MORGAN.) AZTEC HOUSES NOT FULLY DESCRIBED. 931 
very light, the Indians being extraordinary expert at that work”! Herrera 
further states that the houses were built of ‘lime and stone.” 
These pueblos were generally small, consisting of three or four large 
joint-tenement houses, with other houses smaller in size, the different grades 
of houses representing the relative thrift and prosperity of the several 
groups by whom they were owned and occupied. It is doubtful whether 
there was a single pueblo in North America, with#he exception of Tlascala, 
Cholula, Tezcuco, and Mexico, which contained ten thousand inhabitants. 
a3 
There is no occasion to apply the term “city” to any of them. None of 
he Spanish descriptions enable us to realize the exact form and structuret 
of these houses, or their relations to each other in forming a pueblo. But 
for the pueblos, occupied or in ruins, in New Mexico, and the more remark- 
able pueblos in ruins in Yucatan and Central America, we would know very 
little concerning the house architecture of the Sedentary Village Indians. 
It is evident from the citations made that the largest of these joint-tenement 
houses would accommodate from five hundred to a thousand or more people, 
living in the fashion of Indians; and that the courts were probably quad- 
rangles, formed by constructing the building on three sides of an inclosed 
space, as in the New Mexican pueblos, or upon the four sides, as in the 
House of the Nuns, at Uxmal. 
The writers on the conquest have failed to describe the Aztee house 
in such a manner that it can be fairly comprehended. They have also failed 
to explain the mode of life within it. But it can safely be said that most of 
these houses were large, far beyond any supposable wants of a single Indian 
family; that they were constructed, when on dry land, of adobe brick, and 
when in the water, of stone imbedded in some kind of mortar, and plastered 
over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white. Some 
also were constructed of a red porous stone. Some of these houses were 
built on three sides of a court, like those on the Chaco, but the court opened 
on a street or causeway. Others not unlikely surrounded an open court or 
quadrangle, which must have been entered through a gateway; but this is 
not clearly shown. The large houses were probably two stories high; 
an upper and a lower floor are mentioned in some cases, but rarely a third. 
1 History of America, ii, 211. 
