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The victorious cavaliers rushed to the sanctuaries to find that the cross and the image of the Virgin had disappeared from the one they had appropriated, and that in the other, before the grim figure of Huitzilopochtli, lay the usual offering of human hearts, possibly those of their own countrymen!
In one of its out-stretched hands the figure held a bow, and in the other a bunch of arrows; but even without these unmistakable attributes I should have known from the skull and from the serpents' heads that this fierce and hideous idol represented the god Huitzilopochtli: the first divinity, and throughout the whole time that their bloody religion endured, the principal divinity, that the ancient Mexicans adored.
The stone known as the statue of the war-goddess is a huge block of basalt covered with sculptures. The antiquaries think that the figures on it stand for different personages, and that it is three gods, Huitzilopochtli the god of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and Mictlanteuctli the god of hell. It has necklaces of alternate hearts and dead man's hands, with death's heads for a central ornament.
"The old Egyptians celebrated the resurrection of Osiris by a sacrament, eating the sacred cake or wafer after it had been consecrated by the priest, and thereby becoming veritable flesh of his flesh." Dr. Frazer says of the Aztecs, that "twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great god Huitzilopochtli was made of dough, then broken in pieces and solemnly eaten by his worshipers."
Early next day it was taken down and set on its feet in a great hall. Then a priest, who bore the name and acted the part of the god Quetzalcoatl, took a flint-tipped dart and hurled it into the breast of the dough-image, piercing it through and through. This was called "killing the god Huitzilopochtli so that his body might be eaten."
Sahagun, Historia Nueva Espana, Bk. II, ch. i. Bernal Diaz describes how he saw one of these monstrous figures that of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, all inlaid with gold and precious stones; and beside it were "braziers, wherein burned the hearts of three Indians, torn from their bodies that very day, and the smoke of them and the savor of incense were the sacrifice."
It is true that all these things have happened to me, somehow." The magician looked at the tall warrior for a while, and in the dark soft eyes of Miramon Lluagor was a queer sort of compassion. Miramon said, "Yes, Manuel, these portents have marked your living thus far, just as they formerly distinguished the beginnings of Mithras and of Huitzilopochtli and of Tammouz and of Heracles "
A similar pious fear led the Creek and Seminole Indians, as we saw, to adopt the more thoroughgoing expedient of rinsing out their bodies by a strong purgative before they dared to partake of the sacrament of first-fruits. At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed their god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards.
But he was met by several chiefs, who, holding out their emaciated arms, exclaimed, 'Why do you delay so long to put an end to our miseries? Rather kill us at once that we may go to our god Huitzilopochtli, who waits to give us rest from our sufferings! Cortés, moved by the piteous sight, replied that he desired not their death but their submission.
In this oratory for such it evidently was stood a statue, smaller than that in the temple yet still more magnificently arrayed, of the god Huitzilopochtli; before which odious image we were thrown upon our faces by our guards.
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