various bandit forces, are nearly all members of the governing Latin element.
All this constitutes a discouraging picture which would be without a ray of hope for the future if we could not discover in the 80 per cent, of the Mexican people who are descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants, some qualities which, if encouraged and developed, might promise to furnish that moral element which, so far, has been conspicuously lacking in the great majority of the Latin population and which must be brought out if popular government is ever to be made successful. So the investigator must turn to the peon element.
THE NATIVE MEXICAN
When Cortez conquered Mexico, it was occupied by a number of distinct families, or tribes, so that the learned Mexican, Orozco y Barra says there were eleven distinct language families, comprising thirty-five idioms and eighty-five dialects. The most important of these tribes or families were the Aztecs and probably next in importance the Tezcocans.
The Aztecs, while not in complete control of the area which now composes Mexico, were the dominant power of the table-land and had their great capital city in its central valley. As nearly as can be learned, they occupied the country in A. D.
