INDIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 539 



etc. During the larger part of the year it is probable the majority of 

 Indians, and even those who owned a house of their own in the towns, 

 lived in the country in simple huts, surrounded by their cornfields, as 

 the case at this day in parts of Alta Verapaz. It was only the Spaniards 

 who led the Indians to congregate in real towns and villages ; and as au 

 evidence of the strangeness which this mode of life had for them, it 

 may be mentioned that many tribes of the Maya family never had a 

 word in their language for this idea, and hence adopted for it the Mexi- 

 can designation " ten ami t". Only in Yucatan a stronger tendency to 

 concentrate seems to have prevailed from of old, as the people there 

 were forced to do so by the small number of permanent ponds (aguadas), 

 of caves through which rivers were passing (cenotes), and of real 

 springs. 



The true nature of old Indian population centers can only be guessed 

 at, since not a trace has survived of what constituted the principal 

 part of a town, or that which was inhabited by the poorer classes who 

 dwelt in mere huts. It is true the Spanish conquerors tell us much of 

 streets and squares, but the actually existing ruins only show that 

 squares, often very extensive, did exist; that in many towns they were 

 exceedingly numerous and beautiful, but streets, in the modern sense 

 of the word, I have never been able to find. Only at Iximche and in a 

 few religious structures (Sajacabaja, Pasajon, S. Isidoro), have I found 

 indications of such a design. Generally it is noticed that the ruins of 

 the principal buildings (tumuli and stone structures) show no definite 

 arrangement. A similar state of things exists even now in many 

 Indian villages which have never been subjected to the Spanish rule 

 of straight streets, intersecting each other rectangularly. They show 

 nothing but a confused conglomeration of separate houses, with 

 crooked and much intersected ways between them, but with no streets 

 in our sense of the word. As the church, with its open square around 

 it, now forms the center of these villages, it may be that the groups of 

 public buildings may formerly have also formed, as it were, the kernel 

 of similarly shaped settlements. 



The old Indian towns of Guatemala and Chiapas have certainly, in 

 ordinary times, harbored no very considerable population, for the space 

 lying within the fortification line is generally very confined, and it is 

 highly improbable that outside of this line other parts of the town 

 should have been added, since such a proceeding would in war times 

 have been as diastrous for those who lived outside as for the fortress 

 itself. 



It may be argued, on the other hand, that the older Spanish writers 

 have left us very minute descriptions of many old Indian towns, but I 

 must confess that I am very skeptical as to their accuracy in such mat- 

 ters. They seem to have indulged with great pleasure in large numbers, 

 feeling sure of not being contradicted. Thus, Fuentes tells us that the 

 chief commanders of the Quiches, Tecum Uman, in the year 1524, had 



