The Earth personified as Mother by the American Indians.

Belief of the Delaware Indians that their ancestors came forth from the earth.

MANY of the American Indians appear to have personified the Earth as their mother and to have supposed that their first ancestors issued from it as a child from the womb. Thus with regard to the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians, who formerly inhabited Pennsylvania, we are informed by an old observer that “the Indians consider the earth as their universal mother. They believe that they were created within its bosom, where for a long time they had their abode, before they came to live on its surface. They say that the great, good, and all powerful Spirit, when he created them, undoubtedly meant at a proper time to put them in the enjoyment of all the good things which he had prepared for them upon the earth, but he wisely ordained that their first stage of existence should be within it, as the infant is formed and takes its first growth in the womb of its natural mother…The Indian mythologists are not agreed as to the form under which they existed while in the bowels of the earth. Some assert that they lived there in the human shape, while others, with greater consistency, contend that their existence was in the form of certain terrestrial animals, such as the ground-hog, the rabbit, and the tortoise.”1

Similar belief among the Iroquois.

Beliefs of the same sort prevailed also among the Iroquois, as we learn from the evidence of a Mohawk chief which was taken down in January 1743 by the Rev. Christopher Pyrlaeus. It runs as follows:

“Tradition. That they had dwelt in the earth where it was dark and where no sun did shine. That though they followed hunting, they ate mice, which they caught with their hands. That Ganawagahha (one of them) having accidentally found a hole to get out of the earth at, he went out, and that in walking about on the earth he found a deer, which he took back with him, and that both on account of the meat tasting so very good, and the favourable description he had given them of the country above and on the earth, their mother concluded it best for them all to come out; that accordingly they did so, and immediately set about planting corn, etc. That, however, the Nocharauorsul, that is, the ground hog, would not come out, but had remained in the ground as before.”2

Relief of the Ottawa Indians in Earth, the Great-grandmother of All.

The Ottawa Indians, a branch of the great Algonkin family, believed that a certain being, whom they called Na-na-bush, created the ground in obedience to the commands of the Great Spirit, and further that, as a benevolent intercessor between the Supreme Being and mankind, he procured the creation of the animals, in order that their flesh might serve men as food and their skins as raiment. He also sent down roots and medicines of sovereign power to heal the sicknesses of mankind and in times of hunger to enable them to kill the wild beasts. All these things, destined for the benefit of the human race, were committed to the care of Me-suk-kum-mik O-Kwi, or the Earth, the Great-grandmother of All; and in order that men and women should never call upon her in vain, the Old Woman was directed to remain constantly at home in her lodge. Hence it is that good Indians never dig up the roots of which their medicines are made without at the same time depositing in the earth something as an offering to Me-suk-kum-mik O-Kwi. They also sing to her the songs in which they relate the creation of the earth and animals and all other good things by Na-na-bush.3

Belief of the Winnebagos in an Earth-goddess-whom they call Grandmother.

The Winnebagos, an Indian tribe of the Siouan stock, similarly look upon the earth as a goddess. She is indeed one of the most ancient deities of the tribe, and appears as the Grandmother in some of their oldest myths. Offerings are made to her at the various ceremonies, particularly at the medicine-dance and the war-bundle feast. However, in the myths she is represented as a being nowise interested in furthering the welfare of mankind; on the contrary, she is spoken of as the sister of those bad spirits who are bent on destroying the human race.4 She is generally known either as Earth (mono) or simply as Grandmother (kunika). Her connexions are almost exclusively with peace. She played a far greater part in the earlier than in the later phases of Winnebago religion, and she figures prominently in the stories of transformation, in which her grandson the Hare is also an important personage. In the myths which are told to explain the origin of rites her character is changed from that of a somewhat indifferent, and at times hostile, deity to that of a beneficent all-loving Mother-earth.5

Winnebago prayers to the Earth goddess.

