were nursing their wrath against the Mormons, and the faces of the men were painted in a way that perhaps seemed terrible to them, but which was laughable to me. Some had the face divided into three or four sections by different colours, for example: forehead white; left side of face, black; right side, red; with lines of each colour over the others. Ordinarily the number of wounds received in battle is recorded by streaks of vermilion. [Illustration: SHRINE OF THE WAR-GODS, TWIN MOUNTAIN, PUEBLO OF ZUÑI, NEW MEXICO] Before the acquisition of firearms and the horse, and the crowding back of tribe against tribe by the whites, wars were in some parts rather infrequent. Night attacks were never made. Captives were often compelled to run the gauntlet, and if they did it bravely they were adopted into the tribe. Frequently a captive was given his life without this ordeal if he would join the tribe of the captors and fill the place of some slain warrior. Cooper utilises this custom where Deerslayer is offered his liberty if he will take the wife and family of one he has killed and become a member of the tribe. Such adoption always rested, however, on the consent of the kindred of the deceased. The war-gods were propitiated by acts of cruelty, and by human sacrifices from among the prisoners. It is related by Bancroft[324] that on one occasion the Iroquois sacrificed an Algonquin woman, exclaiming, “Areskoni, to thee we burn this victim; feast on her flesh and grant us new victories.” Her flesh was afterwards eaten as a religious rite. Cannibalism of this kind prevailed in many tribes; _always, ostensibly_, a religious ceremony, not a means of satisfying hunger. The victims were often richly feasted and generously treated for some time before being executed. Payne holds that the Aztec custom of consuming captives at religious feasts was in reality a means of procuring animal food resulting from the limited meat supply, and that perpetual war was waged mainly to obtain prisoners for this purpose.[325] Prescott says: “Indeed the great object of war, with the Aztecs, was quite as much to gather victims for their sacrifices as to extend their empire.”[326] [Illustration: A COSTUME OF A HĀMATSA IN THE KWAKIUTL CANNIBALISTIC CEREMONY, WHERE SLAVES AND CORPSES WERE FORMERLY DEVOURED The head and neck rings were from his mother’s tribe, the Tongass (Tlinkit) ] [Illustration: MEXICAN OPERATING THE PALM-DRILL FOR FIRE Fac-simile outline of an original Mexican painting presented to the University of Oxford by Archbishop Sand ]