIMITIVE RACES—AZTEC EMPIRE  
OF all that extensive empire which once acknowledged the authority of Spain in the New World, no portion, for interest and importance, can be compared with Mexico;—and this equally, whether we consider the variety of its soil and climate; the inexhaustible stores of its mineral wealth; its scenery, grand and picturesque beyond example; the character of its ancient inhabitants, not only far surpassing in intelligence that of the other North American races, but reminding us, by their monuments, of the primitive civilization of Egypt and Hindostan; or, lastly, the peculiar circumstances of its Conquest, adventurous and romantic as any legend devised by Norman or Italian bard of chivalry. It is the purpose of the present narrative to exhibit the history of this Conquest, and that of the remarkable man by whom it was achieved.
But, in order that the reader may have a better understanding of the subject, it will be well, before entering on it, to take a general survey of the po{4}litical and social institutions of the races who occupied the land at the time of its discovery.
The country of the ancient Mexicans, or Aztecs as they were called, formed but a very small part of the extensive territories comprehended in the modern republic of Mexico.[4] Its boundaries cannot be defined with certainty. They were much enlarged in the latter days of the empire, when they may be considered as reaching from about the eighteenth degree north, to the twenty-first, on the Atlantic; and from the fourteenth to the nineteenth, including a very narrow strip, on the Pacific.[5] In its greatest breadth, it could not ex{5}ceed five degrees and a half, dwindling, as it approached its southeastern limits, to less than two. It covered, probably, less than sixteen thousand square leagues.[6] Yet such is the remarkable formation of this country, that, though not more than twice as large as New England, it presented every variety of climate, and was capable of yielding nearly every fruit, found between the equator and the Arctic circle.
All along the Atlantic, the country is bordered by a broad tract, called the tierra caliente, or hot region, which has the usual high temperature of equinoctial lands. Parched and sandy plains are intermingled with others, of exuberant fertility, almost impervious from thickets of aromatic shrubs and wild flowers, in the midst of which tower up{6} trees of that magnificent growth which is found only within the tropics. In this wilderness of sweets lurks the fatal malaria, engendered, probably, by the decomposition of rank vegetable substances in a hot and humid soil.[7] The season of the bilious fever,—vómito, as it is called,—which scourges these coasts, continues from the spring to the autumnal equinox, when it is checked by the cold winds that descend from Hudson’s Bay. These winds in the winter season frequently freshen into tempests, and sweeping down the Atlantic coast and the winding Gulf of Mexico, burst with the fury of a hurricane on its unprotected shores, and on the neighboring West India islands. Such are the mighty spells with which Nature has surrounded this land of enchantment, as if to guard the golden treasures locked up within its bosom. The genius and enterprise of man have proved more potent than her spells.
After passing some twenty leagues across this burning region, the traveller finds himself rising into a purer atmosphere. His limbs recover their elasticity. He breathes more freely, for his senses are not now oppressed by the sultry heats and intoxicating perfumes of the valley. The aspect of nature, too, has changed, and his eye no longer revels among the gay variety of colors with which the landscape was painted there. The vanilla, the indigo, and the flowering cacao-groves disappear as he advances. The sugar-cane and the glossy-leaved banana still accompany him; and, when he{7} has ascended about four thousand feet, he sees in the unchanging verdure, and the rich foliage of the liquid-amber tree, that he has reached the height where clouds and mists settle, in their passage from the Mexican Gulf. This is the region of perpetual humidity; but he welcomes it with pleasure, as announcing his escape from the influence of the deadly vómito.[8] He has entered the tierra templada, or temperate region, whose character resembles that of the temperate zone of the globe. The features of the scenery become grand, and even terrible. His road sweeps along the base of mighty mountains, once gleaming with volcanic fires, and still resplendent in their mantles of snow, which serve as beacons to the mariner, for many a league at sea. All around he beholds traces of their ancient combustion, as his road passes along vast tracts of lava, bristling in the innumerable fantastic forms into which the fiery torrent has been thrown by the obstacles in its career. Perhaps, at the same moment, as he casts his eye down some steep slope, or almost unfathomable ravine, on the margin of the road, he sees their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enamelled vegetation of the tropics. Such are the singular contrasts pre{8}sented, at the same time, to the senses, in this picturesque region!