The following are specimens of Winnebago prayers addressed to the Earth-goddess at what are called war-bundle feasts. Thus after offering tobacco, with prayers, to the Moon and the Morning Star, the officiant prays as follows: “To you, grandmother, the Earth, do we offer tobacco also. We pray for victory in war, and for all the medicines that are necessary to attain it, so that we may bind ourselves with medicine; that we may use the flowers of the earth for paint—all that is red and all that is blue—this we ask of you. Should there be anything better, we ask that you arrange it so that we obtain it Tobacco and corn for food do we offer to you, and should you need more tobacco we will send it along. Here it is.”6

Again, on a similar occasion, the officiant prays, saying, “You who are our grandmother, Earth, you blessed grandfather Djobenaegiwiexga with life and war powers. As far as you extend, that far, O grandmother, do we spread out for you tobacco and food and mocassins. Here is the tobacco. Here in the fire shall I place tobacco; and food and offerings of buckskin will we send to you at all times. You will always accept them, grandfather said, it is said, so that our clansmen may travel in a straight path of war and life.”7

Worship of the Earth among the Cheyenne Indians.

The Cheyenne Indians, a tribe of the western plains who belong to the Algonkin stock, say that there is a principal god named Heammawihio, who lives up aloft, and that there is also a god called Ahk tun o wihio, who lives under the ground. Both deities are beneficent, and they possess like powers. Next after Heammawihio, we are informed, “the power of the earth is named in prayer. It is implored to make everything grow which we eat, so that we may live; to make the water flow, that we may drink; to keep the ground firm, that we may live and walk on it; to make grow those plants and herbs that we use to heal ourselves when we are sick; and to cause to grow also the grass on which the animals feed.” Such reverence for the earth is general among the western Indians.8 On this subject, the same writer, Mr. G. B. Grinnell, whose acquaintance with the western Indians extends over half a century, tells us that “the almost universal reverence of the Indians for the earth is interesting in connection with their feeling about the ownership of land. The earth is regarded as sacred, often it is called the ‘mother’, and it appears to rank second among the gods. A sacrifice of food is held up first to the sky and then is deposited on the earth, and perhaps rubbed into the soil. The first smoke is directed to the sky, the second to the earth, and then those to the four directions in order. Other sacrifices are commonly held up first to the sky, and then are held toward the earth. Before beginning to perform any sacred office, the priest or doctor holds his hands first towards the sky, and then rubs them on the ground. ‘It is by the earth’, they say, that we live. Without it we could not exist. It nourishes and supports us. From it grow the fruits that we eat, and the grass that sustains the animals whose flesh we live on; from it come forth, and over its surface run, the waters which we drink. We walk on it, and unless it is firm and steadfast we cannot live.”9

Personification of the Earth among the Klamath Indians.

The Klamath Indians of south-western Oregon regard the Earth as a mysterious, shadowy power of incalculable energies and influences, rather mischievous and wicked than beneficial to mankind. They ascribe anger and other passions to it, but their personification of it has not advanced beyond a rudimentary stage. In the many tales which they tell about the Earth, that mysterious power nowhere appears as an active deity.10 An Indian prophet who announced his mission at Priest Rapids, on the Middle Columbia River, dissuaded his numerous followers from tilling the ground, alleging as his reason that “it is a sin to wound or cut, tear up or scratch our common mother by agricultural pursuits; she will avenge herself on the whites and on the Indians following their example by opening her bosom and engulfing such malefactors for their misdeeds.”11

Worship of the Earth Mother among the Zuñis of New Mexico.

The Zuñis of New Mexico speak of the Earth Mother (Awitelin Tsita) as the source of all man's food, both vegetable and animal.12 In all the poetic conceptions of the Zunis one great object is said to be paramount, and that is food to support the life of man. Thus they pray, saying, “May the rain-makers water the Earth Mother that she may be made beautiful to look upon. May the rain-makers water the Earth Mother that she may become fruitful and give to her children and to all the world the fruits of her being, that we may have food in abundance. May the Sun Father embrace our Earth Mother that she may become fruitful, that food may be bountiful [plentiful], and that our children may live the span of life, not die, but sleep to awake with their gods.”13

The Earth-goddess among the Hopi Indians.

