318 
Dakota Indian can have for himself; but the highest form is 
self-immolation, and exists in the Sun-dance. Previously to 
the latter the rite of purification is performed so as to make 
him and his sacrifice successful.* 
The natives of Virginia had great reverence for their 
priests ;+ the Narragansett Indians of New England, the 
Natchez of Louisiana,} the Creeks and Cherokees had temples, 
in which they kept perpetual fires burning, priests, and altars 
for sacrifice; and, among the external ceremonies of the 
Indians of Indiana and Ohio, were sacrifices for the purpose 
of propitiating the Deity.$ 
One great class of mounds left by the Mound Builders is 
that for religious purposes, embracing altar or sacrificial 
mounds and temple mounds. Both are very numerous. The 
altar mounds contain altars, ashes, and often the remains of 
sacrifices and sacrificial articles, some of which are the most 
valuable articles which they had; one having been found in 
Jowa which contained figures cut in stone, showing a sacri- 
ficial scene, in which three human victims were offered to the 
Sun. Some of the temple mounds are very large, the largest 
of all being near Hast St. Louis, 700 by 500 feet at the base, 
450 by 200 feet at the top, and 90 feet high.|| 
(4) Other Forms of Worship.— Bancroft devotes five octavo 
pages§ to a ceremony of purification of infants by water 
among the Mexicans somewhat akin to infant baptism at the 
time the child is named. It may or may not have been a relic 
of primitive baptism, but it was an emblem of purification 
from sin, and several prayers were offered in connexion. It 
was done by the midwife. Among the Mayas it was done by 
the priest, whereby the child received a purer nature, without 
. which it could not live a good life or get married. He also 
says that ten or twelve writers speak of baptism in some form, 
and that the use of water, more or less sanctified or holy, in a 
rite avowedly purifical for inherent sin, runs back to a period 
far pre-Christian among the Mexicans, Mayas, and other 
American nations.** It was also common among the Peru- 
vians west of the Andes in a certain form, though it had little 
in common with the Christian sacrament, except the giving of 
* Gospel Among the Dakotas, pp. 87, 88. © 
+ Hayward’s Book of All Religzons, p. 214. 
L Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. ii. 
§ McCoy’s History of Indian Missions. 
|| Tschudi’s Peruvian Antiquities, chap. viii. 
4 Native Races of the Pacrfic, vol. ii. chap. v. 
** Tbid., vol. iii. p. 49. 