Still pressing upwards, the traveller mounts into other climates, favorable to other kinds of cultivation. The yellow maize, or Indian corn, as we usually call it, has continued to follow him up from the lowest level; but he now first sees fields of wheat, and the other European grains brought into the country by the Conquerors. Mingled with them, he views the plantations of the aloe or maguey (agave Americana), applied to such various and important uses by the Aztecs. The oaks now acquire a sturdier growth, and the dark forests of pine announce that he has entered the tierra fria, or cold region,—the third and last of the great natural terraces into which the country is divided. When he has climbed to the height of between seven and eight thousand feet, the weary traveller sets his foot on the summit of the Cordillera of the Andes,—the colossal range that, after traversing South America and the Isthmus of Darien, spreads out, as it enters Mexico, into that vast sheet of table-land which maintains an elevation of more than six thousand feet, for the distance of nearly two hundred leagues, until it gradually declines in the higher latitudes of the north.[9]
Across this mountain rampart a chain of vol{9}canic hills stretches, in a westerly direction, of still more stupendous dimensions, forming, indeed, some of the highest land on the globe. Their peaks, entering the limits of perpetual snow, diffuse a grateful coolness over the elevated plateaus below; for these last, though termed “cold,” enjoy a climate the mean temperature of which is not lower than that of the central parts of Italy.[10] The air is exceedingly dry; the soil, though naturally good, is rarely clothed with the luxuriant vegetation of the lower regions. It frequently, indeed, has a parched and barren aspect, owing partly to the greater evaporation which takes place on these lofty plains, through the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, and partly, no doubt, to the want of trees to shelter the soil from the fierce influence of the summer sun. In the time of the Aztecs, the table-land was thickly covered with larch, oak, cypress, and other forest trees, the extraordinary dimensions of some of which, remaining to the present day, show that the curse of barrenness in later times is chargeable more on man than on nature.{10} Indeed, the early Spaniards made as indiscriminate war on the forest as did our Puritan ancestors, though with much less reason. After once conquering the country, they had no lurking ambush to fear from the submissive, semi-civilized Indian, and were not, like our forefathers, obliged to keep watch and ward for a century. This spoliation of the ground, however, is said to have been pleasing to their imaginations, as it reminded them of the plains of their own Castile,—the table-land of Europe;[11] where the nakedness of the landscape forms the burden of every traveller’s lament who visits that country.
Midway across the continent, somewhat nearer the Pacific than the Atlantic Ocean, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet, is the celebrated Valley of Mexico. It is of an oval form, about sixty-seven leagues in circumference,[12] and is encompassed by a towering rampart of porphyritic rock, which nature seems to have provided, though ineffectually, to protect it from invasion.
The soil, once carpeted with a beautiful verdure{11} and thickly sprinkled with stately trees, is often bare, and, in many places, white with the incrustation of salts caused by the draining of the waters. Five lakes are spread over the Valley, occupying one-tenth of its surface.[13] On the opposite borders of the largest of these basins, much shrunk in its dimensions[14] since the days of the Aztecs, stood the cities of Mexico and Tezcuco, the capitals of the two most potent and flourishing states of Anahuac, whose history, with that of the mysterious races that preceded them in the country,[15] exhibits some{12} of the nearest approaches to civilization to be met with anciently on the North American continent.
