RELIGIOUS USES OF PRECIOUS STONES 255
pository
and "feed" it by rubbing over it the blood of a deer. This goes to
prove that the stone, as a fetich, was considered to be a living entity
and as such to require nourishment.48
Precious
stones have been everywhere regarded as especially appropriate
offerings at the shrine of a divinity, for the worshipper naturally
thought that what was most valuable and beautiful in his eyes must also
be most pleasing to the divinity he worshipped. However, we rarely find
the usage which was remarked by Francisco Lopez de Gomara among the
Indians of New Granada about the time of the Spanish Conquest.47 These
natives "burned gold and emeralds" before the images of the sun and
moon, which were regarded as the highest divinities. Certainly to use
precious stones for a "burnt offering" was an original and curious
idea, although we have abundant proof that pearls were offered in this
way by the mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley. In this case great
quantities of pearls were burned at the obsequies of the chiefs of the
tribes, or at those of any one belonging to the family of a chief.
In
ancient Mexico the lapidaries adored the four following divinities as
their tutelary gods: Chiconaui Itz-cuintli ("nine dogs"), Naualpilli
("noble necromancer"), Macuilcalli ("five horses"), and Cintectl ("the
god of harvest"). A festival was celebrated in honor of the three
last-named divinities when the zodiacal sign called chiconaui itzcuintli was
in the ascendant. A feminine divinity represented this sign and to her
was attributed the invention of the garments and the orna-
""
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico," ed. by Frederick Webb
Hodge; Smithsonian. Inst., Bur. of Am. Ethn. Bull. 30. Pt. I, p. 458;
Washington, 1910.
""Historia de las Indias," in "Bib. de autores espafioles," vol. xxii, Madrid, 1852, p. 202.
