670 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



When the Spanish missionaries began to catechize the ancient 

 Mexicans they took advantage of their taste for singing and for the 

 theater, and organized representations closely resembling the Mysteres 

 des Enfants Sans Souci and the Confreres de la Passion, which 

 were executed in our churches in the Middle Ages. These mysteries 

 were accompanied by sacred songs which made easier the teaching 

 of the Christian doctrine. 



It is thus Saliagun composed in the Aztec tongue 365 " canticos," 

 one for each day of the year. It would be more correct to say not 

 "canticles" but farces, for the songs, although of a religious char- 

 acter, were often accompanied by gestures and intermingled with 

 dialogues. He had numerous imitators among the Mexicans them- 

 selves, and the memory has not been lost of a great mystery in honor 

 of the Mother of God, due to Don Francisco Placido, governor of 

 Atzcapotzalco. This mystery was successfully represented in one 

 of the celebrated ceremonies in the basilica of Notre Dame de Guada- 

 loupe. 



There should not be forgotten either the Final Judgment of Father 

 Andres de Olmos, represented in the church of Tlaltelolco, in the 

 presence of the first viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, and of Fray 

 Zumarraga, the first archbishop of Mexico (1540). 



These festivals have still another origin besides that which has 

 just been mentioned. In the time immediately following the Span- 

 ish conquest, the conquerors and the monks held dances for their 

 Indian vassals — for the abbeys had vassals, like the seignorial fiefs 

 given to the conquistadors by the kings of Spain — dances recalling 

 more or less exactly those of the ancient Mexicans. 



For the rest, there were religious festivals, and even profane ones— 

 I will speak of them later on — in which the Indians, remembering 

 their conversion to Christianity, came to make honorable amends in 

 some church. To do this, they dressed up in imitation of their an- 

 cestors, danced and sang in accordance with what they had retained 

 or knew of the past ; and all was accompanied by alms for the priests 

 who perceived in this the most indisputable gain for the natives. 

 Later still, when the Indians saw the Spaniards celebrating the car- 

 nival, this old custom came to life, and what was formerly a kind of 

 affirmation, of acknowledgment of vasselage, then a religious festi- 

 val, became only a vague mardi gras or a day of mi-careme. 



These representations, in use until the last day of the Spanish dom- 

 ination, disappeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, dur- 

 ing the political disorders. During the 10 years of the War of 

 Emancipation of New Spain the Indians, like the middle class of 

 people, had other preoccupations than the theater and dances. The 

 Spanish clergy had lost all influence, and the native clergy was only 

 beginning to be organized. 



