232 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
Communism in living in large households, the communism being confined 
to the household, was probably the rule of life among the ancient Mexicans 
at the time of the Conquest.’ 
Two of the houses in Mexico were more particularly noted by the 
soldiers of Cortes than others—that in which they were quartered, and 
that in which Montezuma lived. Neither can be said to have been described. 
I shall confine myself to #hese two structures. 
Cortes made his first entry into Mexico in November, 1519, with four 
hundred and fifty Spaniards, according to Bernal Diaz,” accompanied by a 
thousand Tlascalan allies. They were lodged in a vacant palace of Monte- 
zuma’s late father, Diaz naively remarks, observing that “the whole of this 
palace was very light, airy, clean, and pleasant, the entry being through a 
great court.”* Cortes, after describing his reception, informs us that Monte- 
zuma “returned along the street in the order already described, until he 
reached a very large and splendid palace in which we were to be quartered. 
He then took me by the hand and led me into a spacious saloon, in front of 
74 So much for the 
which was a court through which we had entered. 
statements of two eve-witnesses. Herrera gathered some additional particu- 
lars. He states that “they came to a very large court, which was the 
wardrobe of the idols, and had been the house of Axayacatzin, Montezuma’s 
father. * * * Being lodged in so large a house, that, though it seems 
incredible, contained so many capacious rooms, with bedchambers, that one 
hundred and fifty Spaniards could all lie single. It was also worth observ- 
ing that though the house was so big, every part of it to the last corner 
was very clean, neat, matted, and hung with hangings of cotton and feather 
work of several colors, and had beds and mats with pavilions over them. 
No man of whatsoever quality having any other sort of bed, no other being 
‘My learned friend, Mr. Ad. F. Bandelier, of Highland, Ill., bas arrived at the same conclusion, 
substantially, as stated in the conclusion of his recent ‘Memoir on the Social Organization and Mode 
of Government of, the Ancient Mexicans,” 12th Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American 
Archeology and Ethnology. Cambridge, 1880, p. 699. 
“Taking all this together, and adding to it the results of our investigations into the military organ- 
ization of the ancient Mexicans, as well as of their communal mode of holding and enjoying the soil, 
we feel authorized to conclude that the social organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans 
was a military democracy, originally based upon communism in living.” 
* Diaz Conquest of Mex., ed. 1803, Keatinge’s Trans., i, 181, 189. Herrera says, 300, ii. 327. 
3Diaz, I, 191. 
4 Dispatches of Cortes, Polsom’s Trans., p. 86. 
