Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/109

 'calpulli' being sovereign within its limits, and assigning to its individual members for their use the minor tracts into which the soil was parcelled in consequence of their mode of cultivation. If, therefore, the terms 'altepetlalli' and 'calpulalli' are occasionally regarded as identical, it is because the former indicates the occupancy, the latter the distribution of the soil. We thus recognize in the calpulli, or kindred group, the unit of tenure of whatever soil the Mexicans deemed worthy of definite possession. Further on we shall investigate how far individuals, as members of this communal unit, participated in the aggregate tenure.

"In the course of time, as the population further increased, segmentation occurred within the four original 'quarters,' new 'calpulli' being formed. For governmental purposes this segmentation produced a new result by leaving, more particularly in military affairs, the first four clusters as great subdivisions. But these, as soon as they had disaggregated, ceased to be any longer units of territorial possession, their original areas being held thereafter by the 'minor quarters' (as Herrera, for instance, calls them), who exercised, each one within its limits, the same sovereignty which the original 'calpulli' formerly held over the whole. A further consequence of this