How our “indigenous betters” just to the south ushered in each New Year with mass infanticide—“they killed many children…tearing out their hearts”, & infant cannibalism—“once dead they cooked & ate them”—as described in an eyewitness mid-16th century chronicle
From, Bernadino de Sahagún. A History of Ancient Mexico, 1547-1577, [translated by Fanny R. Bandelier from the Spanish version of Carlos Maria de Bustamante, Fisk University Press, 1932] Volume 1, pp. 51,72:
“The first month of the year was called amongst the Mexicans Atlacahualco, and elsewhere Quavitelola… On this first day of the month they celebrated a festival…[W]e may safely say this feast was probably held in honor of all of them [i.e., the gods of rain, water, and wind]…In this month they killed many children; they sacrificed them in many places on the top of mountains, tearing out their hearts in honor of the gods of rain, so they might grant them abundant rain…according to others it was in honor of the goddess of waters; still others pretended it was in honor of the god of winds…If the children who were to be killed cried a great deal and shed many tears they were glad of it, for they took it as a prognostication of a great deal of rain for that year…[T]hey searched for a great many infants, buying them from their mothers and choosing especially those who had two twisted tufts of hair on the head and were born under a lucky sign, saying that those were a more agreeable sacrifice to the gods to make them grant water at the opportune time. They carried these infants up to the high mountains to kill, where they had made the solemn vow to offer sacrifice. There, on those mountain-tops, they tore out the hearts of some of the infants, while others they did it [i.e., tore out their hearts] in certain places of the lagune of Mexico [a fertile region of Northern Mexico]. One of those places was Tepetzinco, a well-known hill in the lagune; another hill in the lagune was called Tepepulco, where they killed a large number of infants each year, and once dead they cooked and ate them.”
