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F. Bandelier, now recognized as our most eminent scholar in Spanish American history, has recently investigated the subject of the tenure of lands among the ancient Mexicans with great thoroughness of research.
Bandelier by personal exploration among the Pueblo tribes in New Mexico, who speak the Queris language, among whom his work thus far has been confined. Descent is in the female line. The same indefatigable student has found very satisfactory evidence of the same organization among the ancient Mexicans.
You come back from the brink with a little shiver, but it was a shiver of sheer delight. No wonder dear old Bandelier, the first of the great archæologists to study this region, opens his quaint myth with the simple words "The Rito is a beautiful place."
Bandelier, in his report of his tour in Mexico, tells us that “his host at Cochiti, New Mexico, could not sell an ear of corn or a string of chili without the consent of his fourteen-year-old daughter, Ignacia, who kept house for her widowed father.” Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 130. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 65.
The little man went through the usual patter of the guide with the facility of long practice. The church was built, he said, in 1540, though Bandelier inaccurately sets the date much later. The roof was destroyed by the Pueblo Indians in 1680 during an attack upon the settlement, at which time the inhabitants took refuge within the mission walls. These are from three to five feet thick.
My friend Bandelier, in the course of his admirable analysis of the ruins at Mitla, has made clear to me how easy it is to attribute to scientific knowledge work that is the result only of manual skill.
The impression which Bandelier gives, in his "Islands of Titicaca and Koati," of the degradation and surly character of these Indians was not apparent at the time of my short visit in 1915.
There is no legendary evidence that there were any Spanish priests in the mission at the time of its destruction, and there is no record extant of any Spaniards losing their lives at Awatobi at the time of its destruction, although the fact of the occurrence, according to Bandelier, was recorded.
"Upon the morne, being Saturday, they came in order of battle, being well armed both on horse and foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the least, whereof he had ane carbine in his hand, two pistols by his sides, and other two at his saddle-torr; the pikemen in their ranks with pike and sword; the musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match.
Sometimes it was necessary to use laughing force to detain him at dark where we had water and a leaning cliff, instead of stumbling on through the trackless night to an unknown "Somewheres." He has always reminded me of John Muir, the only other man I have known intimately who was as insatiate a climber and inspiring a talker. But Bandelier had one advantage.
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