UNITY OF RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION THROUGHOUT MEXICO
At the epoch of the Conquest it is abundantly clear that the Aztecâ had succeeded in establishing their tribal cult, enriched with the beliefs of the peoples they had conquered, over a wide area. They had adopted into their pantheon such deities of the surrounding tribes as appealed to their imagination, or were too powerful to be ignored, and actually “imprisoned” many others of lesser puissance, whose idols were kept in confinement in a building within the precincts of the great temple at Mexico-Tenochtitlan.38
Within the historical period but little radical difference existed between the several Mexican cults, which all appear to have been affected by a common influence. We observe, therefore, the phenomenon of certain early religious forms originating under common influences, separated for centuries and profoundly altered by immigrant forces, at length brought together again by the amalgamating powers of conquest under the influence of one central and paramount cult, only, when once more united, to find a common destruction at the hands of the ministers of an alien and invading faith.
At the period of the Conquest, then, we find the Mexican religion relatively homogeneous in character, with a widespread ascendancy, its provincial activities exhibiting differences of little more than local kind. Even in its most far-flung manifestations, indeed, it never showed such variations as permit us to say that the most dissimilar or distant variety of