TABLE OF CONTENTS
xi
| CHAPTER IX. | |
| HOUSES OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS. | |
| Area of their occupation—Their condition that of Village Indians—Probably immigrants from New Mexico—Character of their earthworks—Embankments enclosing squares—Probable sites of their houses—Adapted, as elevated platforms, to Long Houses—High bank works—Capacity of embankments—Conjectural restoration of this pueblo—Other embankments—Their probable uses—Artificial clay beds under grave-mounds—Probably used for cremation of chiefs—Probable numbers of the Mound-Builders—Failure of attempt to transplant this type of village life to the Ohio Valley—Their withdrawal probably voluntary. | 244 |
| CHAPTER X. | |
| HOUSES OF THE AZTECS OR ANCIENT MEXICANS. | |
| First accounts of Pueblo of Mexico—Their extravagance—Later American exaggerations—Kings and emperors made out of sachems and war-chiefs—Ancient society awakens curiosity and wonder—Aztec government a confederacy of three Indian tribes—Pueblo of Mexico in an artificial lake—Joint-tenement houses—Several families in each house—Houses in Cuba and Central America—Aztec houses not fully explained-—Similar to those in New Mexico—Communism in living probable—Cortez in Pueblo of Mexico—His quarters—Explanation of Diaz—Of Herrera—Of Baudelier—House occupied by Montezuma—A communal house—Montezuma's dinner—According to Diaz—To Cortez—To Herrera—To H. H. Bancroft—Excessive exaggerations—Dinner in common by a communal household—Bandelier's "Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans." | 274 |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| RUINS OF HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF YUCATAN AND CENTRAL AMERICA. | |
| Pueblos in Yucatan and Central America—Their situation—Their house architecture—Highest type of aboriginal architecture—Pueblos were occupied when discovered—Uxmal houses erected on pyramidal elevations—Governor's house—Character of its architecture—House of the Nuns—Triangular ceiling of stone—Absence of chimneys—No cooking done within the house—Their communal plan evidently joint-tenement houses—Present communism of Mayas—Presumptively inherited from their ancestors—Ruins of Zayi—The closed house—Apartments constructed over a core of masonry—Palenque—Mr. Stephens' misconception of these ruins—Whether the post and lintel of stone were used as principles of construction?—Plan of all these houses communal—Also fortresses—Palenque Indians flat-heads—American ethnography—General conclusions. | 303 |
| INDEX | |
| Pages 279 to 281 | |