Of these races the most conspicuous were the Toltecs. Advancing from a northerly direction, but from what region is uncertain,[16] they entered the{13} territory of Anahuac,[17] probably before the close of the seventh century. Of course, little can be{14} gleaned with certainty respecting a people whose written records have perished, and who are known to us only through the traditionary legends of the nations that succeeded them.[18] By the general agreement of these, however, the Toltecs were well{15} instructed in agriculture and many of the most useful mechanic arts; were nice workers of metals; invented the complex arrangement of time adopted by the Aztecs; and, in short, were the true fountains of the civilization which distinguished this part of the continent in later times.[19] They established their capital at Tula, north of the Mexican Valley, and the remains of extensive buildings were to be discerned there at the time of the Conquest.[20] The noble ruins of religious and other edifices, still to be seen in various parts of New Spain, are referred to this people, whose name, Toltec, has passed into a synonym for architect.[21] Their shadowy history reminds us of those primitive races who preceded the ancient Egyp{16}tians in the march of civilization; fragments of whose monuments, as they are seen at this day, incorporated with the buildings of the Egyptians themselves, give to these latter the appearance of almost modern constructions.[22]
After a period of four centuries, the Toltecs, who had extended their sway over the remotest borders of Anahuac,[23] having been greatly reduced, it is said, by famine, pestilence, and unsuccessful wars, disappeared from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it. A few of them still lingered behind, but much the greater number, probably, spread over the region of Central America and the neighboring isles; and the traveller now speculates on the majestic ruins of Mitla and Palenque, as possibly the work of this extraordinary people.[24][25]
After the lapse of another hundred years, a numerous and rude tribe, called the Chichimecs, en{17}tered the deserted country from the regions of the far Northwest. They were speedily followed by other races, of higher civilization, perhaps of the same family with the Toltecs, whose language they appear to have spoken. The most noted of these were the Aztecs or Mexicans, and the Acolhuans. The latter, better known in later times by the name of Tezcucans, from their capital, Tez{18}cuco,[26] on the eastern border of the Mexican lake, were peculiarly fitted, by their comparatively mild religion and manners, for receiving the tincture of civilization which could be derived from the few Toltecs that still remained in the country.[27] This, in their turn, they communicated to the barbarous Chichimecs, a large portion of whom became amalgamated with the new settlers as one nation.[28]
Availing themselves of the strength derived, not{19} only from this increase of numbers, but from their own superior refinement, the Acolhuans gradually stretched their empire over the ruder tribes in the north; while their capital was filled with a numerous population, busily employed in many of the more useful and even elegant arts of a civilized community. In this palmy state, they were suddenly assaulted by a warlike neighbor, the Tepanecs, their own kindred, and inhabitants of the same valley as themselves. Their provinces were overrun, their armies beaten, their king assassinated, and the flourishing city of Tezcuco became the prize of the victor. From this abject condition the uncommon abilities of the young prince, Nezahualcoyotl, the rightful heir to the crown, backed by the efficient aid of his Mexican allies, at length redeemed the state, and opened to it a new career of prosperity, even more brilliant than the former.[29]
The Mexicans, with whom our history is principally concerned, came also, as we have seen, from the remote regions of the North,—the populous hive of nations in the New World, as it has been in{20} the Old.[30] They arrived on the borders of Anahuac towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, some time after the occupation of the land by the kindred races. For a long time they did not establish themselves in any permanent residence, but continued shifting their quarters to different parts of the Mexican Valley, enduring all the casualties and hardships of a migratory life. On one occasion they were enslaved by a more powerful tribe; but their ferocity soon made them formidable to their masters.[31] After a series of wanderings and adventures which need not shrink from comparison{21} with the most extravagant legends of the heroic ages of antiquity, they at length halted on the southwestern borders of the principal lake, in the year 1325. They there beheld, perched on the stem of a prickly pear, which shot out from the crevice of a rock that was washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in his talons, and his broad wings opened to the rising sun. They hailed the auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the site of their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water. On these they erected their light fabrics of reeds and rushes, and sought a precarious subsistence from fishing, and from the wild fowl which frequented the waters, as well as from the cultivation of such simple vegetables as they could raise on their floating gardens. The place was called Tenochtitlan, in token of its miraculous origin, though only known to Europeans by its other name of Mexico,[32] derived from their war-god, Mexitli.[33] The legend of its foundation is still further commemorated by the device of the eagle and the cactus, which form the arms{22} of the modern Mexican republic. Such were the humble beginnings of the Venice of the Western World.[34][35]
The forlorn condition of the new settlers was made still worse by domestic feuds. A part of the citizens seceded from the main body, and formed a separate community on the neighboring marshes. Thus divided, it was long before they could aspire to the acquisition of territory on the main land. They gradually increased, however, in numbers, and strengthened themselves yet more by various improvements in their polity and military discipline, while they established a reputation for courage as well as cruelty in war which made their{23} name terrible throughout the Valley. In the early part of the fifteenth century, nearly a hundred years from the foundation of the city, an event took place which created an entire revolution in the circumstances and, to some extent, in the character of the Aztecs. This was the subversion of the Tezcucan monarchy by the Tepanecs, already noticed. When the oppressive conduct of the victors had at length aroused a spirit of resistance, its prince, Nezahualcoyotl, succeeded, after incredible perils and escapes, in mustering such a force as, with the aid of the Mexicans, placed him on a level with his enemies. In two successive battles, these were defeated with great slaughter, their chief slain, and their territory, by one of those sudden reverses which characterize the wars of petty states, passed into the hands of the conquerors. It was awarded to Mexico, in return for its important services.[36]
