intelligently investigated. It is to be hoped that some one will undertake this work.
The Spanish writers do not mention the practice of communism in living as existing among the Village Indians of Mexico or Central America. They are barren of practical information concerning their mode of life; but we have the same picture of large households composed of several families, whose communism in the household may reasonably be inferred.
We have also the striking illustration of "Montezuma's Dinner," hereafter to be noticed, which was plainly a dinner in common by a communal household. Beside these facts we have the ownership of lands in common by communities of persons. Moreover, the ruins of ancient houses in Central and South America, and in parts of Mexico, show very plainly their joint tenement character. From the plans of these houses the communism of the people by households may be deduced theoretically with reasonable certainty.
Yucatan, when discovered, was occupied by a number of tribes of Maya Indians. The Maya language spread beyond the limits of Yucatan. This region, with Chiapas, Guatemala, and a part of Honduras, contained and still contains evidence, in the ruins of ancient structures, of a higher advancement in the arts of life than any other part of North America The present Maya Indians of Yucatan are the descendants of the people who occupied the country at the period of the Spanish conquest, and who occupied the massive stone houses now in ruins, from which they were forced by Spanish oppression.
We have a notable illustration of communism in living among the present Maya Indians, as late as the year 1840, through the work of John L. Stephens. At Nohcacab, a few miles east of the ruins of Uxmal, Mr Stephens, having occasion to employ laborers, went to a settlement of Maya Indians, of whom he gives the following account: "Their community consists of a hundred labradores, or working men; their lands are held and wrought in common, and the products are shared by all. Their food is prepared at one hut, and every family sends for its portion, which explains a singular spectacle we had seen on our arrival, a procession of women and children, each carrying an earthen bowl containing a quantity of smoking
