The learned world is already fully acquainted with the falsehood of their histories; reason and later discoveries condemn them. Many years have elapsed, since I first entered into Indian life, besides a good acquaintance with several southern Indians, who were conversant with the Mexican Indian rites and customs; and it is incontrovertible, that the Spanish monks and jesuits in describing the language, religion, and customs, of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, were both unwilling, and incapable to perform so arduous an undertaking, with justice and truth. They did not converse with the natives as friends, but despised, hated, and murdered them, for the sake of their gold and silver: and to excuse their own ignorance, and most shocking, cool, premeditated murders, they artfully described them as an abominable swarm of idolatrous cannibals offering human sacrifices to their various false deities, and eating of the unnatural victims. Nevertheless, from their own partial accounts, we can trace a near agreement between the civil and martial customs, the religious worship, traditions, dress, ornaments, and other particulars of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, and those of the present North American Indians.[89] {197} Acosta tells us, that though the Mexicans have no proper name for God, yet they allow a supreme omnipotence and providence: his capacity was not sufficient to discover the former; however, the latter agrees with the present religious opinion of the English-American Indians, of an universal divine wisdom and government. The want of a friendly intercourse between our northern and southern Indians, has in length of time occasioned some of the former a little to corrupt, or alter the name of the self-existent creator and preserver of the universe, as they repeat it in their religious invocations, YO HE A AH.[90] But with what show of truth, consistent with the above concession, can Acosta describe the Mexicans as offering human sacrifices also to devils, and greedily feasting on the victims! We are told also that the Nauatalcas believe, they dwelt in another region before they settled in Mexico; that they wandered eighty years in search of it, through a strict obedience to their gods, who ordered them to go in quest of new lands, that had such particular signs;—that they punctually obeyed the divine mandate, and by that means found out, and settled the fertile country of Mexico. This account corresponds with the Chikkasah tradition of settling in their present supposed holy land, and seems to have been derived from a compound tradition of Aaron’s rod, and the light or divine presence with the Israelites in the wilderness, when they marched. And probably the Mexican number of years, was originally _forty_, instead of _eighty_.