At a ceremony of the Hopi Indians of Arizona the Earth-goddess is represented by a bundle of sticks placed on the floor of the house, and over this bundle the priest kneels when he shouts to the Earth-goddess down a hole in the floor.14

Worship of the Earth among the Caribs of the Antilles.

The Caribs of the Antilles said that the Earth was a good mother who gave them all things necessary for life.15 They regarded an earthquake as a sign given them by the Earth to dance for the sake of their health. So they used to dance for four days and four nights by moonlight, arrayed in all their barbaric finery, wearing masks of diverse colours, and necklaces, bracelets, belts, and garters loaded with little shells, which clashed and clattered as they danced, while old women shook rattles and droned a monotonous accompaniment.16

Belief of the Salivas in Mother Earth.

Worship of Mother Earth (Pachamama or Mamapacha) among the Peruvian Indians.

Sacrifices and prayers to Mother Earth.

One of the tribes of the Salivas, an Indian nation on the Orinoco, claimed to be a daughter of the Earth; they said that formerly the earth brought forth men and women just as it brings forth briars and thorns nowadays.17 The Peruvian Indians worshipped the Earth as a goddess, whom they named Pachamama or Mother Earth because it yielded them the fruits whereby they lived.18 The worship of Mother Earth (Mamapacha) persisted among the Indians of Peru even after their nominal conversion to Christianity. The women were particularly devoted to it, especially at the time of sowing their fields. They professed to speak with the goddess, begging her to grant them a good crop, and in order to enforce their petition they poured out maize-beer and maize-flour as an offering to her; this they did either with their own hands or by the intervention of a priest.19 When they fell sick, they sometimes thought that the Earth-mother was angry with them; so to appease her wrath they poured out chicha (maize-beer) and burned woollen cloths on the spot where they had fallen ill. Women in childbed also invoked her help with similar sacrifices. Yet we are told that in Peru the worship of the Earth-mother, universal and important as it was, mainly rested on this popular basis: it had no place in the public ritual of the community, though it retained a prominent position among the rites performed for the special benefit of the Apu-Ccapac-Inca.20 Thus, for example, after sacrificing to the Sun, the Thunder, and the Moon, and praying for the health, prosperity, and victory of the reigning Inca, the priests also sacrificed to the Earth and prayed to her, saying, “O Mother Earth! preserve the Lord Inca, thy son, who stands upon thee, in peace and safety”.21 Sacrifices to Mother Earth (Pachamama) were equally prominent among the sacrifices offered by the Apu-Ccapac-Incas in their progresses from place to place: at the principal provincial centres on these occasions two Hamas were sacrificed to the Creator (Pachacamac), two to the Sun, two to the Earth, and one to the Thunder.22 The village or town of Mama (“Mother”), situated on a tributary of the Rimac, derives its name from a celebrated sanctuary of the Earth-mother, who was there worshipped as a consort of the Creator, Pachacamac. The two streams which mingle their waters below the sanctuary were known us the breasts of the Earth-mother.23

Worship of the Mother of the Gods or the Heart of the Earth among the ancient Mexicans.

Festival at which the goddess was personated by woman, who was put to death in the divine character.

The consecration of the victim.

The dances.

