CHAPTER II—MEXICO: THE GODS
THE question of the religion of the Ancient Mexicans is by no means easy to approach. At the time of the Spanish conquest the Mexican pantheon was still in a state of great confusion, and the number of tribal cults of which it was composed had not yet been reduced to a homogeneous whole. Gods whose functions were similar or associated had been invested with the attributes one of the other, and there is reason to suspect that the names of deities whose importance was relatively recent had been incorporated in the earlier myths by a priesthood jealous of the dignity of its own particular god. The history of the valley of Mexico, as far as it can be traced, consists, as we have seen, of the conquest from time to time of the sedentary agricultural population by ruder and more warlike tribes from the hills. The victors, conscious of their cultural inferiority, in adopting to the best of their ability the mode of life of the conquered, were careful also to propitiate the local gods, whom they regarded as responsible for the superior culture of the latter; though they attempted, as far as they dared, to subordinate them to their own chief deity. These hill-tribes of primitive hunters seem to have worshipped each a god of its own, who was regarded as its personal leader, who presided over war and the chase and who appears to have been connected with the stars and occasionally with the sun. This connection with the sun was, I am inclined to think, an afterthought, and not universal, arising from the belief that war was instituted in order to provide the sun with blood-offerings. To this
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