186 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 
exogamic kinship groups. They were probably mili- 
tary societies taking into their membership all the men 
of the tribe. The name Calpolli, or “‘ great house’’, 
which was applied to them seems to have referred to a 
sort of barracks or general meeting place in each ward 
or division of the city where arms and trophies were kept 
and the youth educated in the art of war. The title in 
land was held by the calpolli and the right of use distrib- 
uted among the heads of families who held possession 
only so long as the land was worked. Each calpolli 
seems to have had a certain autonomy in governmental 
matters as well as a local religious organization. It is 
curious to find in Salvador, far to the south, the word 
calpolli applied to the platform mounds that surround 
courts in the ancient ruins. This use of the word may 
indicate that the “great houses” of the different soci- 
eties were ordinarily the principal buildings of the city 
and that they were used for civil, military, and religious 
purposes. 
In forming judgment on the fundamentals of social 
organization among the Aztecs we must remember that 
no clear case of kinship clans has been reported south of 
the area of the United States. Among the Cakchiquels, 
a Mayan tribe of the Guatemalan highlands, two royal 
houses are reported from which the ruling chief was al- 
ternately drawn. The Zotzils have been explained as a 
bat clan because their name is associated with the word 
for bat and because a bat god appears to have been their 
patron deity. The Mazatecas and Mixtecas, Deer 
people and Cloud people, also have clanlike names but 
in all cases these are designations of entire tribes, not of 
subdivisions of tribes. 
Tenochtitlan was divided into four quarters and each 
quarter subdivided into a number of wards. An under 
