MORGAN. ] ARCHITECTURE BELOW SCIENTIFIC STAGE. 273 
Greeks. Speaking of the Governor’s House, Mr. Stephens remarks, that 
“the doors are all gone, and the wooden lintels over them have fallen.”? 
In some of the inner apartments, the lintels were still in place over the 
doorways, and some were lying on the floor, sound and solid, which latter 
condition was no doubt owing to their being more sheltered than those over 
the outer doorway.”* The same is true of the House of the Nuns, and of 
a number of other structures figured and described in Mr. Stephens’ works. 
But lintels of stone are found in some houses. Thus, of one of the build- 
ings at Kabah, he says: “The lintels over the doors are of stone.”* In this 
case there was a stone column in the middle of the doorway, and the lintel 
was in two sections. Norman, speaking of the ruins at Chichen Itza, 
remarks that the “ doorways are nearly a square of about seven feet, some- 
what resembling the Egyptian; the sides of which are formed of large 
blocks of hewn stone. In some instances the lintels are of the same 
material.”* They used sapote wood usually for lintels, a wood remarkable 
for its solidity and durability. It may safely be said that the lintel of 
wood was the rule in Yucatan, and not the exception. While they under- 
stood the use of the stone lintel, which alone was capable of affording a 
durable structure, its common and ordinary use was beyond their ability. 
The use of stone of the size required overmatched their ability in stone 
masonry, as arule. It cannot, therefore, be said that the post and lintel 
of stone became a principle of construction in their architecture. As the 
Mayas, who constructed these edifices, were in the Middle Status of barba- 
rism, it was not to have been expected that their architecture would reach 
the scientific stage. 
American aboriginal history and ethnology have been perverted, and 
even caricatured in various ways, and, among others, by a false terminology, 
which of itself is able to vitiate the truth. When we have learned to sub- 
stitute Indian confederacy for Indian kingdom; Teuchtli, or head war- 
chief, sachem, and chief, for king, prince, and lord; Indian villages in the 
place of ‘“ great cities”; communal houses for ‘“ palaces,” and democratic 
for monarchic institutions; together with a number of similar substitu- 
tions of appropriate for deceptive and improper terms, the Indian of the 
1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, i, 175. 2Tb,, p. 178. 3Tb., 1, 398. 4Rambles in Yucatan, p. 1L8, 
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