The ancient Mexicans worshipped a goddess whom they variously named Mother of the Gods (Teteo innan) Grandmother (Toci), or Heart of the Earth (Tlalyollotli).24 In explanation of this last title it was said that when she chose she made the earth to quake.25 Hence modern writers seem to be justified in treating her as an Earth-goddess,26 though she is not definitely so described, so far as I have observed, by the original Spanish authors who have described her strange and bloody rites. Her festival fell in the eleventh month of the Mexican year, which began on the twenty-fourth of August and ended on the twelfth of September.27 The goddess presided over medicines and medicinal plants, which accords well with the character of an Earth-deity. Hence she was worshipped especially by physicians, surgeons, blood-letters, midwives, women who procured abortion, and fortune-tellers of all sorts, such as those who predicted the future from grains of maize or drew omens from the inspection of water in a bowl. All these guilds clubbed together once a year to celebrate a great festival in honour of their patron divinity. For this purpose they bought a woman who was to personate the goddess at the festival and to be put to death in that character.28 She had to be neither very old nor very young; hence a woman of about forty or forty-five was usually selected for the fatal dignity. The purchase was made forty days before the festival. Like all the other slaves chosen to personate deities she was washed and purified and received the name of the goddess whom she was to represent in life and death. Thus sanctified and consecrated she was from that day onward shut up in a cell and closely guarded, that she should not sin; for the representative of a goddess must be sinless. When twenty days were over, they brought her forth from her cell, clothed her in the garments appropriate to the goddess, and set her before the public that all might see and adore her as the deity incarnate. From that hour the people esteemed her as the Mother of the Gods herself and paid her as much reverence as if in truth she had been that great divinity. Seven days before the festival they gave her in charge to four old medical women or midwives, who waited on her and made it their business to keep her in a happy and cheerful frame of mind, telling her stories and encouraging her to laugh and be merry, for it was an evil omen if any woman or man who was to die in the character of a god was sad and cast down at the prospect of death.29 If that happened they thought that many soldiers would be slain in war or that many women would die in childbed.30 Among other occupations the woman who personated the Mother of the Gods was given a quantity of aloes which in her last days she had to dress, spin, and weave into a shirt and petticoats, which were afterwards to figure in the ghastly ritual.31 But the principal mode of diverting the thoughts of the unhappy woman from her approaching doom was the dance. Four rows of dancers, carrying branches of trees in blossom, danced silently, without singing, daily in the afternoon till set of sun. They hardly moved their legs or bodies, but lifted and lowered their arms in time to the music. These dances went on for eight days. Then the medical women, young and old, divided themselves into two parties and engaged in a sham fight before the woman who acted the part of the Mother of the Gods. In the battle the two sides pelted each other with balls made of tree-moss, leaves of reeds, portions of cactus, or yellow flowers of a certain sort; and the woman who personated the goddess had to lead the first attack.32

The farewell to the market.

The sacrifice.

Personification of the goddess and her son Cinteotl by men wearing the skin of the victim.

These sham-fights lasted four days, and when they were over they led the woman who was to die to the marketplace, escorted by all the medical women, that she might bid it a last farewell, for she was to return to it no more. On her return from it she scattered maize wherever she passed by way of good-bye to the market. Thence they reconducted her to her cell, which was hard by the temple where she was to die that night. As they went, the medical women and the midwives consoled her, saying, “Be not sorrowful, sweetheart; this night you will sleep with the king. Therefore rejoice.” They did not let her know that she was about to be killed; for her death must be sudden and unexpected. They covered her with the ornaments of the Mother of the Gods, and at midnight they led her to the temple where she was to die. A great multitude had gathered to see her pass, but no one spoke or coughed; a profound silence reigned. Arrived at the place of sacrifice she was hoisted on the back of an assistant, whereupon the priest came up, and seizing her by the hair adroitly cut off her head, while her streaming blood drenched the man who supported the now headless body. The skin was immediately stripped from the still warm and throbbing corpse, and in it a tall robust young man clad himself, thus personating the goddess come to life again. Over the woman's skin he wore the shirt and petticoats which she had woven in her last days.33 One of the woman's thighs was flayed separately and the skin carried to another temple, where a young man put it on his face as a mask and thus personated the maize-god Cinteotl, the son of the Mother of the Gods. Besides the mask of skin he wore a hood and jacket of feathers.34

Ritual observed by the representatives of the goddess and her son.

