Page:The American Indian.djvu/195

 CHAPTER X

SOCIAL GROUPING

the sixteenth century, there were at least three well-organized governments in the New World: the Nahua, Inca, and Chibcha. Though our data as to the details of these organizations are but fragmentary, it is clear that the social structure upon which they rested was communistic. The family group was the unit to which plots of land were assigned and upon which levies were made. Each family group had its head man who also held a place in the council for the next higher group. The government was vested in a single family group, one of whom was the chief or monarch. He qualified and was chosen by such means as this group elected, regardless of his parentage. These were the fundamental characteristics common to all the governments of the area of higher culture: they differed from each other not in these but in the ways in which the ruling family group built up its power and organized its political machinery. The thoroughness and efficiency of the Inca system was notorious, for it left practically nothing to the individual, an ideal toward which certain European states seem to be headed. The apparent ease of the Spanish conquest is often cited as proof to the contrary, but the conquerors succeeded by a bold dash at the ruling group and, once having laid hands upon the machinery, the thoroughly domesticated natives were easily handled. So it was rather by the very thoroughness of the system, than its weakness, that they succeeded. In fact, wherever there were still independent cities, the invaders met with the most heroic resistance, some communities perishing to the last man. Further, it was largely the ready-trained army of the native kingdoms, or such units of it as the usurpers could lay hands upon, that did the work against these refractory cities.

The political organization in Mexico was less thorough than that of the Inca, though far superior to that in Colombia.