Men offer up human victims to their gods because they think that the gods are gratified by such offerings. In many cases the gods are supposed to have an appetite for human flesh or blood.[33] The Fijian gods are described as “delighting in human flesh.”[34] Among the Ooryahs of India the priest, when offering a human sacrifice to the war-god Manicksoro, said to the god, “The sacrifice we now offer you must eat.”[35] Among the Iroquois, when an enemy was tortured at the stake, the savage executioners leaped around him crying, “To thee, Arieskoi, great spirit, we slay this victim, that thou mayest eat his flesh and be moved thereby to give us henceforth luck and victory over our foes.”[36] Among the ancient nations of Central America the blood and heart of the human victims offered in sacrifice were counted the peculiar portion of the gods.[37] Thus, in Mexico, the high-priest, after cutting open the victim’s breast, tore forth the yet palpitating heart, offered it first to the sun, threw it then at the feet of the idol, and finally burned it; sometimes the heart was placed in the mouth of the idol with a golden spoon, and its lips were anointed with the victim’s blood.[38]
[33] See Lippert, Seelencult, p. 77 sqq.; Schneider, Naturvölker, i. 190.
[34] Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 195.
[35] Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 211. Cf. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 120 (Kandhs).
[36] Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 142.
[37] Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 307, 310, 311, 707 sqq.
[38] Clavigero, op. cit. i. 279.
But the human victim is not always, as has been erroneously supposed,[39] intended to serve the god as a food-offering. The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, as Major Ellis observes, maintain that their gods require not only food, but attendants; “the ghosts of the human victims sacrificed to them are believed to pass at once into a condition of ghostly servitude to them, just as those sacrificed at the funerals of chiefs are believed to pass into a ghostly attendance.”[40] Cieza de Leon mentions the prevalence of a similar belief among the ancient Peruvians. At the hill of Guanacaure, “on certain days they sacrificed men and women, to whom, before they were put to death, the priest addressed a discourse, explaining to them that they were going to serve that god who was being worshipped.”[41]
[39] Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 75 sq. Idem, Prolegomena of the History of Religions, p. 132. Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 189. Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, p. 60, n. 1. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, p. 603.
[40] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 169.