The Discovery of America Part 6

[Sidenote: The "Long House."]

Such was the famous confederacy of the Iroquois. They called it the Long House, and by this name as commonly as any other it is known in history.

The name by which they called themselves was Hodenosaunee, or "People of the Long House." The name was picturesquely descriptive of the long and narrow strip of villages with its western outlook toward the Niagara, and its eastern toward the Hudson, three hundred miles distant. But it was appropriate also for another and a deeper reason than this. We have seen that in its social and political structure, from top to bottom and from end to end, the confederacy was based upon and held together by the gentes, clans, communal households, or "long houses," which were its component units. They may be compared to the hypothetical indestructible atoms of modern physics, whereof all material objects are composed. The whole inst.i.tutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group of ideas and habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and incapable of imagining any other form of organization than the clan held together by the tie of a common maternal ancestry. The house architecture was as much a const.i.tuent part of the fabric as the council of sachems. There is a transparency about the system that is very different from the obscurity we continually find in Europe and Asia, where different strata of ideas and inst.i.tutions have been superimposed one upon another and crumpled and distorted with as little apparent significance or purpose as the porches and gables of a so-called "Queen Anne" house.[84]

Conquest in the Old World has resulted in the commingling and manifold fusion of peoples in very different stages of development. In the New World there has been very little of that sort of thing. Conquest in ancient America was pretty much all of the Iroquois type, entailing in its milder form the imposition of tribute, in its more desperate form the extermination of a tribe with the adoption of its remnants into the similarly-const.i.tuted tribe of the conquerors. There was therefore but little modification of the social structure while the people, gradually acquiring new arts, were pa.s.sing through savagery and into a more or less advanced stage of barbarism. The symmetry of the structure and the relation of one inst.i.tution to another is thus distinctly apparent.

[Footnote 84: For instance, the whole discussion in Gomme's _Village Community_, London, 1890, an excellent book, abounds with instances of this crumpling.]

The communal household and the political structure built upon it, as above described in the case of the Iroquois, seem to have existed all over ancient North America, with agreement in fundamental characteristics and variation in details and degree of development.

There are many corners as yet imperfectly explored, but hitherto, in so far as research has been rewarded with information, it all points in the same general direction. Among the tribes above enumerated as either in savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, so far as they have been studied, there seems to be a general agreement, as to the looseness of the marriage tie the clan with descent in the female line, the phratry, the tribe, the officers and councils, the social equality, the community in goods (with exceptions already noted), and the wigwam or house adapted to communal living.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View, Cross-section, and Ground-plan of Mandan round house.]

[Sidenote: Circular houses of the Mandans.]

The extreme of variation consistent with adherence to the common principle was to be found in the shape and material of the houses. Those of the savage tribes were but sorry huts. The long house was used by the Powhatans and other Algonquin tribes. The other most highly developed type may be ill.u.s.trated by the circular frame-houses of the Mandans.[85] These houses were from forty to sixty feet in diameter. A dozen or more posts, each about eight inches in diameter, were set in the ground, "at equal distances in the circ.u.mference of a circle, and rising about six feet above the level of the floor." The tops of the posts were connected by horizontal stringers; and outside each post a slanting wooden brace sunk in the ground about four feet distant served as a firm support to the structure. The s.p.a.ces between these braces were filled by tall wooden slabs, set with the same slant and resting against the stringers. Thus the framework of the outer wall was completed. To support the roof four posts were set in the ground about ten feet apart in the form of a square, near the centre of the building. They were from twelve to fifteen feet in height, and were connected at the top by four stringers forming a square. The rafters rested upon these stringers and upon the top of the circular wall below. The rafters were covered with willow matting, and upon this was spread a layer of prairie gra.s.s. Then both wall and roof, from the ground up to the summit, were covered with earth, solid and hard, to a thickness of at least two feet. The rafters projected above the square framework at the summit, so as to leave a circular opening in the centre about four feet in diameter. This hole let in a little light, and let out some of the smoke from the fire which blazed underneath in a fire-pit lined with stone slabs set on edge.

