undefined macro

[Jason Stover]

make -f Smake is failing to expand AM_INTL_SUBDIR.  I've been
struggling with this problem for a while now.  My lack of
understanding of aclocal and autoconf is hindering progress. So tell
me if I have this straight:

1. aclocal should copy the contents of m4/*.m4 and gl/m4/*.m4
   into configure.ac.
2. autoconf should read the macros defined in configure.ac, run
   m4 on them, and place the results in configure.

Is that right?

Now here is the error:

$ make -f Smake

...
aclocal -I m4 -I gl/m4
autoconf
configure.ac:26: warning: AM_INTL_SUBDIR is m4_require'd but not m4_defun'd
m4/gettext.m4:362: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is expanded from...
configure.ac:26: the top level
configure:20777: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_INTL_SUBDIR
      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
      See the Autoconf documentation.
*** Error code 1

...the problem is that I can see the macro defined in the m4 directory:

$ grep AM_INTL_SUBDIR m4/*.m4 
m4/gettext.m4:    AC_REQUIRE([AM_INTL_SUBDIR])dnl
m4/intl.m4:AC_DEFUN([AM_INTL_SUBDIR],

...so it looks like aclocal isn't including some necessary information in
configure.ac. Is that right? 

But before it choked, I saw this:

...
Copying file m4/intl.m4
...

Doesn't that mean aclocal copied the defun into configure.ac?

A few details that might be relevant: I recently upgraded to the latest version
of automake, and auto*, and aclocal. My system has BSD m4 in /usr/bin, and GNU
m4 1.4.3 in /usr/local/bin.

Any hints or section of relevant docs I should read? 

-Jason