134 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
cultivated by irrigation; cotton being superadded to the maize, beans, 
squashes, and tobacco, cultivated by the northern tribes, Their houses, 
with those previously described, represent together an original indigenous 
architecture, which, with its diversities, sprang out of their necessities. Its 
fundamental communal type, I repeat, is found not less clearly in the houses 
about to be described, and in the so-called palace at Palenque, than in the 
long-house of the Iroquois. An examination of the plan of the structures 
in Mexico, New Mexico, and Central America will tend to establish the 
truth of this proposition. 
New Mexico is a poor country for civilized man, but quite well adapted 
to Sedentary Indians, who cultivate about one acre out of every hundred 
thousand. This region, and the San Juan, immediately north of it, pos- 
sessed a number of narrow fertile valleys, containing together, possibly, 
50,000 inhabitants, and it is occupied now by their descendants (excepting 
the San Juan) in manner and form as it was then. Each pueblo consisted 
either of a single great house, or of three or four such houses grouped 
together; and what is more significant, the New Mexican pueblo is a fair 
type of those now found in ruins in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, and 
Honduras, in general plan and in situation. All the people lived together 
in these great houses on terms of equality, for their institutions were essen- 
tially democratical. Common tenements for common Indians around these 
structures were not found there by Coronado in 1541, neither have any 
been found there since. There is not the slightest ground for supposing 
that any such tenements ever existed around those in Yucatan and Central 
America. Every structure was in the nature of a fortress, showing the in- 
security in which they lived. 
Since the year 1846, the date of the conquest of New Mexico, a 
number of military reconnaissances, under the direction of the War Depart- 
ment, have been made in various parts of the Territory. The army officers 
m charge devoted their chief attention to the physical geography and 
resources of the regions traversed; but, incidentally, they investigated the 
pueblos in ruins, and the present condition of the Pueblo Indians. The 
admirable manner in which they have executed the work is shown by the 
series of reports issued from time to time by the government. More 