Then was formed that remarkable league, which, indeed, has no parallel in history. It was agreed between the states of Mexico, Tezcuco, and the neighboring little kingdom of Tlacopan, that they should mutually support each other in their wars, offensive and defensive, and that in the distribution of the spoil one-fifth should be assigned to Tlacopan, and the remainder be divided, in what proportions is uncertain, between the other powers. The Tezcucan writers claim an equal share for their nation with the Aztecs. But this does not seem to{24} be warranted by the immense increase of territory subsequently appropriated by the latter. And we may account for any advantage conceded to them by the treaty, on the supposition that, however inferior they may have been originally, they were, at the time of making it, in a more prosperous condition than their allies, broken and dispirited by long oppression. What is more extraordinary than the treaty itself, however, is the fidelity with which it was maintained. During a century of uninterrupted warfare that ensued, no instance occurred where the parties quarrelled over the division of the spoil, which so often makes shipwreck of similar confederacies among civilized states.[37]
The allies for some time found sufficient occupation for their arms in their own valley; but they soon overleaped its rocky ramparts, and by the middle of the fifteenth century, under the first Montezuma, had spread down the sides of the table-land to the borders of the Gulf of Mexico. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, gave evidence of the public prosperity. Its frail tenements were{25} supplanted by solid structures of stone and lime. Its population rapidly increased. Its old feuds were healed. The citizens who had seceded were again brought under a common government with the main body, and the quarter they occupied was permanently connected with the parent city; the dimensions of which, covering the same ground, were much larger than those of the modern capital of Mexico.[38][39]
Fortunately, the throne was filled by a succession of able princes, who knew how to profit by their enlarged resources and by the martial enthusiasm of the nation. Year after year saw them return, loaded with the spoils of conquered cities, and with throngs of devoted captives, to their capital. No state was able long to resist the accumulated strength of the confederates. At the beginning{26} of the sixteenth century, just before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Aztec dominion reached across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, under the bold and bloody Ahuitzotl, its arms had been carried far over the limits already noticed as defining its permanent territory, into the farthest corners of Guatemala and Nicaragua. This extent of empire, however limited in comparison with that of many other states, is truly wonderful, considering it as the acquisition of a people whose whole population and resources had so recently been comprised within the walls of their own petty city, and considering, moreover, that the conquered territory was thickly settled by various races, bred to arms like the Mexicans, and little inferior to them in social organization. The history of the Aztecs suggests some strong points of resemblance to that of the ancient Romans, not only in their military successes, but in the policy which led to them.[40]
The most important contribution, of late years, to the early history of Mexico is the Historia antigua of the Lic. Don. Mariano Veytia, published in the city of Mexico, in 1836. This scholar was born of an ancient and highly respectable family at Puebla, 1718. After finishing his academic education, he went to Spain, where he was kindly received at court. He afterwards visited several other countries of Europe, made himself acquainted with their languages, {27}and returned home well stored with the fruits of a discriminating observation and diligent study. The rest of his life he devoted to letters; especially to the illustration of the national history and antiquities. As the executor of the unfortunate Boturini, with whom he had contracted an intimacy in Madrid, he obtained access to his valuable collection of manuscripts in Mexico, and from them, and every other source which his position in society and his eminent character opened to him, he composed various works, none of which, however, except the one before us, has been admitted to the honors of the press. The time of his death is not given by his editor, but it was probably not later than 1780.
Veytia’s history covers the whole period from the first occupation of Anahuac to the middle of the fifteenth century, at which point his labors were unfortunately terminated by his death. In the early portion he has endeavored to trace the migratory movements and historical annals of the principal races who entered the country. Every page bears testimony to the extent and fidelity of his researches; and, if we feel but moderate confidence in the results, the fault is not imputable to him, so much as to the dark and doubtful nature of the subject. As he descends to later ages, he is more occupied with the fortunes of the Tezcucan than with those of the Aztec dynasty, which have been amply discussed by others of his countrymen. The premature close of his labors prevented him, probably, from giving that attention to the domestic institutions of the people he describes, to which they are entitled as the most important subject of inquiry to the historian. The deficiency has been supplied by his judicious editor, Orteaga, from other sources. In the early part of his work, Veytia has explained the chronological system of the Aztecs, but, like most writers preceding the accurate Gama, with indifferent success. As a critic, he certainly ranks much higher than the annalists who preceded him, and, when his own religion is not involved, shows a discriminating judgment. When it is, he betrays a full measure of the credulity which still maintains its hold on too many even of the well-informed of his countrymen. The editor of the work has given a very interesting letter from the Abbé Clavigero to Veytia, written when the former was a poor and humble exile, and in the tone of one addressing a person of high standing and literary eminence. Both were employed on the same subject. The writings of the poor abbé, published again and again, and translated into various languages, have spread his fame throughout Europe; while the name of Veytia, whose works have been locked up in their primitive manuscript, is scarcely known beyond the boundaries of Mexico.
