148 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



number. It is asserted that, after the conquest by the Spaniards, the Franciscan 

 monks, alone, destroyed in eight years, more than twenty thousand idols.* Their 

 temples were in proportion ; Torquemada estimated them at forty thousand, and 

 Clavigero thinks this estimate is much within bounds. They had their fasts, 

 penances and feasts, their monks, vestals and priests of different orders. But what 

 is most surprising in a nation possessing any claim to refinement, was their 

 numberless human sacrifices; men, women and children were put to death by 

 every possible variety of suffering, and there seems to be no doubt that the blood 

 of no less than twenty thousand human beings w^as annually devoted to the gods 

 of the Mexicans. When to this account we add the appalling fact that the bodies 

 of the victims were devoured at the feasts of the people, we are compelled to 

 acknowledge that no nation on the earth has ever presented such a combination of 

 revolting enormities. f It is but justice, however, again to remark, that these 

 abominations were not practised by the Toltecas and the other ancient nations of 

 Anahuac, but by their successors and perhaps conquerors of the Aztec family. 



We pass over other traits of barbarism, which prove, that while the intel- 

 lectual character of the Mexicans was far exalted above that of the other nations 

 of North America, their moral perceptions appear to have been blunted in 

 proportion : all their institutions, religious and civil, were established and main- 

 tained with bloody rites, which must have constantly operated to deaden and 

 obliterate the finer feelings of our nature. Familiarity with death leads to 

 indifference of life, and hence, perhaps, the superior courage of the Mexicans: 

 for notwithstanding the aspersions of De Pauw and others, these people yielded to 

 the Spaniards only after a valiant struggle. De Pauw asserts that Mexico was 

 conquered by Cortez with 450 vagabonds, and fifteen horses, badly armed. This 

 is a great error; for every reader of American history is aware, that Cortez 

 enlisted against the doomed empire, the people of various tributary and discontented 

 provinces ; so that in place of attacking Mexico with 450 men, he commenced his 

 invasion with 200,000. Cortez acknowledges the multitude of his allies, and 

 admits that at the siege of the capital, they fought against the Mexicans with even 

 greater ardor than the Spaniards themselves. The siege of the city lasted seventy- 

 four days, during which time the inhabitants defended themselves with the utmost 

 bravery ; nor did they surrender until 50,000 of their number had been destroyed 

 by famine and the sword, and seven of the eight parts of their city had fallen into 

 the hands of the enemy. 



* Hist, of Mexico, B. VI, p. 26. (Cullen.) t Clavigero, Hist, of Mexico, p. 59. 



