11 Erskine, Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 248.
12 Schoolcraft, History, &c. of the Indian Tribes, part v. p. 93.
the Virgin Mary, and Quetzalcoatl was St. Thomas! 13 Such affirmers are to be cautiously followed. Finally, it is a quite significant fact that while some point to the pains which the Peruvians took in embalming their dead as a proof that they looked for a resurrection of the body, Acosta expressly says that they did not believe in the resurrection, and that this unbelief was the cause of their embalming.14 Garcilaso de la Vega, in his "Royal Commentaries of the Peruvian Incas," says that when he asked some Peruvians why they took so great care to preserve in the cemeteries of the dead the nails and hair which had been cut off, they replied that in the day of resurrection the dead would come forth with whatever of their bodies was left, and there would be too great a press of business in that day for them to afford time to go hunting round after their hair and nails.15 The fancy of a Christian is too plain here. If the answer were really made by the natives, they were playing a joke on their credulous questioner, or seeking to please him with distorted echoes of his own faith.
The conceits as to a future life entertained by the Mexicans varied considerably from those of their neighbors of Peru. Souls neither good nor bad, or whose virtues and vices balanced each other, were to enter a medium state of idleness and empty content. The wicked, or those dying in any of certain enumerated modes of death, went to Mictlan, a dismal hell within the earth. The souls of those struck by lightning, or drowned, or dying by any of a given list of diseases, also the souls of children, were transferred to a remote elysium, Tlalocan. There was a place in the chief temple where, it was supposed, once a year the spirits of all the children who had been sacrificed to Tlaloc invisibly came and assisted in the ceremonies. The ultimate heaven was reserved for warriors who bravely fell in battle, for women who died in labor, for those offered up in the temples of the gods, and for a few others. These passed immediately to the house of the sun, their chief god, whom they accompanied for a term of years, with songs, dances, and revelry, in his circuit around the sky. Then, animating the forms of birds of gay plumage, they lived as beautiful songsters among the flowers, now on earth, now in heaven, at their pleasure.16 It was the Mexican custom to dress the dead man in the garb appropriated to the guardian deity of his craft or condition in life. They gave him a jug of water. They placed with him slips of paper to serve as passports through guarded gates and perilous defiles in the other world. They made a fire of his clothes and utensils, to warm the shivering soul while traversing a region of cold winds beyond the grave.17 The following sentence occurs in a poem composed by one of the old Aztec monarchs: "Illustrious nobles, loyal subjects, let us aspire to that heaven where all is eternal and corruption cannot come. The horrors of the tomb are but the cradle of the sun, and the shadows of death are brilliant lights for the stars." 18
13 Squier, Serpent Symbol in America, p. 13.
14 Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, book v. ch. 7.
15 Book ii. ch. 7.
16 Clavigero, History of Mexico, book vi. sect. 1.
17 Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. ch. 6.
18 Ibid. sect. 39.