him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff
betokened that his errand was one of death. The clan elected its
_calpullec_ and _ahcacautin_, and could depose them for cause.[112]

[Footnote 112: Compare this description with that of the
institutions of Indians in the lower status, above, p. 69.]

[Sidenote: Rights and duties of the clan.]

The members of the clan were reciprocally bound to aid, defend, and
avenge one another; but wergild was no longer accepted, and the penalty
for murder was death. The clan exercised the right of naming its
members. Such names were invariably significant (as _Nezahualcoyotl_,
"Hungry Coyote," _Axayacatl_, "Face-in-the-Water," etc.), and more or
less "medicine," or superstitious association, was attached to the name.
The clans also had their significant names and totems. Each clan had its
peculiar religious rites, its priests or medicine-men who were members
of the clan council, and its temple or medicine-house. Instead of
burying their dead the Mexican tribes practised cremation; there was,
therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral ceremonies were conducted
by the clan.

[Sidenote: Aztec phratries.]

The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were
organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico, as
the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters. The phratry had
acquired more functions than it possessed in the lower status. Besides
certain religious and social duties, and besides its connection with the
punishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was an organization for
military purposes.[113] The four phratries were four divisions of the
tribal host, each with its captain. In each of the quarters was an
arsenal, or "dart-house," where weapons were stored, and from which they
were handed out to war-parties about to start on an expedition.

[Footnote 113: In this respect it seems to have had some
resemblance to the Roman _centuria_ and Teutonic _hundred_. So
in prehistoric Greece we may perhaps infer from Nestor's advice
to Agamemnon that a similar organization existed:--

[Greek: krin' andras kata phyla, kata phretras, Agamemnon,
hos phretre phretrephin arege, phyla de phylois.]
_Iliad_, ii. 362.

But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a
development a