The only other aperture for light was the doorway, which was a kind of vestibule or pa.s.sage some ten feet in length. Curtains of buffalo robes did duty instead of doors. The family compartments were triangles with base at the outer wall, and apex opening upon the central hearth; and the part.i.tions were hanging mats or skins, which were tastefully fringed and ornamented with quill-work and pictographs.[86] In the lower Mandan village, visited by Catlin, there were about fifty such houses, each able to accommodate from thirty to forty persons. The village, situated upon a bold bluff at a bend of the Missouri river, and surrounded by a palisade of stout timbers more than ten feet in height, was very strong for defensive purposes. Indeed, it was virtually impregnable to Indian methods of attack, for the earth-covered houses could not be set on fire by blazing arrows, and just within the palisade ran a trench in which the defenders could securely skulk, while through the narrow c.h.i.n.ks between the timbers they could shoot arrows fast enough to keep their a.s.sailants at a distance. This purpose was further secured by rude bastions, and considering the structure as a whole one cannot help admiring the ingenuity which it exhibits. It shows a marked superiority over the conceptions of military defence attained by the Iroquois or any other Indians north of New Mexico. Besides the communal houses the village contained its "medicine lodge," or council house, and an open area for games and ceremonies. In the s.p.a.ces between the houses were the scaffolds for drying maize, buffalo meat, etc., ascended by well-made portable ladders. Outside the village, at a short distance on the prairie, was a group of such scaffolds upon which the dead were left to moulder, somewhat after the fashion of the Pa.r.s.ees.[87]

[Footnote 85: Morgan, _Houses and House-life_, pp. 126-129; Catlin's _North Amer. Indians_, i. 81 _ff._]

[Footnote 86: Catlin, i. 83.]

[Footnote 87: Catlin, i. 90.]

[Sidenote: The Indians of the pueblos,--in the middle status of barbarism.]

We are now prepared to understand some essential points in the life of the groups of Indians occupying the region of the Cordilleras, both north and south of the Isthmus of Darien, all the way from Zuni to Quito. The princ.i.p.al groups are the Moquis and Zunis of Arizona and New Mexico, the Nahuas or Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, the Mayas, Quiches, and kindred peoples of Central America; and beyond the isthmus, the Chibchas of New Granada, and sundry peoples comprised within the domain of the Incas. With regard to the ethnic relationships of these various groups, opinion is still in a state of confusion; but it is not necessary for our present purpose that we should pause to discuss the numerous questions thus arising. Our business is to get a clear notion in outline of the character of the culture to which these peoples had attained at the time of the Discovery. Here we observe, on the part of all, a very considerable divergence from the average Indian level which we have thus far been describing.

This divergence increases as we go from Zuni toward Cuzco, reaching its extreme, on the whole, among the Peruvians, though in some respects the nearest approach to civilization was made by the Mayas. All these peoples were at least one full ethnical period nearer to true civilization than the Iroquois,--and a vast amount of change and improvement is involved in the conception of an entire ethnical period.

According to Mr. Morgan, one more such period would have brought the average level of these Cordilleran peoples to as high a plane as that of the Greeks described in the Odyssey. Let us now observe the princ.i.p.al points involved in the change, bearing in mind that it implies a considerable lapse of time. While the date 1325, at which the city of Mexico was founded, is the earliest date in the history of that country which can be regarded as securely established, it was preceded by a long series of generations of migration and warfare, the confused and fragmentary record of which historians have tried--hitherto with scant success--to unravel. To develop such a culture as that of the Aztecs out of an antecedent culture similar to that of the Iroquois must of course have taken a long time.

[Sidenote: Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with adobe.]

It will be remembered that the most conspicuous distinctive marks of the grade of culture attained by the Cordilleran peoples were two,--the cultivation of maize in large quant.i.ties by irrigation, and the use of adobe-brick or stone in building. Probably there was at first, to some extent, a causal connection between the former and the latter. The region of the Moqui-Zuni culture is a region in which arid plains become richly fertile when water from neighbouring cliffs or peaks is directed down upon them. It is mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump or well, which seem to have been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal Americans of whatever grade. The change of occupation involved in raising large crops of corn by the aid of sluices would facilitate an increase in density of population, and would encourage a preference for agricultural over predatory life. Such changes would be likely to favour the development of defensive military art. The Mohawk's surest defence lay in the terror which his prowess created hundreds of miles away. One can easily see how the forefathers of our Moquis and Zunis may have come to prefer the security gained by living more closely together and building impregnable fortresses.

[Sidenote: Possible origin of adobe architecture.]

