CH AP PRR, Oct. 
RUINS OF HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF YUCATAN AND 
CENTRAL AMERICA. 
At the epoch of their discovery, Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala were « 
probably more thickly peopled than any other portion of North America 
of equal area; and their inhabitants were more advanced than the remaining 
aborigines. Their pueblos were planted along the rivers and streams, often 
quite near each other, and presented the same picture of occupation and of 
village life which might have been seen at the same time in the valley of the 
Rio Grande, of the Rio Chaco, and probably of the San Juan, and, at a still 
earlier period, of the Scioto. They consisted of a single great house, or of 
a cluster of houses near each other, forming one pueblo or village. In 
some cases, four or more structures were grouped together upon the same 
elevated platform; and where there were several of these platforms, each 
surmounted with one or more edifices, one of them was devoted to religious, 
and a portion of another to social and public uses. But there is no reason 
for supposing, from any ruins yet found, or from what is known of the 
people historically, that any one pueblo contained, at most, ten thousand 
inhabitants. No one tribe, or confederacy of tribes, had risen to supremacy 
within either of these areas by the consolidation of surrounding tribes. 
They were found, on the contrary, in the same state of subdivision and 
independence which invariably accompanies the gentile organization. Con- 
federacies in all probability existed among such contiguous pueblos as 
spoke the same dialect, as the Cibolans were probably confederated, and as 
the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and Tlacopans are known to have been. Such con- 
federacies, however, could not have reached beyond a common language 
of the tribes confederated. 
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