The regulations of the acequia of Quart, near Valence, dating from the days of the Moors, but enacted afresh in 1350,established the following organization. All, who were entitled to share the water, assembled in a junta in the spring of everysecond year. The junta framed rules, and nominated the syndic, the eight electos and the judge ( contador ). These electedofficers formed the ordinary junta , and had executive and judicial authority. The syndic, who must be a cultivator, wasnominated by the general assembly from a list of three candidates, prepared by the ordinary junta , in concert with theout-going syndic. He superintended the works, collected debts and fines, and submitted an account of his administration tothe general assembly. Every Thursday, he sat before the porch of the cathedral with the electos , to try offences and disputesrelating to the water. The contador examined the expenses, and received a remuneration. His authority was for an unlimitedperiod, but was revocable. In the huerta of Valence, the tribunal or cort of acequieras was composed of the syndics of theseven acequias , which served for the irrigation of the kuerta . This tribunal, called cort de la Seo , assembled before thecathedral,or, in the time of the Moors, before the mosque,every Thursday, and tried all offences and disputes touching thedistribution of the water. The wisdom of the decisions of this tribunal, composed solely of peasants, was celebratedthroughout Spain. This organisation of acequieras among the Moors, is exactly similar to that of joint-stock companies, orof the Anglo-Saxon Township. The associates are self- governing and their own judges; they administer their own concernswithout restraint; they elect their officers, deliberate upon and frame laws. There is at the same time a combination ofrepublican government with the parliamentary system. (2)Among many African tribes, the system of village communities is likewise in full force. Vice-Admiral Fleuriot de Langle tellsus that among the Yoloffs of the Gorea district the soil is the common property of the villages. Every year the village chief,with the assistance of a council of elders, executes a re-distribution of the arable land, calculating the lots according to thewants of each family. It is precisely the same custom as we find in Java, and in Russia. In the midst of the Pacific Ocean,travellers have met with an identically similar social organization. (3)In Mexico, the nations were found devoted to agriculture, and living in villages which own the soil as common property.
The dwelling-house and garden attached were the only subjects of private property. One portion of the domain was dividedannually among the inhabitants; another portion was cultivated in common, and the produce applied to public purposes. Incertain districts, not only the arable land but even the dwelling house was common property. "In New Mexico and mArizona, among the Pueblo Indians, a state of society is found in which the characteristic feature is a mode of dwelling,quite unique in its nature. Imagine a vast building, of massive quadrangular form, consisting of three or four storeys, eachstorey being divided into small cells, containing separate families: in this singular construction, the whole community isconcentrated. These villages are quite peculiar in their nature. The building, as a whole, bears some resemblance to some ofthe large edifices which are seen further South, such as the palace of Falenqué or the `casa del Gubernador,' at Uxmal. Thesecommon buildings were in use at the time of the conquest, and there are still some found inhabited in several districts. Therueblos possess a degree of culture very superior to that of the wandering tribes of the north, with whom they are constantlyat war." (4)
"The most absolute communism;" says M. Giraud Teulon, (5) still prevails in some districts of New Zealand, of SouthAmerica, of the Andaman Isles and Nicobar. If any one traverses the territories of the Centre and South of the United States,he will frequently meet with villages, which comprise only one or two houses, a hundred and a hundred-and-fifty feet inlength, in which forty or fifty kindred families live together. The Minitarees and the Mandans live in polygonal buildings, inwhich several families are housed; and the long huts of the Indians on the Columbia River contain hundreds of persons.
Certain Indian villages, such as Tumachemootool, in the Columbia valley, or Taas, in New Mexico, are solely made up ofone or two colossal houses, rising to a height of five or six storeys, by a series of terraces, each of which in succession isbuilt some way behind the former, and containing from three to four hundred persons. In the cañon of the Rio Chaco, to theNorth-West of Santa Fé, there still exists a ruined group of seven pueblos or communal edifices, each of which was capableof holding seven or eight hundred people. (6)It was edifices of this nature that the first Spaniards often took for palaces, and which, in reality, were nothing but massivebuildings filled with Indians, living in community. Mexico, Yucatan, and Guatemala, before the arrival of the Europeans,were occupied by numerous villages of this kind. The present Indians of these territories are the direct descendants of theindigenous population discovered by the Spaniards. Their civilization even now affords in some respects the spectacle of thetransition from the nomadic to the settled mode of life.
