CHAPTER 20

OF THE HORRIBLE SACRIFICES OF MEN THAT THE MEXICANS PERFORMED

Although the Peruvians surpassed the Mexicans in killing children and sacrificing their sons (for I have not read or learned that the Mexicans did this), yet in the number of men that they sacrificed and the horrible way in which they did it the Mexicans surpassed the Peruvians and even every other nation in the world. And so that we may see the great misery in which the devil so blindly held these people I will describe at length their inhuman custom in this regard. First, the men who were sacrificed had been taken in war, and they did not make these solemn sacrifices except with captives; in this, seemingly, they followed the style of the ancients, who according to what some authors say called the sacrifice victima because he had been vanquished, and they also called him hostia, quasi ab hoste because he was an offering made of their enemies, although usage gradually extended both words to any sort of sacrifice. Indeed, the Mexicans sacrificed only captives to their idols, and their usual wars were fought to provide captives for their sacrifices. And so they tried to take their enemies alive when they fought against each other and to capture but not kill them in order to rejoice in their sacrifice. This was the reason given by Moctezuma to the Marqués del Valle when he was asked why, when he was so powerful and had conquered so many kingdoms, he had not subdued the province of Tlaxcala, which was so near. Moctezuma replied to this that there were two reasons why they had not subdued that province, although it would have been easy to do so if they had wished. One was to have a place for the Mexican youth to exert themselves, lest they be reared in idleness and luxury; the other and principal reason was that he had reserved that province in order to have a place to obtain captives to sacrifice to his gods.

The way in which they performed these sacrifices was that they gathered together those who were to be sacrificed at that palisade of skulls I described earlier and performed a ceremony with them at the foot of that palisade. They placed them all in a line at its foot, with many guards surrounding them. Then a priest came out dressed in a short alb with many fringes and descended from the summit of the temple with an idol made of a dough of amaranth and maize, kneaded with honey, whose eyes were green beads and whose teeth were grains of maize. He came with all possible haste down the temple steps and climbed upon a great stone that was set in a very lofty chapel in the middle of the courtyard. The stone was called quauhxicalli, which means "eagle stone." The priest climbed up a little stairway that was opposite the chapel and came down another that was on the other side; always clutching his idol, he went up to where those who were to be sacrificed were standing and walked from side to side, showing that idol to each man individually and saying, "this is your god." And when he had finished showing it to them he descended by the other side of the stairs, and all those who were going to die went in procession to the place where they were to be sacrificed, and there they found the ministers who were going to sacrifice them standing ready. The usual method of sacrifice was to open the chest of the man being sacrificed and, tearing out his heart still half alive, cast him aside to roll down the steps of the temple, which were bathed in blood.

To give a clearer understanding of this, be it known that six sacrificers appointed for this office came to the place of sacrifice: four to hold the feet and hands of the man who was to be sacrificed, another for his throat, and another to cut open the victim's chest and tear out his heart. They called these officials chachalmua, which in our language is the same as a minister of some sacred thing; this was a supreme office and held in great esteem among them and was inherited after the manner of an entailment. The minister who held the office of killing, the sixth of these men, was considered and revered as a supreme priest or pontiff and had a different name according to the difference in the times and solemnities when he sacrificed; also the clothing was different when they came out to exercise their office at different times. The name of their office was papa and topilzin; their apparel and clothing consisted of a red garment like a dalmatic with fringes on its edges, a crown of rich green and yellow feathers on their heads, in their ears something resembling gold earrings with green stones set into them, and under the lip, near the middle of the chin, a piece of jewelry like a little tube, made of blue stone. These six sacrificers had their faces and hands thickly daubed with black; five of them had their hair tightly curled and in disarray, with strips of leather fastened around their heads, and on their foreheads little rolls of paper painted in different colors. They were dressed in white dalmatics embroidered in black. In this garb they looked like figures of the devil himself, and seeing them come out with such a horrible appearance struck great fear into all the people. In his hand the supreme priest held a large flint knife, very sharp and broad; another priest had a wooden collar carved in the likeness of a serpent. When all six were in front of the idol they bowed low before it and ranged themselves in order next to the pyramidal stone that, as I mentioned above, was opposite the door of the idol's chamber. This stone was so sharp pointed that when the victim was thrown on his back on top of it, he was bent over in such a way that when the knife fell on his breast it was very easy to split a man down the middle with it.

After these sacrificers had ranged themselves in order, all those who had been taken in the wars and were to be sacrificed during this festival were brought out and, closely accompanied by guards, were led up those long staircases, all in rows and completely naked, to the place where the ministers were waiting. And as they arrived the six sacrificers took each of them in order, one seizing one foot and another the other, one holding one hand and another the other, and threw him backward over that sharp-pointed stone, where the fifth of these ministers placed the collar over his throat and the high priest used that knife to open his chest with extraordinary speed, tearing out the heart with his hands and holding it up still smoking to the sun, to whom he offered the heart's heat and steam. Then he turned to the idol and threw the heart in its face, and then they very easily sent the victim's corpse rolling down the temple steps, for the stone was placed so close to them that there was not two feet of space between the stone and the top step, and so with a kick they rolled the corpses down the stairs. And in this way they sacrificed all the victims one after another, and, when all were dead and the corpses had been rolled down the stairs, their owners -those by whose hands they had been made prisoner - picked them up and carried them off and distributed them among themselves and ate them, celebrating solemn rites with them. The smallest number of these victims was always above forty or fifty, for some men were very expert in taking captives. All the other nations round about did the same, imitating the Mexicans in their rites and ceremonies in the service of their gods.