98 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
‘6. Conquest of any tribe by the Mexicans was not followed by an 
annexation of that tribe’s territory, nor by an apportionment of its soil 
among the conquerors. Tribute was exacted, and, for the purpose of raising 
that tribute (in part), special tracts were set off; the crops of which were 
gathered for the storehouses of Mexico. 
“7, Consequently, as our previous investigations (of the warlike insti- 
tutions and customs of the ancient Mexicans) have disproved the generally 
received notion of a military despotism prevailing among them, so the 
results of his review of Tenure and distribution of lands tend to establish 
‘that the. principle and institution of feudality did not exist in aboriginal 
Mexico.’” 
Among the Peruvians their land system was probably much the same 
as among the ancient Mexicans. But according to Garcilapo de la Vega, 
they had carried their system with respect to lands a little farther. Their 
lands, he remarks, were ‘‘divided into three parts and applied to different 
uses. The first was for the Sun, his priests and ministers; the second was 
for the King, and for the support and maintenance of his governors and 
officers. * * * And the third was for the natives and sojourners of the 
provinces, which was divided equally according to the needs which each 
family required.”* 
While these several statements may not present the exact case in all 
respects in Peru, Mexico, or among the Northern Indian tribes, they suf- 
ficiently indicate the ownership of land by communities of persons, larger 
or smaller, with a system of tillage that points to large households. Neither 
the Peruvians, nor the Aztecs, nor any Indian tribe had attained to a knowl- 
edge of the ownership of land in severalty in fee simple at the period of 
their discovery. This knowledge belongs to the period of civilization. There 
is not the slightest probability that any Indian, whether Iroquois, Mexican, 
or Peruvian, owned a foot of land that he could call his own, with power to 
sell and convey the same in fee simple to whomsoever he pleased. 
1Royal Commentaries of Peru, Lond. ed., 1688. Rycaut, trans., p. 154, 
