124 G. F. Ruxton, Esq., on the Migration 



this seeming abjuration of the idolatry of their fathers, is 

 alone for the purpose of conciliating their conquerors, and 

 in order that no hindrance or molestation should be offered 

 to the observances of their secret faith. 



Like the Aztecs, they have their high priests, so called at 

 least by the exaggerating writers of the Spanish Conquest, 

 but which functionaries would be better known to all conver- 

 sant with the American Indian, as '* medicine or mystery 

 men ;" the '* Obi" of the African negro. 



Indeed if all the erudite historians, who have so elaborate- 

 ly worked up into the most interesting romance the meagre 

 materials afforded by Mexican history, had so simplified their 

 work as to write only that which they conscientiously be- 

 lieve to be true, or in other words, had called things by their 

 proper names, instead of being puzzled and mystified at the 

 strange anomaly of civilisation and barbarism exhibited by 

 the ancient Mexicans ; if they had been described to be 

 what in truth they were, and no more, a tribe of Indians 

 dwelling in lodges of stone, and living by agriculture, we 

 should be the better able to appreciate their real state, and 

 to draw a comparison between the pomp and glory of the 

 Court of Montezuma, emperor of the Mexicans, and the same 

 regal splendour displayed at the present time in the Medi- 

 cine Lodge of Tum-ga-cosh or Buffalo Belly, the chief of the 

 mighty nation of the Comanche. 



Fray Augustin Ruiz and Venabides visited New Mexico 

 as early as the close of the sixteenth century (about the year 

 1585), and they declare that upwards of a million of Indians 

 sought baptism at their hands, impelled by the commands they 

 had received from a white woman, who had for many years 

 been preaching amongst them. It seems that on a rosary 

 being presented to some of these Indians, on which was a 

 medallion bearing the effigy of some female saint, they im- 

 mediately recognised the robes in which she was represented, 

 as being of the same form and colour as those worn by the 

 female who had instructed them, and who made her appea- 

 rance from the direction of the Moquis country. 



It is singular that the Moquis are called by the American 

 trappers and hunters, who visit their country in the course of 



