LITMIR.BIZ

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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 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 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 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.]

      μήτηρ μεύ τʹ ἐμέ ψησι Του ἑμμεναι ᾶυτὰρ ἐγωγε

       οὐκ ὀιδ, ὀυ γαρ πώ τις ἐον γόνον ἀυτὸς ἀνέγνω

       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

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