r head of each clan became its
living representative, assumed a totemistic costume and became the "living
image of the ancestral teotl," or god of his people, of whose activity he
rendered account to the central government. It is significant that the
common native title for lords or chieftains was "tlatoque," literally,
"the speakers," and that they were closely designated as the spokesmen of
his people, who habitually kept silence in his presence.

The fact that the names and signs of the days are identical with the
totemic tribal distinctions imposed for governmental reasons, is one which
I shall proceed to demonstrate more fully. Meanwhile attention is now
drawn to the chapter on the 7-day period in Dr. Daniel G. Brinton's
"Native Calendar of Central America and Mexico," in which he surmises that
the tribal divisions of the Cakchiquels "were drawn from the numbers of
the Calendar."

According to the native records the institution of the Calendar was
simultaneous with that of tribal organization and a minute study of both
features reveals that it could not have been otherwise.

From the dawn of their history the Cakchiquels, as I have already shown,
were divided into thirteen divisions of warriors (Khob, constituting the
upper class) and seven tribes (Amag, constituting the lower class). A
totem and a day being assigned to each division and tribe, they were, once
and for all time, placed in a definite position towards each other and
towards the state, and the order in which their chieftains were to sit in
general council, and to assume or perform certain duties, was thus
instituted. The 20-day period thus constituted a "complete count" and
synopsis of the "thirteen divisions of warriors and seven tribes," but it
also fulfilled other not less important purposes.

The day-signs were so ordered that the first, eleventh and sixteenth were
major signs employed to designate the years, and identified with the four
quarters, elements and their respective colors. The 20-day period,
consisting as it also did of 4 major signs and of 4x4=16 minor signs, was
as closely linked to the idea of the Four Quarters as it was to the Above
and Below, represented by the 13+7 division. It is therefore evident that
a simultaneous reckoning of periods consisting of 5, 7, 13, and 20 days
was ingeniously combined. I shall show in my special treatise how "the
lords of the Night" employed in their astronomical calendar, 9-night and
9-moon perio