[The opinions set forth by Mr. Prescott respecting the Mexican empire were attacked with much vigor by Lewis H. Morgan. Mr. Morgan demonstrated conclusively that many of those opinions were erroneous. But, as Payne says in his History of the New World called America, vol i. p. 306, “his results cannot be regarded {28}as satisfactory, much less as final.” The Spanish chroniclers Prescott consulted were correct ordinarily in their statement of facts, but were misleading in their conclusions because of their inability to comprehend the Aztec institutions.
On the pueblo as the unit of aboriginal history, see Payne, vol. i. pp. 36-47.
In his Ancient Society, p. 186, Mr. Morgan says: “The histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character. But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to reject them in these respects and commence anew, using any facts they may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society.” He does not, however, always observe his own rules if those rules seem to militate against the thesis he is endeavoring to establish. Moreover, he is so dogmatic in his statements and so confident in the infallibility of his own judgment, that the reader who is seeking simply to ascertain the truth about the whole matter is oftentimes intensely exasperated with him. This is especially true with respect to the famous essay on “Montezuma’s Dinner,” where he writes almost as though he had been a guest at the banquet and had partaken of the viands which were there consumed. As Mr. Morgan may justly be regarded as the founder of a school, it is well to state his views at length.
According to him, then, there was no kingdom or empire of Mexico. There was simply a confederacy of three tribes, and this confederacy was a military democracy. The governmental powers were vested in a council of chiefs with a general commander. The council exercised all civil power, the military power being left in the hands of the war chief. There were no feudal castles inhabited by lawless lords. There were only great communal houses tenanted by clans.
In his brilliant work on Ancient Society, Mr. Morgan places below civilization two stages of development—savagery and barbarism. The invention of pottery marks the difference between these two stages. The savage makes no pottery. When the women of the savage tribes used vessels of fire-hardened clay for boiling their food they had passed into the first stage of barbarism. Elsewhere there were pastoral stages of development. In North America there were none. The only domesticated animal its inhabitants possessed when the Europeans landed on the continent was the dog. The first stage of barbarism in North America was marked by the cultivation of maize or Indian corn. This grain can be cultivated more easily than any other cereal. No other yields such enormous returns. In virgin soil it is only necessary to drop the {29}seed into the earth. Nature cares for its complete development. But virgin soil becomes exhausted in a few years. As population becomes denser and migrations cease to be practicable, the land must be more carefully tilled, and, where rains are comparatively infrequent, must be irrigated. Irrigation and the use of adobe (sun-dried brick) and stone in building mark the beginning of the second period of barbarism. In this period also tools of stone give place to those of metal, the metal used in America being copper. The Aztecs, the Mayas, and, in South America, the Peruvians were in the second period. But to the third period, when the smelting of iron ore was invented, these people never passed.
The invention of a phonetic alphabet and the use of written records, Mr. Morgan thinks, mark the beginning of civilization. But, as John Fiske points out, it will not do to insist too narrowly upon the phonetic alphabet. Hieroglyphics have perpetuated much historic record in Egypt and China. Although the Mexicans and Central Americans did not smelt iron ore, they yet possessed historic records in their hieroglyphics (hieroglyphics which may still be read). They were then enjoying civilization of an extremely rude type, combined with a marvellously developed barbarism. For though their barbarism was marked by human sacrifices and by cannibalism, yet, according to testimony which Mr. Morgan says may be taken at its face value, these barbarians had pleasure-gardens and fountains, baths, menageries, feather-work that was marvellously beautiful, pottery that showed admirable taste, vessels of gold and silver, and many other accessories of an advanced civilization.
