MORGAN.] RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 151 
At the time of their discovery the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico 
generally worshipped the sun as their principal divinity. Although under 
constraint they became nominally Roman Catholic, they still retain, in fact, 
their old religious beliefs. Mr. Miller has sent me some information upon 
this subject concerning the pueblos of Taos, Jemez, and Zia. 
‘ Before the Spaniards forced their religion upon the people, the pueblo 
of Taos had the Sun for their God, and worshipped the Sun as such They 
had periodical assemblages of the authorities and the people in the estufas 
for offering prayers to the Sun, to supplicate him to repeat his diurnal visits, 
and to continue to make the maize, beans, and squashes grow for the sus- 
tenance of the people. ‘The Sun and God,’ said the governor (Mirabal) to 
me, ‘are the same. We believe really in the Sun as our God, but we pro- 
fess to believe in the God and Christ of the Catholic Church and of the 
Bible. When we die, we go to God in Heaven. Ido not know whether 
Heaven is in the Sun, or the Sun is Heaven. The Spaniards required us to 
believe in their God, and we were compelled to adopt their God, their 
church, and their doctrines, willing or unwilling. We do not know that 
under the American Government we may exercise any religion we choose, 
and that the National Government and the church government are wholly 
disconnected. We have very great respect and reverence for the Sun. We 
fear that the Sun will punish us now, or at some future time, if we do evil. 
The modern pueblos have the Sun religion really, but they profess the 
Christian religion, of which they know nothing but what the Catholic religion 
teaches. They always believed that Montezuma would come again as the 
messiah of the pueblo. ‘The Catholic religion has been so long outwardly 
practiced by the people that it could not now, they think, be easily laid 
aside, and the old Sun religion be established, because it is looked upon as 
established by the law of the land, and therefore necessarily practiced. 
Nevertheless, the Indians will always follow and practice, as they do, both 
religions. If,’ said the governor, ‘one Indian here at this pueblo were to 
declare that he intended to renounce and abandon the religion of his fathers 
(the worship of the Sun) and adopt the Christian religion as his only faith, 
and another Indian were to declare that he intended to repudiate the 
Christian religion and adopt and practice only the Sun religion, the former 
