Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/98

 hot broth, all coming down the same road, and disappearing-among the different huts. Every member belonging to the community, down to the smallest pappoose, contributing in turn a hog. From our ignorance of the language, and the number of other and more pressing matters claiming our attention, we could not learn all the details of their internal economy, but it seemed to approximate that improved state of association which is sometimes heard of among us; and as theirs has existed for an unknown length of time, and can no longer be considered merely experimental, Owen or Fourier might perhaps take lessons from them with advantage." A hundred working men indicate a total of five hundred persons, who were then depending for their daily food upon a single fire, the provisions being supplied from common stores, and divided from the caldron. It is, not unlikely, a truthful picture of the mode of life of their forefathers in the "House of the Nuns," and in the "Governor's House" at Uxmal, at the epoch of the Spanish conquest.

It is well known that Spanish adventurers captured these pueblos, one after the other, and attempted to enforce the labor of the Indians for personal ends, and that the Indians abandoned their pueblos and retreated into the inaccessible forests to escape enslavement, after which their houses of stone fell into decay, the ruins of which, and all there ever was of them, still remain in all parts of these countries

It is hardly supposable that the communism here described by Mr. Stephens was a new thing to the Mayas; but far more probable that it was a part of their ancient mode of life, to which these ruined houses were eminently adapted. The subject of the adaptation of the old pueblo houses in Yucatan and Central America to communism in living will be elsewhere considered.

When Columbus first landed on the island of Cuba, he sent two men into the interior, who reported that "they travelled twenty-two leagues, and found a village of fifty houses, built like those before spoken of, and they contained about one thousand persons, because a whole generation lived in a house; and the prime men came out to meet them, led them by the arms, and lodged them in one of these new houses, causing them to sit down on