the same materials an article entitled "A Study of the Houses and
House Life of the Indian Tribes," with a scheme for the exploration
of the ruins in New Mexico, Arizona, the San Juan region, Yucatan,
and Central America.

With some additions and reductions the facts are now presented in
their original form, and as they will now have a wider distribution
than the articles named have had, they will be new to most of my
readers. The facts and suggestions made will also have the advantage
of being presented in their proper connection. Thus additional
strength is given to the argument as a whole. All the forms of this
architecture sprang from a common mind, and exhibit, as a consequence,
different stages of development of the same conceptions, operating
upon similar necessities. They also represent these several
conditions of Indian life with reasonable completeness. Their houses
will be seen to form one system of works, from the Long House of the
Iroquois to the Joint Tenement houses of adobe and of stone in New
Mexico, Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala, with such diversities as
the different degrees of advancement of these several tribes would
naturally produce. Studied as one system, springing from a common
experience, and similar wants, and under institutions of the same
general character, they are seen to indicate a plan of life at once
novel, original, and distinctive.

The principal fact, which all these structures alike show, from the
smallest to the greatest, is that the family through these stages of
progress was too weak an organization to face alone the struggle of
life, and sought a shelter for itself in large households composed
of several families. The house for a single family was exceptional
throughout aboriginal America, while the house large enough to