The earthen wall of the Mandan, supported on a framework of posts and slabs, seems to me curiously and strikingly suggestive of the incipient pottery made by surrounding a basket with a coating of clay.[88] When it was discovered how to make the earthen bowl or dish without the basket, a new era in progress was begun. So when it was discovered that an earthen wall could be fashioned to answer the requirements of house-builders without the need of a permanent wooden framework, another great step was taken. Again the consequences were great enough to make it mark the beginning of a new ethnical period. If we suppose the central portion of our continent, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, to have been occupied at some time by tribes familiar with the Mandan style of building; and if we further suppose a gradual extension or migration of this population, or some part of it, westward into the mountain region; that would be a movement into a region in which timber was scarce, while adobe clay was abundant. Under such circ.u.mstances the useful qualities of that peculiar clay could not fail to be soon discovered. The simple exposure to sunshine would quickly convert a Mandan house built with it into an adobe house; the coating of earth would become a coating of brick. It would not then take long to ascertain that with such adobe-brick could be built walls at once light and strong, erect and tall, such as could not be built with common clay.

In some such way as this I think the discovery must have been made by the ancestors of the Zunis, and others who have built pueblos. After the pueblo style of architecture, with its erect walls and terraced stories, had become developed, it was an easy step, when the occasion suggested it, to subst.i.tute for the adobe-brick coa.r.s.e rubble-stones embedded in adobe. The final stage was reached in Mexico and Yucatan, when soft coralline limestone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel and laid in courses with adobe-mortar.

[Footnote 88: See above, p. 25.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Cushing at Zuni.]

The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most interesting structures in the world. Several are still inhabited by the descendants of the people who were living in them at the time of the Spanish Discovery, and their primitive customs and habits of thought have been preserved to the present day with but little change. The long sojourn of Mr. Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, in the Zuni pueblo, has already thrown a flood of light upon many points in American archaeology.[89] As in the case of American aborigines generally, the social life of these people is closely connected with their architecture, and the pueblos which are still inhabited seem to furnish us with the key to the interpretation of those that we find deserted or in ruins, whether in Arizona or in Guatemala.

[Footnote 89: See his articles in the _Century Magazine_, Dec., 1882, Feb., 1883, May, 1883; and his papers on "Zuni Fetiches,"

_Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, ii. 9-45; "A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Ill.u.s.trative of Zuni Culture Growth," id. iv.

473-521; see also Mrs. Stevenson's paper, "Religious Life of a Zuni Child," id. v. 539-555; Sylvester Baxter, "An Aboriginal Pilgrimage," _Century Magazine_, Aug., 1882.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pueblo Hungo Pavie. Chaco Canon N. M.]

[Sidenote: Typical structure of the pueblo.]

In the architecture of the pueblos one typical form is reproduced with sundry variations in detail. The typical form is that of a solid block of buildings making three sides of an extensive rectangular enclosure or courtyard. On the inside, facing upon the courtyard, the structure is but one story in height; on the outside, looking out upon the surrounding country, it rises to three, or perhaps even five or six stories. From inside to outside the flat roofs rise in a series of terraces, so that the floor of the second row is continuous with the roof of the first, the floor of the third row is continuous with the roof of the second, and so on. The fourth side of the rectangle is formed by a solid block of one-story apartments, usually with one or two narrow gateways overlooked by higher structures within the enclosure.

Except these gateways there is no entrance from without; the only windows are frowning loop-holes, and access to the several apartments is gained through skylights reached by portable ladders. Such a structure is what our own forefathers would have naturally called a "burgh," or fortress; it is in one sense a house, yet in another sense a town;[90]

its divisions are not so much houses as compartments; it is a joint-tenement affair, like the Iroquois long houses, but in a higher stage of development.

[Footnote 90: Cf. [Greek: oikos], "house," with Latin _vicus_, "street" or "village," Sanskrit _vesa_, "dwelling-place,"

English _wick_, "mansion" or "village."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie.]

[Sidenote: Pueblo society.]

So far as they have been studied, the pueblo Indians are found to be organized in clans, with descent in the female line, as in the case of the ruder Indians above described. In the event of marriage the young husband goes to live with his wife, and she may turn him out of doors if he deserves it.[91] The ideas of property seem still limited to that of possessory right, with the ultimate t.i.tle in the clan, except that portable articles subject to individual ownership have become more numerous. In government the council of sachems reappears with a princ.i.p.al sachem, or cacique, called by the Spaniards "gobernador."