Mr. Morgan was adopted into the Seneca tribe of North American Indians, and he was able to study Indian institutions from an inside point of view. Unquestionably he had a more profound knowledge of those institutions than any other scholar of his time. But he went too far when he confined the Aztecs to the narrow limits in development to which the Senecas had attained. Moreover, he does not make due allowance for the changes in development which the more favorable climate of the Mexican table-lands brought about. The “long house” of the Iroquois may have been constructed on the same general plan, but it could hardly have been mistaken for the building in which Montezuma quartered Cortés and his allies. The one meal, freshly cooked and eaten about midday, bore but little resemblance to the banquets in Mexico described with such watery appreciation by the Spanish chroniclers. (Morgan admits that these same chroniclers may be trusted when they write of food and other such palpable matters.)
But Mr. Morgan is unquestionably right in saying that Montezuma’s so-called “empire” was really a confederacy of tribes—living in pueblos, governed by a council of chiefs, and levying tribute upon other pueblos. The Aztec confederacy dominated the Mexican land as the Iroquois confederacy dominated the region between the Connecticut and the Mississippi. To assert that otherwise the{30} two nations were alike both in their institutions and in their development is as unwarranted as to say that the governmental institutions and the political development of the United States and Venezuela are identical.
How did this confederacy come to be formed?
The earliest family group was the clan. As Sir Henry Maine points out in his Ancient Law, the individual was nothing in ancient society, the state was nothing, the family was everything. This statement holds good everywhere, for America as well as for India. A group of clans made up a phratry or brotherhood; a group of phratries made a tribe. This threefold grouping was universal. The Greek phratry, the Roman curia, the Teutonic hundred were analogous institutions. In the clans kinship was always derived through the female line. The Mutterrecht everywhere prevailed.{*}
{*} [This subject Mr. Morgan treats with a master’s hand in his Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines.]
μ?τηρ με? τ? ?μ? ψησι Του ?μμεναι ?υτ?ρ ?γωγε
ο?κ ?ιδ, ?υ γαρ π? τι? ?ον γ?νον ?υτ?? ?ν?γνω
Odyssey, I, 215-6.
In that middle stage of barbarism when men began to acquire property, when warriors of valor converted to their uses what had once been common property,—herds of cattle, wives, etc.,—when polygamy became a custom, kinship came to be reckoned through the male line. In this way relationship was mightily changed. But in aboriginal America where domesticated animals were unknown this change did not take place as early as it did elsewhere. In Mexico the change did not probably come much before the century of the Conquest. Kinship was through females only. The exogamous clan (the system which required that the spouse should be taken from another clan) was the unit of the social structure, not the family.
House life found expression in architecture. One underlying principle was everywhere apparent—namely, adaptation to communal living. Gradations in culture were evident from the buildings.{*} Thus, the “long house” of the Iroquois, from fifty to one hundred feet long, divided into compartments every six or eight feet, and roughly constructed from timber and bark, betokened very different conditions from those which prevailed among the pueblos of the Zu?i Indians, with their immense structures of adobe and of stone.
{*} [This subject Mr. Morgan treats with a master’s hand in his Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines.]
In the communal house woman ruled. To her belonged the personal property. Because it was derived through her, this property remained always with the exogamous clan. Thus, marriage made very little difference to woman’s maintenance. If the husband who had come into the house proved to be lazy and otherwise worthless, divorce was easy, and he was sent back to his own.{31}
From its own members the clan elected a sachem to attend to civil matters, and a chief to direct its military affairs.
The son could not succeed his father in these offices, but a brother might succeed a brother. (This was true of the Indian tribe to which Powhatan belonged. Had James I of England been aware of this fact, he would not have looked with such jealous eyes upon his subject Rolfe who had married the Indian princess Pocahontas.) The clan was always known by some distinctive name, usually that of some animal—beaver, fox, wolf, etc.
When the clan became so large as to be unwieldy, it split up into phratries. The “phratry” was at first a religious and social organization; and one of its chief duties was the prosecution of criminals. (The Teutonic hundred was ever ready to exact “wehrgeld.”) “The tribe” was usually the highest attainment in organization of which the aborigines of America were capable. The Mexican confederacy was the most interesting and important of their permanent organizations. The Spaniards did not understand the principles on which this confederacy was founded, because it was entirely unlike anything with which they were familiar.—M.]