With these preliminary suggestions made, the three most important and most difficult questions with respect to the Aztec social system, remain to be considered. They relate first, to the existence of Gentes and Phratries; second, the existence and functions of the Council of Chiefs; and, third, the existence and functions of the office of General Military Commander, held by Montezuma.
I. _The Existence of Gentes and Phratries._
It may seem singular that the early Spanish writers did not discover the Aztec gentes, if in fact they existed; but the case was nearly the same with the Iroquois under the observation of our own people more than two hundred years. The existence among them of clans, named after animals, was pointed out at an early day, but without suspecting that it was the unit of a social system upon which both the tribe and the confederacy rested.[207] The failure of the Spanish investigators to notice the existence of the gentile organization among the tribes of Spanish America would afford no proof of its non-existence; but if it did exist, it would simply prove that their work was superficial in this respect.
There is a large amount of indirect and fragmentary evidence in the Spanish writers pointing both to the gens and the phratry, some of which will now be considered. Reference has been made to the frequent use of the term "kindred" by Herrera, showing that groups of persons were noticed who were bound together by affinities of blood. This, from the size of the group, seems to require a gens. The term "lineage" is sometimes used to indicate a still larger group, and implying a phratry.