There is an organized priesthood, with distinct orders, and a ceremonial more elaborate than those of the ruder Indians. In every pueblo there is to be found at least one "estufa," or council-house, for governmental or religious transactions. Usually there are two or three or more such estufas. In mythology, in what we may call pictography or rudimentary hieroglyphics, as well as in ordinary handicrafts, there is a marked advance beyond the Indians of the lower status of barbarism, after making due allowances for such things as the people of the pueblos have learned from white men.[92]

[Footnote 91: "With the woman rests the security of the marriage ties; and it must be said, in her high honour, that she rarely abuses the privilege; that is, never sends her husband 'to the home of his fathers,' unless he richly deserves it." But should not Mr. Cushing have said "home of his mothers," or perhaps, of "his sisters and his cousins and his aunts?" For a moment afterward he tells us, "To her belong all the children; and descent, including inheritance, is on her side." _Century Magazine_, May, 1883, p. 35.]

[Footnote 92: For example, since the arrival of the Spaniards some or perhaps all of the pueblos have introduced chimneys into their apartments; but when they were first visited by Coronado, he found the people wearing cotton garments, and Franciscan friars in 1581 remarked upon the superior quality of their shoes. In spinning and weaving, as well as in the grinding of meal, a notable advance had been made.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Restoration of Pueblo Bonito.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pueblo Penasca Blanca.]

[Sidenote: Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley.]

[Sidenote: The Moqui pueblos.]

[Sidenote: The cliff pueblos.]

From the pueblos still existing, whether inhabited or in ruins, we may eventually get some sort of clue to the populations of ancient towns visited by the Spanish discoverers.[93] The pueblo of Zuni seems to have had at one time a population of 5,000, but it has dwindled to less than 2,000. Of the ruined pueblos, built of stone with adobe mortar, in the valley of the Rio Chaco, the Pueblo Hungo Pavie contained 73 apartments in the first story, 53 in the second, and 29 in the third, with an average size of 18 feet by 13; and would have accommodated about 1,000 Indians. In the same valley Pueblo Bonito, with four stories, contained not less than 640 apartments, with room enough for a population of 3,000; within a third of a mile from this huge structure stood Pueblo Chettro Kettle, with 506 apartments. The most common variation from the rectangular shape was that in which a terraced semicircle was subst.i.tuted for the three terraced sides, as in Pueblo Bonito, or the whole rectangular design was converted into an ellipse, as in Pueblo Penasca Blanca. There are indications that these fortresses were not in all cases built at one time, but that, at least in some cases, they grew by gradual accretions.[94] The smallness of the distances between those in the Chaco valley suggests that their inhabitants must have been united in a confederation; and one can easily see that an actual juxtaposition or partial coalescence of such communities would have made a city of very imposing appearance. The pueblos are always found situated near a river, and their gardens, lying outside, are easily accessible to sluices from neighbouring cliffs or mesas. But in some cases, as the Wolpi pueblo of the Moquis, the whole stronghold is built upon the summit of the cliff; there is a coalescence of communal structures, each enclosing a courtyard, in which there is a spring for the water-supply; and the irrigated gardens are built in terrace-form just below on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From this curious pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary cliff-houses found in the Ch.e.l.ly, Mancos, and McElmo canons, and elsewhere,--veritable human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the perpendicular rock, accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous climb; places of refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by more barbarous invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas marks of careful building and tasteful adornment.[95]

[Footnote 93: At least a better one than Mr. Prescott had when he naively reckoned five persons to a household, _Conquest of Mexico_, ii. 97.]

[Footnote 94: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, chap. vii.]

[Footnote 95: For careful descriptions of the ruined pueblos and cliff-houses, see Nadaillac's _Prehistoric America_, chap.

v., and Short's _North Americans of Antiquity_, chap. vii. The latter sees in them the melancholy vestiges of a people gradually "succ.u.mbing to their unpropitious surroundings--a land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin--the Apaches."]

[Sidenote: Pueblo of Zuni.]

The pueblo of Zuni is a more extensive and complex structure than the ruined pueblos on the Chaco river. It is not so much an enormous communal house as a small town formed of a number of such houses crowded together, with access from one to another along their roof-terraces.

Some of the structures are of adobe brick, others of stone embedded in adobe mortar and covered with plaster. There are two open plazas or squares in the town, and several streets, some of which are covered ways pa.s.sing beneath the upper stories of houses. The effect, though not splendid, must be very picturesque, and would doubtless astonish and bewilder visitors unprepared for such a sight. When Coronado's men discovered Zuni in 1540, although that style of building was no longer a novelty to them, they compared the place to Granada.

[Sidenote: Pueblo of Tlascala.]