Note 284.1 — Chapter XIII · FUNERAL RITES.

But first of all we may take note of some observances among the American aborigines, which, though not connected with funerals, afford us a glimpse of the sacramental character of a feast upon a kinsman’s body. The Totonacas, a tribe of the Mexican Chichimecs, used to slay periodically three of their children and mix the blood with certain herbs from the temple-garden, and the sap of the Cassidea elastica, into the consistency of dough, which was called toyoliayt la quatl (Food of our Life). Every six months all adults of the tribe were required to partake of it as a kind of Eucharist. And the compiler, from whom I take the account, sarcastically adds: “They thus partook of human blood without previous miraculous transformation.” The Cacivos of Peru are also said to sacrifice and eat a voluntary victim every year.284.1 The Aztecs and the peoples allied to them are infamous for the hideous barbarity of their human sacrifices; and indeed it is incalculable what benefits were conferred on these unhappy nations in the softening of manners and the refinement of character, not to mention the salvation of immortal souls, when the sanguinary rites of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli were swept away, to make room for the Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass and the hecatombs of the Holy Inquisition. Among the Aztecs a prisoner of war was esteemed his captor’s son. He was generally sacrificed at the feast of Xipetotec, deity of the goldsmiths, and Huitzilopochtli. The body was returned to the captor, who cut it up and divided it between his superiors, relations and friends, not tasting it himself, because “he counted it as the flesh of his own body.” He gave the skin to be worn for twenty days by another, who went about during that time collecting gifts for the captor. At another festival of Huitzilopochtli a dough statue of the god was made with certain seeds and the blood of children. It was formally “killed” at the conclusion of the ceremonies, by means of a flint-tipped dart, and then cut up and eaten by the male part of the population. This was called the killing and eating of the god.285.1 Nor can we doubt that we have in these rites vestiges of totemistic feasts at which the totem-victim was not improbably represented by a kinsman.