ommunal houses, forming a kind of
precinct, with its special house or houses for official purposes,
corresponding to the _estufas_ in the New Mexican pueblos. The houses
were the common property of the clan, and so was the land which its
members cultivated; and such houses and land could not be sold or
bartered away by the clan, or in anywise alienated. The idea of "real
estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of
occupancy, and--as among some ruder Indians--its individual members
exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.

[Footnote 111: The notion of an immense population groaning
under the lash of taskmasters, and building huge palaces for
idle despots must be dismissed. The statements which refer to
such a vast population are apt to be accompanied by
incompatible statements. Mr. Morgan is right in throwing the
burden of proof upon those who maintain that a people without
domestic animals or field agriculture could have been so
numerous (_Anc. Soc._, p. 195). On the other hand, I believe
Mr. Morgan makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in
underestimating the numbers that could be supported upon Indian
corn even under a system of horticulture without the use of the
plough. Some pertinent remarks on the extraordinary
reproductive power of maize in Mexico may be found in Humboldt,
_Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne_, Paris, 1811, tom.
iii. pp. 51-60; the great naturalist is of course speaking of
the yield of maize in ploughed lands, but, after making due
allowances, the yield under the ancient system must have been
well-nigh unexampled in barbaric agriculture.]

[Sidenote: Clan officers.]

The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs
(_tecuhtli_) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel
religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half
starved. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from
the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan
(_calpulli_) had an official head, or sachem, called the _calpullec_;
and also a military commander called the _ahcacautin_, or "elder
brother." The _ahcacautin_ was also a kind of peace officer, or
constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with