Note 23 — Chapter II

Doubtless it should be stated at the outset that there is serious and reasonable question on the part of not a few students of aboriginal Mexico as to whether Aztec institutions merit the name "empire" in any sense analogous to those of the imperial states of the Old World. "A loose confederacy of democratic Indians" is the phrase employed by Waterman [a], p. 250, in describing the form of the Mexican state as it is pictured by Morgan, Bandelier, Fiske, and others (see Waterman, loc. cit., for sources); and it is altogether reasonable to expect that Americanist studies will eventually show that the great Middle American nations were developed from, and retained characteristics of, communities resembling the Pueblos of our own Southwest rather than the European states which the Spaniards had in the eye when they made their first observations. It is to be expected, too, that a changed complexion put upon the interpretation of Mexican society will eventually modify the interpretation of Mexican ritual and mythology, giving it, for example, something less of the uranian significance upon which scholars of the school of Förstemann and Seler put so great weight, and something more, if not of the Euhemerism of Brasseur de Bourbourg, at least of reliance upon social motives and historical traditions.