And if Josephus
Acosta's word may be taken, he tells us that in many parts of
America there was no government at all. "There are great and
apparent conjectures," says he, "that these men [speaking of those
of Peru] for a long time had neither kings nor commonwealths, but
lived in troops, as they do this day in Florida- the Cheriquanas,
those of Brazil, and many other nations, which have no certain
kings, but, as occasion is offered in peace or war, they choose
their captains as they please" (lib. i. cap. 25). If it be said,
that every man there was born subject to his father, or the head of
his family. that the subjection due from a child to a father took away
not his freedom of uniting into what political society he thought fit,
has been already proved; but be that as it will, these men, it is
evident, were actually free; and whatever superiority some politicians
now would place in any of them, they themselves claimed it not; but,
by consent, were all equal, till, by the same consent, they set rulers
over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a
voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in
the choice of their governors and forms of government.
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