76 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
hot broth, all coming down the same road, and disappearing among the 
different huts. Every member belonging to the community, down to the 
smallest pappoose, contributing in turn a hog. From our ignorance of the 
language, and the number of other and more pressing matters claiming our 
attention, we could not learn all the details of their internal economy, but 
it seemed to approximate that improved state of association which is some- 
times heard of among us; and as theirs has existed for an unknown length 
of time, and can no longer be considered merely experimental, Owen or 
Fourier might perhaps take lessons from them with advantage.” A hundred 
working men indicate a total of five hundred persons, who were then depend- 
ing for their daily food upon a single fire, the provisions being supplied from 
common stores, and divided from the caldron. It is, not unlikely, a truth- 
ful picture of the mode of life of their forefathers in the ‘‘House of the 
Nuns,” and in the ‘“‘Governor’s House” at Uxmal, at the epoch of the Span- 
ish conquest. . 
It is well known that Spanish adventurers captured these pueblos, one 
after the other, and attempted to enforce the labor of the Indians for per- 
sonal ends, and that the Indians abandoned their pueblos and retreated into 
the inaccessible forests to escape enslavement, after which their houses of 
stone fell into decay, the ruins of which, and all there ever was of them, 
still remain in all parts of these countries 
It is hardly supposable that the communism here described by Mr. 
Stephens was a new thing to the Mayas; but far more probable that it was 
a part of their ancient mode of life, to which these ruined houses were emi- 
nently adapted. The subject of the adaptation of the old pueblo houses in 
Yucatan and Central America to communism in living will be elsewhere 
considered. 
When Columbus first landed on the island of Cuba, he sent two men 
into the interior, who reported that ‘they travelled twenty-two leagues, and 
found a village of fifty houses, built like those before spoken of, and they 
contained about one thousand persons, because a whole generation lived in 
a house; and the prime men came out to meet them, led them by the arms, 
and lodged them in one of these new houses, causing them to sit down on 
1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, ii, 14. 
