The myths relating to the great tribal gods, if faithfully examined, assist us in forming a definite idea of the character of early religious conceptions in Anahuac. The hymns to the gods are, perhaps, a surer indication of the trend of popular faith and probably date from a more archaic period than do the myths, which, as we possess them, nearly all exhibit signs of priestly alteration. In several of these chants we assuredly arrive at the whole significance of Mexican religion, which in its essence, and as seen at the Conquest period, was nothing more than a vastly elaborated rain-cult, similar in its general tendency to that still prevalent among the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico and Arizona, yet broader in outlook, of a higher complexity and productive of a theology and an ethical system of greater sophistication and scope. The religion of the Pueblo peoples is, indeed, the poor and degenerate descendant of the bizarre and picturesque ritual of the Mexicans, or, more probably, had a common origin with it. Through the researches and personal exertions of many well-equipped Americanists the entire ritual of this modern pluvial cult is now well known and deserves the closest study from students of Mexican religion, as providing them with comparative and analogical material of the first importance. [11] We shall keep on the trail of a very definite clue if we attempt to descry in such evidences as we possess of archaic Mexican faith the signs of an incipient rain-cult, having its origin in a settled agricultural existence. If we glance at the general characteristics of the numerous members of the Mexican pantheon, we find that very readily and quite naturally they group themselves into three great classes: (a) creative deities, which may be regarded as the outcome of late theological speculation, and which may, accordingly, be passed over in this place; (b) gods of growth; and (c) gods developed from specific objects and deified heavenly bodies, some of which latter were developed from gods of the chase. The “original” deities of Mexico would seem, therefore, to have presided over vegetable growth and conferred on their votaries good luck in the hunt. But as time passed, these latter also took on the attributes of gods of the cereal and vegetable food-supply, and, indeed, often seriously contested the status of the true growth-gods in the elaborate nature of the symbolic vegetal ceremonial with which their festivals were celebrated.