Among primitive people the sacrifice of children is common. In most cases there is some specific result that is desired when the child is sacrificed. In the Tonga Islands in the South Pacific, the sacrifice of the child is called _nawgia_ and strangling is the method adopted, whenever it is found that the ordinary cures do not affect some sick parent. It is said that the natives watch the ceremony of strangling with much pity but that they feel it is better “to sacrifice a child who is at present of no use to society, and perhaps may not otherwise live to be,” than to allow a sick chief to die.[201] On one occasion when the gods had been offended the native priests decreed that the child of Toobo Toa, the chief, should be sacrificed, “on such occasions the child of a male chief being always chosen as being worthier than others,” and a two-year-old child was strangled against the protests of its mother, who tried to conceal it.[202] That the health of the Ynca also led to sacrifice of children is stated by Acosta: “They vsed in Peru to sacrifice yong children of foure or six yeares old vnto tenne; and the greatest parte of these sacrifices were for the affaires that did import the Ynca, as in sickness for his health, and when he went to the warres for victory, or when they gave the wreathe to their new Ynca, which is the marke of a King, as heere the Scepter and the Crowne be. In this solemnitie they sacrificed the number of two hundred children, from foure to tenne yeares of age, which was a cruell and inhumane spectacle. The manner of the sacrifice was to drowne them and bury them with certaine representations and ceremonies; sometimes they cutte off their heads, annointing themselves with the blood from one eare to another.”[203] Acosta also declared that when an ordinary man was sick and believed he would die, his own son was sacrificed to the Sun or to Virachoca. Francisco de Jerez says that the Peruvian Indians sacrificed their own children and tinted the doors of their temples and the faces of their idols with the blood. [Illustration: THE INCAS OFFERING A HUMAN SACRIFICE TO THEIR CHIEF (FROM “MOEURS DES SAUVAGES AMERIQUAINS,” BY P. LAFITAU, PARIS, 1724)] [Illustration: AMERICAN SAVAGES SUBSTITUTING AN ANIMAL FOR A HUMAN SACRIFICE (FROM “MOEURS DES SAUVAGES AMERIQUAINS,” BY P. LAFITAU, PARIS, 1724)] “They sacrifice each month their own children, and with their blood smear the faces of the idols and the doors of the temples, and sprinkle the blood over the graves of their dead.”[204] It is certain, according to the story of Sieur le Moyne de Mourgues, that “in that part of Florida which is near Virginia,—and where the French are under the leadership of Sieur le Laudonnière—the people of this country regard their chiefs as sons of the Sun and, for this reason, they pay them divine honours, sacrificing to them their first-born.”[205]