nment
and manners.<13> Wilson, more skeptical, and bolder, utterly repudiates
the old accounts, and refuses to believe the Aztecs were any thing more
than savages.<14>

With such divergent and conflicting views, we at once perceive the
necessity of carefully scanning all the accounts given, and make them
conform, if possible, to what is known of Indian institutions and
manners. The Mexicans are but one of several tribes that are the
subjects of our research; but their institutions are better known than
the others, and, in a general way, whatever is true of them will be
true of the rest. We have seen the efforts of the Spanish explorers to
explain whatever they found new or strange in America by Spanish words,
and the results of such procedure. We are at full liberty to reject
their conclusions and start anew.

What the Spaniards found around the lakes of Mexico was a union or
confederacy of three tribes. Very late investigations by Mr. Bandelier
have established the presence of the usual subdivisions of the tribes.
So we have here a complete organization according to the terms of
ancient society: that is, the gens, phratry, tribe, and confederacy
of tribes. It is necessary that we spend some time with each of these
subdivisions before we can understand the condition of society among
the Mexicans, and, in all probability, the society among all of the
civilized nations of Central America.

We will begin with the gens, or the lowest division of the tribe. We
must understand its organization before we can understand that of a
tribe, and we must master the tribal organization before attempting
to learn the workings of the confederacy. To neglect this order, and
commence at the top of the series, is to make the same mistake that
the older writers did in their studies into this culture. A gens has
certain rights, duties, and privileges which belong to the whole gens,
and we will consider some of the more important in their proper place.
We must understand by a gens a collection of persons who are considered
to be all related to each other. An Indian could not, of his own will,
transfer himself from one gens to another. He remained a member of the
gens into which he was born. He might, by a formal act of adoption,
become a member of another gens; or he might, in certain contingencies,
lose his connection with a gens and become an outcast. There is no such
thing as privileged classes in a gens. All its members stand on an equ