Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/78

64 "This day, my fathers, ye animal gods, although this country be filled with enemies, render me precious. . . . Oh, give ye shelter of my heart from them."

The faith of the Zunis, with its half-conscious metaphysics, its devoutness, and its magic ritual, may seem a kind of introduction to the magic, the ritual, and the piety of the ancient Aztecs. The latter may have grown, in a long course of forgotten ages, out of elements like those of the Zuni practice, combined with the atrocious cruelty of the warrior tribes of the north.