Sacrifice of the captives.

The man who represented the Mother of the Gods and was clad in the skin of the dead woman how joined the other who personated the son of the goddess-and wore the mask of skin on his face. After a curious ritual of flight and pursuit, in which the fugitives carried bloody besoms of couch-grass and at sight of which all the beholders were seized with fear and trembling, the two actors who played the parts of the divine Mother and the divine Son repaired together very deliberately to the temple of the Mother of the Gods, where the woman had been slain in the character of the goddess. There the man who represented the Mother of the Gods entered the temple. It was still night, but at break of day he ascended the steps of the pyramidal temple and took up his post on the summit No sooner did his figure appear outlined against the sky than men who had been waiting below ran up the staircase at full speed to bring him offerings. Some covered his feet and head with white eagle down; others painted his face red; others put on him a short cloak which bore the likeness of an eagle embroidered or woven in the stuff; others clad him in painted petticoats. Some cut off the heads of quails in his presence; others offered him copal. Also they decked him out in all the richest ornaments of the goddess and set a splendid crown on his head. Then the captives who were to die were set in a row before him. He took one of them, laid him on his back on the block, cut open his breast, and tore out his heart. This he did to a second, a third, and a fourth. The rest he left to be butchered by the priests.35

The representatives of the goddess and her son at the temple of Cinteotl.

The deposition of the mask of human skin.

Leaving the sacred shambles the two men who personated the divine Mother and the divine Son then repaired to the temple of Cinteotl, preceded by devotees who wore ornaments of paper, cotton, and feathers, and escorted on either side by medical women who sang as they marched,’ while priests led the singing and played on musical instruments. The heads of the human victims were brought to this temple. There a great many old soldiers were waiting, and when the procession arrived they took the man who played the part of the divine Son in their midst and ran with him at full speed to a certain hill which stood at the borders of the enemy's country. There the divine Son took from his face the mask made of the skin from the thigh of the dead woman and deposited it in a tower or keep at the frontier. Often the enemy was waiting for them at the spot, a fight ensued, and some were slain, after which the survivors returned home.36

The dance of the representative of the Mother of the Gods.

A variety of ceremonies followed in which the representative of the Mother of the Gods played a conspicuous part, dancing with the medical women in the court of the temple of the Mother of the Gods. The captains and soldiers who had just been decorated by the King for gallantry took part in these dances. They danced silently to the tuck of drum, and all were so festooned that they looked like living flowers to the admiration of the beholders. But the women who saw them dancing in gorgeous array wept, saying, “Our sons now so richly bedecked will have to march when war is proclaimed. Think you that they will return? Perhaps we shall see them no more.” The King and all his courtiers were present at these ceremonies. The gold on their persons was so plentiful that the courtyard shone with a dazzling splendour in the blaze of the sun.37

The blood of the human victims tasted by the representative of the Mother of the Gods.

Yet the human representative of the Mother of the Gods had to figure in another and grimmer scene than these flowery sun-illumined dances. For the blood of the Human victims slain in sacrifice was brought to him in a vessel decked with feathers, and he had to stoop over it, dip his finger in the blood, and suck his bloody finger. Then he gave a doleful groan, and all who heard it were seized with fear and said that the Earth herself felt it and shook. At the conclusion of this dismal rite, all the people stooped down, took up a little earth on one finger, and ate it. This ceremony of eating earth they commonly performed at their solemn festivals and in presenting themselves before their idols; they looked on it as a mark of reverence and humility towards the gods. After their conversion to Christianity they sometimes observed the custom before the images of the saints.38

The skin of the woman who personated the Mother of the Gods hung on a tower.

