Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/357

Rh and ferocious, fear was the motive of worship, human sacrifice the only means of placating the gods, and thus religion, which should soften and humanise manners and elevate character, was engulfed in a dreadful superstition, which held the nation in a state of permanent degradation, with the result that the most civilised amongst the Indians of North America were at the same time the most barbarous. The perfect ordering of this system impressed the Spaniards, while its awful rites horrified them.

Their state was well ordered, and, in many respects, governed according to wise and enlightened standards, and that their civilisation was of no mean order is proven by the following factors in it: