EELLS. 317 
possessions, 200,000 llamas having been offered at one time ; 
and sometimes even their children were offered. Their 
temples were numerous, large, and costly, whose ruins still 
exist, and their priests also numerous, held in great esteem, 
carefully educated, and under a high priest who claimed to 
be a descendant of the Sun.* 
Habel in his Sculptures of Guatemalat gives several 
figures, which have been referred to in the section on prayer, 
and in connexion with them are men in the act of offering 
sacrifices, fierce beasts, and human victims, with the altar and 
sacrificial knife. 
The priests, sacrifices, and temples of Mexico, Zapotepec, 
and the Magas and Toltecs have become somewhat famous. 
When discovered, their temples and high places reminded one 
of Babylon, there having been two thousand in the city of 
Mexico, and forty thousand (as estimated) in the whole 
country, with an ecclesiastical body estimated at nearly a 
million! Their sacrifices included human beings, twenty 
thousand of whom were offered annually in the city of Mexico, 
and eighty thousand at the dedication of one temple.t 
The lst of September is a red-letter day among the 
Karoks of California, when the great dance of propitiation is 
held, at which all the tribe are present, and also deputations 
from other tribes, and in the valley of the Geysers stands an 
image of stone, which tradition says was made there by an 
old prophet of the Ashochimi, as a propitiation for sin on 
account of earthquakes and sickness.$ 
Cushing speaks plainly of this belief in sacrifices, of the 
priests and temples among the Zunis,|| Dunn testifies to the 
idea of sacrifices among the tribes around the mouth of the 
Columbia River, the Knistenaux, and the Rocky Mountain 
Indians,§] and the writer has found the same among the 
Skokomish and Clallam Indians of Washington Territory. 
Among the Dakotas the most primitive and ancient form 
of worship is sacrifice. It is the foundation of all their 
ancient ceremonies, and shows itself in every-day life. It 
may be something small, as paint, or the down of the female 
swan, or it may be dog-meat, one of the greatest luxuries a 
* Tschudi’s Peruvian Antiquities, pp. 147, 157,197, 241, 288. 
+ Appleton’s American Cyclopedia, art. “Am. Antiquities.” 
{ Bancroft’s Native Races of the Pacijic. 
§ Contributions to N. A. Ethnology, pp. 28, 200. 
|| Popular Science Monthly, June, 1882. 
{| Dunn, On Oregon Territory, pp. 71, 90, 219. 
VOL. XIX. 2A 
