Identifier: cu31924028701559 (find matches)
Title: Travels amongst American Indians : their ancient earthworks and temples : including a journey in Guatemala, Mexico and Yucatan, and a visit to the ruins of Patinamit, Utatlan, Palenque and Uxmal
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Brine, Lindesay, 1834-1906
Subjects: Indians
Publisher: London : S. Low, Marston & Company
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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exico bythat fierce race. The last human sacrifice offered bythe Pawnees occurred in the year 1837, and in thiscase it is believed that the offering was made to thespirit who caused the land to produce fertile crops. A young girl of fourteen years of age had beencaptured during a war with the Sioux, and it wasdecided that she was to be killed and sacrificed tothis particular Manito. The strange character ofthe method of immolation arrests attention. Thegirl was carefully secured upon a frame-work madeof light poles, raised a few feet above the ground.When she was in the right position for the sacrifice,a fire was kindled beneath, but before the flameshad actually begun to touch her, and precisely at: the moment when it was perceived that the fire wassufiiciently strong to begin to burn her, she was sud-denly killed by a flight of arrows.* She was then * In Chapter xvii it will be seen that the Aztecs or Toltecs inYucatan, also, in certain cases, killed the victim by a flight ofarrows.
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Sha-to-Ko (Blue Hawk). A Pawnek. HUMAN SACRIFICES. 133 taken down from the scaffolding and the flesh wascut into small portions and taken away into thenelds, where the blood was sprinkled over certainparts of the land which had been planted. The fact of a sacrifice so important as that of agu-1 on the verge of womanhood being made to thegod believed to have power over all matters relatingto the growth of corn and other vegetable produce,proves that the Pawnees cultivated the earth to agreater extent than other tribes. Their neighbours,the Dakotas, were more exclusively a hunting race,and their human sacrifices, as far as has been ascer-tained by events that have happened within the pastcentury, were usually made for the purpose ofpropitiation in the more solemn forms of Sun-worship, or of appeasing the anger of evil spirits ordemons when manifested by storms of lightning andthunder. My host told me that during the time he hadlived amongst the Pawnees he had not seen any-thing in their

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