Finally, a priest descended the staircase of the temple-pyramid of the great god Uitzilopochtli, carrying in his hand a wooden basket full of white chalk and white feathers, which he left at the foot of the steps. Immediately a great number of soldiers, who had been waiting and watching, raced to the basket, striving who should be the first to reach it. There they filled their hands with the contents of the basket and ran hack to the point from which they had started. The man who wore the skin of the dead woman and who personated the Mother of the Gods watched them plundering the contents of the basket, and when they had done he ran after them as if in pursuit, while all the spectators accompanied his movements with loud cries, and when he passed them in his course they spat at him and hurled at him whatever they happened to have in their hands. The King himself took part in this affray and returned to his palace at a run. All did the same, and abandoned the representative of the Mother of the Gods with the exception of a few who joined some priests and escorted him to a place called Tocititlan, that is, “Near our Grandmother”. There the representative of the goddess stripped off the woman's skin and hung it on a tower or keep that stood on the spot. There it was stretched out with the head up and the arms open, in full view of the road. Such was the end of the festival of the Mother of the Gods.39

Meaning of the custom of choosing men and women to personate gods or goddesses and putting them to death.

The custom of choosing a living woman to represent a goddess, treating her as the divinity in person, and afterwards killing her and clothing in her skin a man who there-upon figured as the representative of the deity, was by no means confined to the worship of the Mother of the Gods; it was a common piece of Aztec ritual, in which men as well as women played the fatal part of gods and came to the same tragic end.40 The only probable explanation of such barbarous rites would seem to be that they were based on a belief in the natural mortality of the gods, and were intended to prolong the lives of the deities for the good of the world by annually killing their human representatives and then simulating their resurrection, this pretence of resurrection being effected by clothing a living man in the skin of the slain representative of the deity. In this way, to take the particular instance with which we are here concerned, the Mexicans may have imagined that they annually endowed with a fresh lease of life the important Earth-goddess, the Mother of the Gods. But it is not clear why apparently a man was always chosen to personate a goddess come to life again by wearing the bloody skin of the woman who had died in the character of the divinity; rather we should expect that, as one woman acted the divine death, so another woman should act the divine resurrection.

• 1.

  Rev. John Heckewelder, “An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighbouring States”, Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society, i. (Philadelphia, 1819) pp. 241 sq.

• 2.

  Quoted by J. Heckewelder, op. cit. pp. 243 sq. The Mohawks were a tribe of Iroquois: their proper name was Caniengas.

• 3.

  Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, prepared for the press by Edwin James, M. D. (London, 1830), pp. 193 sq. That the Indians among whom Tanner lived as a captive were Ottawas appears to follow from his statement (p. 36) that his captor was a kinsman of Net-no-kwa, the principal chief of the Ottawwaws (Ottawas).

• 4.

  P. Radin, “The Winnebago tribe”, Thirty-seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1923), p. 286.

• 5.

  P. Radin, op. cit. pp. 440 sq.

• 6.

  P. Radin, op. cit. p. 536.

• 7.

  P. Radin, op. cit. p. 501; compare id. pp. 449, 459, 469.

• 8.

  G. B. Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians (New Haven, 1923), ii. 88, 89.

• 9.

  G. B. Grinnell, “Tenure of land among the Indians”, American Anthropologist, ix. (1907) p. 3, note ¹.

• 10.

  A. S. Gatschet, The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon (Washington, 1890), p. xci (Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. ii. Part I.).

• 11.

  A. S. Gatschet, op. cit. p. xcii.

• 12.

  Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians”, Twenty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1904), pp. 20, 23, 24.

• 13.

  Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, “Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians”, Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1915), p. 37.

• 14.

  J. W. Fewkes, “Hopi Katcinas”, Twenty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1903), p. 55.

• 15.

  De Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des Iles Antilles Seconde Edition (Rotterdam, 1665), p. 469.

• 16.

