hat at length he gave it
up and never saw them all.[99] This might have happened in such a
building as Pueblo Bonito; and a suspicion is raised that Montezuma's
city was really a vast composite pueblo, and that its so-called palaces
were communal buildings in principle like the pueblos of the Chaco
valley.

[Footnote 99: "Et io entrai piu di quattro volte in una casa
del gran Signor non por altro effetto che per vederla, et ogni
volta vi camminauo tanto che mi stancauo, et mai la fini di
vedere tutta." _Relatione fatta per un gentil' huomo del Signor
Fernando Cortese_, apud Ramusio, _Navigationi et Viaggi_,
Venice, 1556, tom. iii. fol. 309.]

[Sidenote: Natural mistake of the Spanish discoverers.]

[Sidenote: Contrast between feudalism and gentilism.]

[Sidenote: Change from gentile society to political society.]

Of course the Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
the meaning of what they saw. It dazed and bewildered them. They knew
little or nothing of any other kind of society than feudal monarchy, and
if they made such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a "king" (i. e.
feudal king) or "emperor," and the clan-chiefs "lords" or "noblemen," if
they supposed that these huge fortresses were like feudal castles and
palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. Such misconceptions were
common enough before barbarous societies had been much studied; and many
a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and splendour about him
that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages of history as a
mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of feudalism.[100]
Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed unavoidable,
found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature; and then the
use of wrong names and titles bore fruit in what one cannot properly
call a theory but rather an incoherent medley of notions about barbaric
society. Nothing could be further from _feudalism_, in which the
relation of landlord and tenant is a fundamental element, than the
society of the American aborigines, in which that relation was utterly
unknown and inconceivable. This more primitive form of society is not
improperly called _gentilism_, inasmuch as it is based upon the gens or
clan, with communism in living, and with the conception of individual
ownership of property undeveloped. It was gentilism that everywhere
prevailed throughout the myriads o