4 
magnificent buildings of great height, built of large blocks of 
736 Concerning Two Divisions of Indians. —[ December, 
tionists, if we go to that part of the United States formerly 
composing the frontier provinces of Mexico we find at this day 
pure Aztecs or cremationists ; for those of the same race in the 
thickly settled and richer portions of Mexico have by one means 
or another been compelled to change from burning to burying _ 
their dead. While in Arizona we have the Apache, Mojave, 
Yuma, and Cocopah tribes, and in Nevada the Digger, which 
- burn their dead, in California the Indians have so changed by 
church influence that nearly all bury their dead according to the 
rules of the Catholic church instead of burning the dead. Part 
of the Daigano tribe, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from 
Mexican territory, moved to the border of Lower California, and 
have gone back to all their old customs, burning their dead, and 
are now Indians in every sense; that is, they are free and un- 
trammeled by any encroachments of the white man or his 
fashions. 
The other division of Mexican Indians were those who buried 
their dead. They had only to drop their own mode of disposal 
of the dead and adopt that of the Catholic church. In order to 
observe the Indians of this division with customs unchanged, 
we must visit the Puma of Arizona, the Moqui and the Yuma 
Indians of New Mexico, for the other bands of this division 
adopt the Catholic mode of burial. 
The cities and dwellings of the two classes of people in the 
-country at the time of the Spanish conquest must have greatly 
differed. Yet the Spaniards called them all Aztecs. In this 
‘there seems to have been a design. The dwellings and cities 
were so exaggerated as to size and importance that in reading 
the reports sent to the Spanish court and the Pope one is led 
to conclude that they were of a grandeur and magnificence be- 
yond all conception. But for Indians at that day or this to live 
in such a high degree of civilization is out of the question. 
Neither the ruins of former cities nor the style of the present 
buildings of their descendants supports those extravagant asser- 
tions. The statements of the Spanish priests were sufficient to 
make the Spanish government proud of its acquisitions, and in 
return its officers and the representatives of the church received : 
great honors and rewards. The Spanish historians of the con- 
quest of the city of Mexico tell us that the city was built on a . 
marsh or wet land ; for they say that ditches were cut to drain 
the city, and boats run up and down them. But how could 
