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56 American ethnography. The more cultured section of the first immigrants, who separated from the main body and departed eastwards, are represented as taking with them their god and leader, whose image was kept veiled in cloth; and allusion has already been made to the statement that Quetzalcoatl's image was in early days kept similarly covered. Moreover a legend dealing with the Aztec migration states that at an early stage of their wanderings two bundles appeared miraculously in their camp, each of which was appropriated by a section of the migrants. In one was found a jewel, and its possessors finally became the inhabitants of Tlaltelolco, while the other contained fire-sticks (continually associated with hunting and stellar deities), and fell to the eventual inhabitants of Tenochtitlan. Further evidence of the fetish nature of such gods is seen in the stories which tell of struggles between different tribes for the possession of a certain god. Thus we have the story of the capture of the god of the immigrant hill-hunters by the sedentary population around lake Pazcuaro in Michoacan; and the seizure by the Chichimec of the two-headed deer of Camaxtli which was his war-fetish. The same idea survived in the provision by the Mexicans within the temple precincts of a prison-house where the idols of conquered tribes were kept in durance; and it was no doubt based upon the belief that once a people was deprived of the god who was its personal leader, its prestige and power must necessarily vanish.

The worship of so many deities involved a cult of no little elaboration, and it must be remembered that apart from the festivals which were observed universally, each tribe, each province, each quarter in Mexico, each guild (often the remains of a former tribe), and each family were punctual in the observance of various domestic and private rites; and though most of the literature which has come down to us is concerned with the national worship, yet no doubt the domestic cults, for