arly understand our subject. The ornamentation on
the ruins of Yucatan is so peculiar that in our opinion it has unduly
influenced the judgment of explorers in this matter. They lose sight
of the fact that the apartments of the houses are small, dark, and illy
ventilated.

That they should hive gone to the trouble of so profusely decorating
their usual places of abode is, indeed, somewhat singular.<8> But Mitla
was certainly an inhabited pueblo at the time of the Spanish conquest,
and there is no good reason for concluding it was ever any thing more
than a group of communal buildings. Yet, from the description given of
it, we can not see that the buildings are greatly inferior in decoration
to the structures in Yucatan. And yet again, from the imperfect accounts
we have of the aboriginal structures in the pueblo of Mexico, we infer
they were constructed on the general plan of communal buildings. As for
the decorations, we have seen they had sometimes elaborate cornices, and
were covered with stucco designs of animals and flowers. In this case
some of them were, to be sure, public buildings for tribal purposes,
but the majority of them were certainly communal residences. With
these facts before us, we can not do otherwise than conclude that these
so-called ruins of great cities we have described are simply the ruins
of pueblos, consisting of communal houses, temples, and, in the case
of large and powerful tribes, official houses. To this conclusion we
believe American scholars are tending more and more.

This requires us to dismiss the idea that the majority of the people
lived in houses of a poorer construction, which have since disappeared,
leaving the ruins of the houses of the nobles. There was no such class
division of the people as this would signify. These ruins were houses
occupied by the people in common. With this understanding, a questioning
of the ruins can not fail to give us some useful hints. We are struck
with their ingenuity as builders. They made use of the best material
at hand. In Arizona the dry climate permits of the use of adobe bricks,
which were employed, though stone was also used. Further south the
pouring tropical rains would soon bring down in ruins adobe structures
and so stone alone is used.

In the Arizona pueblo we have a great fortress-built house, three and
four stories high, and no mode of access to the lower story. This is
in strict accord with Indian principles of defense, which co