"[246-1] In ancient Mexico not only the warriors who were thus
sacrificed on the altar of their country, but with a delicate and
poetical sense of justice that speaks well for the refinement of the
race, also those women who perished in child-birth, were admitted to the
home of the sun. For are not they also heroines in the battle of life?
Are they not also its victims? And do they not lay down their lives for
country and kindred? Every morning, it was imagined, the heroes came
forth in battle array, and with shout and song and the ring of weapons,
accompanied the sun to the zenith, where at every noon the souls of the
mothers, the Cihuapipilti, received him with dances, music, and flowers,
and bore him company to his western couch.[246-2] Except these,
none--without, it may be, the victims sacrificed to the gods, and this
is doubtful--were deemed worthy of the highest heaven.
A mild and unwarlike tribe of Guatemala, on the other hand, were
persuaded that to die by any other than a natural death was to forfeit
all hope of life hereafter, and therefore left the bodies of the slain
to the beasts and vultures.
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