Page:Mexican Archæology.djvu/139

Rh living in the underworld, the souls of the dead were not deprived of the light of the sun, since it was supposed to pass through the infernal regions during the night on its journey back to the east. The souls of infants dying still unstained by sin were believed to be received in a special paradise by Tonacatecutli, where they spent their time flitting from flower to flower in the form of humming-birds.

The question of the obsequies of the dead next arises, and we find two methods of disposal practised in Mexico, cremation and inhumation. The first of these appears to be the more characteristic of the hunting tribes, though the account of Sahagun would seem to show that the Chichimec originally practised the latter. This people were said to be extremely long-lived, and protracted ill-health was regarded as so uncanny that if a malady lasted over four or five days, the patient was killed. The Tarascans certainly employed cremation; in the case of the king, the body was laid out by the principal chiefs, who were summoned during his illness, and carried in state by night to a temple, where it was burned. A number of slaves accompanied the procession, playing on tortoise-carapaces and rattles formed of a serrated bone along which a stick was rubbed; these slaves were killed while the pyre was burning, and were buried separately behind the temple. The ashes of the king were made into a mummy-pack with a false head and mask, which was buried seated in a large urn at the foot of the temple steps facing eastward. The grave was roofed with wooden slabs, and earth was heaped upon the top. Those killed in war were also burnt with their bows before the temple, and their ashes buried in urns. Though the wilder Chichimec, as stated above, appear to have simply buried their dead, yet the early Chichimec kings in the valley of Mexico, Xolotl, Nopaltzin and Quinatzin, are said to have been burnt and their ashes deposited in urns in caves. At Teotihuacan, a site