They feared no doubt to defile the portion of
God in their stomachs by contact with common things. A similar pious
fear led the Creek and Seminole Indians, as we saw, to adopt the
more thoroughgoing expedient of rinsing out their bodies by a strong
purgative before they dared to partake of the sacrament of
first-fruits.
At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed
their god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards. As
a preparation for this solemn ceremony an image of the deity in the
likeness of a man was fashioned out of seeds of various sorts, which
were kneaded into a dough with the blood of children. The bones of
the god were represented by pieces of acacia wood. This image was
placed on the chief altar of the temple, and on the day of the
festival the king offered incense to it. Early next day it was taken
down and set on its feet in a great hall. Then a priest, who bore
the name and acted the part of the god Quetzalcoatl, took a
flint-tipped dart and hurled it into the breast of the dough-image,
piercing it through and through.
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