CHAPTER IV.
LAWS AND LAWGIVERS.
WHAT we know of the social organization and government of the Aztec and kindred tribes has come down to us mostly through Spanish sources, as, excepting some pictures carved on temple-walls and on monuments, most of their early records were swept away at the time of the conquest. But these foreign writers knew so little of the peculiarities of the people they professed to describe that their accounts are often contradictory. Thus a great empire is spoken of by one writer as ruled by the despot Montezuma. Kings elect him to his high office. He is surrounded by a great retinue of hereditary nobility, and princes from a score of provinces are obliged to attend him as hostages for the good behavior of their people, while a harem of a thousand dark-eyed beauties graces his splendid halls. On the other hand, Cortez informs Charles V. that some of these tribes have a republican form of government. Such, for instance, were the Cholulans, a powerful mercantile tribe about sixty miles from Mexico, and the Tlascalans, a race of bold mountaineers whom Cortez met and conquered on his way to that city. Of Tlascala he says: "It resembles the States of Venice, Genoa and Pisa, since the supreme authority is not reposed in one person. In war all unite and have a voice in its management and
