Starting, then, with North America, which is acknowledged to be, or to have been, one of the chief centres of “mother-right,” or metrocracy, we meet there with many aboriginal nations among whom a son, as a rule takes the father’s name and becomes his heir.[509] Thus Cranz states that, among the Eskimo of Greenland, “when a husband dies, his eldest son inherits his house, tent, and woman’s boat, and besides must maintain the mother and children, who share the furniture and clothes amongst themselves.”[510] Among the Indians bordering on the south-east coast of the river St. Lawrence, according to Heriot, the eldest son took the name of his father with the addition of one syllable.[511] The Californian tribes[512] and the Dacotahs[513] recognized chieftainship as hereditary in the male line; and, with reference to the latter, Mr. Prescott remarks that they cannot well forget relationships, as the names of father and mother are both recollected for three or four generations.[514] Among the Ahts, the eldest son takes all the property left by his father, and the head-chiefs rank is hereditary in the male line.[515] The paternal system prevails, moreover, in thirteen other tribes mentioned by Mr. Frazer in his essay on “Totemism.”[516] In Mexico, Yucatan, San Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, succession ran from father to son; and in Vera Paz, according to Las Casas, kinship was so exclusively recognized in the male line, that the people there thought the most remote kin in their own lineage to be more closely related than the daughter of their mother, provided she was not of the same father. On the other hand, Piedrahita tells us that, among the Chibchas, the sons of sisters, and, in default of such, the brothers of the king, were the heirs to the crown of Bogota, but that the sons had a right to the personal property of their father; whilst, according to Herrera, the property was inherited by the brothers, and if there were none living, by the _sons_ of those who were dead.[517]