  De la Borde, Relation de l’ origine, mœurs, coustumes, religion, guerres et voyages ties Caraibes sauvages des Isles Antilles de l’ Amerique, p. 38 (in Recueil de divers Voyages faits en Afrique et en Amerique, Paris, 1684).

• 17.

  J. Gumilla, Histoire naturelle, civile et geographique de l’ Orenoque (Avignon, 1758), i. 175.

• 18.

  Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, vol. i. p. 49, Markham's translation (Hakluyt Society, London, 1869–1871); J. de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, vol. ii. p. 304, Grimston's translation (Hakluyt Society, London, 1880).

• 19.

  P. J. de Arriaga, La Extirpation de la Idolatria en el Peru (Lima, 1920), p. 20. The original edition of this work was printed at Lima in 1620.

• 20.

  E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. (Oxford, 1892) p. 467.

• 21.

  Chr. de Molina, “The Fables and Rites of the Yncas”, in The Rites and Laws of the Yncas, translated and edited by C. R. Markham (Hakluyt Society, London, 1873), p. 56. The prayer is somewhat differently translated by E. J. Payne (l.c.). In particular he translates Pachamama by “Mother of all things” rather than by Mother Earth, on the ground that pacha “appears to be in its origin a collective term, simply denoting many colligated objects of thought, and hence may be translated ‘things’. Employed to designate the visible things around the speaker, it is equivalent to “world” (op. cit. p. 456). While he admits that the Earth was invoked under the name of Pachamama, he holds that the true translation of the title is “Mother of (all) things”, and adds that “Mother Earth” would be Mamapacha. Yet he notes that the form Mamapacha is found occasion, ally, but rarely; it is used for example by Arriaga, an excellent authority (see above, p. 432).

• 22.

  E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. 467.

• 23.

  E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. 458. The worship of Pachamama has left some traces of itself among the christianized Indians of Bolivia. See R. Paredes, Mitos, Superticiones y Supervivencias populares de Bolivia (La Paz, 1920), pp. 38 sqq.

• 24.

  B. de Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, traduite et annotée par D. Jourdanet et R. Simeon (Paris, 1880), pp. 18, 68, 134; Diego Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España (Mexico, 1867-1880), ii. 185, 187; E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. 464, 468.

• 25.

  D. Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, ii. 187.

• 26.

  E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. 464, 468; T. A. Joyce, Mexican Archælogy (London. 1914), pp. 43.

• 27.

  J. de Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana (Madrid, 1723), ii. 275.

• 28.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. p. 18.

• 29.

  D. Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, ii. 187 sq.

• 30.

  B. de Sahagun op. cit. p. 134.

• 31.

  D. Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, ii. 188.

• 32.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 133 sq.

• 33.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. p. 134; D. Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, ii. 188.

• 34.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. p. 135.

• 35.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 135 sq.

• 36.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 136 sq.

• 37.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 137 sq.

• 38.

  D. Diego, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, pp. 189 sq.

• 39.

  B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 138 sq. The two fullest accounts of this strange festival are those of B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 18 sq., 68 sq., 133-139, and D. Duran, op, cit. ii. 185-191. The two accounts differ from and supplement each other on many points, but are not necessarily inconsistent. I have combined them in the text, following mainly the account of Sahagun. A much briefer description is given by J. de Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana (Madrid, 1723), ii. 275 sq., which appears to have little or no independent value. A short account of the festival, based on Torquemada's, is given by Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’ Amérique Centrale (Paris, 1857–1859), iii. 523-525; while a very full one, based throughout on Sahagun's and following it closely, is supplied by H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875–1876), iii. 353-359. When Bancroft wrote, the second volume of Duran's work, containing his description of the festival, had not yet been published. E. J. Payne's brief account (History of the New World called America, i. 470) is drawn from Duran alone. I have described the festival elsewhere. See The Golden Bough, Part VI. The Scapegoat, pp. 288-291.

• 40.

  For examples see The Golden Bough, Part VI. The Scapegoat, pp. 275 sqq.