In the consideration of subjects relating to the Indians it is necessary to discriminate between the observances of the aboriginal inhabitants and those of the races who were of foreign origin. Thus with respect to the superstitious and extremely devotional inclinations of the natives in Guatemala and Chiapas, it may be assumed that those instincts belong to the race who dwelt in those lands before they were conquered by the Toltecs and Aztecs; but the customs of sacrificing human beings to the gods together with other acts of barbarity were introduced from North America. The Spaniards considered that the most evident proclivities of the masses of the natives were drunkenness and idolatry. The latter tendency prevailed to an excessive degree. Las Casas states that throughout New Spain the idols were so numerous that they could not be counted. During his journeys he found them in every place and of every kind, in their huts, in the villages, amongst the hills and in the sacred places. The numbers of them, he relates, were infinite. In the sixteenth century the Indians were gradually, but not without difficulty, brought under the control of the Spanish ecclesiastics. The idols were destroyed, and the superstitious practices, especially all those which were connected with the worship of demons, were suppressed. The national instinct of idolatry still remains. There is in the nature of the aboriginal races a religious fervour which apparently forms an integral part of their character. They are also submissive and inoffensive, and it can be understood how any invading and warlike tribe would, without difficulty, conquer and control people having this mild disposition. It is not surprising that a fierce tribe of North American Indians was able to reduce them into a state of servile obedience. The Toltecs and, afterwards, the Aztecs would undoubtedly have introduced into Mexico the barbarous usages which prevailed amongst the tribes dwelling in the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio, and these usages, when grafted upon the vices which existed amongst the natives, may have been the inciting cause of the revolting condition of national demoralisation which was so severely described by Bernal Diaz and other Spanish historians.