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Rh, a government to itself, yet recognizing a common interest in times of peril. Their heroic struggle against the Spaniards in 1680 reveals the existence of basic elements for union, but at no time did any of these villages appear to be moved by the spirit of conquest and force its neighbors into a closer organization. On the other hand, they were not easily assimilated, preserving to this very day a great deal of their independence. It is quite probable that underneath their individualities these villages, with their family groups, closely coordinated ritualistic observances, their elected governors and war captains, present the fundamental characteristics of the towns from which the southern aboriginal empires were built up.

In the immediate vicinity of the Pueblo villages were the somewhat nomadic Apache, Ute, and Navajo, with simple tribal organizations in which each local group was a law unto itself. But to the east, through the Gulf States and up into Virginia, we find a tendency to close federation. Among the best-known examples are the Cherokee, Creek, and Powhatan organizations. Further north in New York, was the famous Iroquois League, with its finely balanced government, the aggressiveness of which created several small but weak neighboring unions. Farther west, we have the Pawnee group and the very loosely coordinated Dakota council of "Seven Fires." Beyond this, we have little more than informal alliances as the Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, and Sarsi; the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche.

Yet, outside of these few attempts at political consolidation, we must be prepared to meet a bewildering array of small independent tribal governments and, in some cases, nothing at all save the fundamental unit groups. Thus it happens that one of the most forbidding aspects of our subject to the layman, is the nomenclature by which we designate these numerous political groups. All these group names have historical origins and so represent neither systems of tribal relationship nor equal social values. When our colonial forefathers observed a new political group under a common head, they gave to it a tribal name derived from its own language or from some other