the songs which he left, seventy in number, some of which are
still preserved, breathe a spirit of emancipation from the idolatrous
superstition of his day. He announced that there was one only god, who
sustained and created all things, and who dwelt above the ninth heaven,
out of sight of man. No image was fitting for this divinity, nor did he
ever appear bodily to the eyes of men. But he listened to their prayers
and received their souls.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, _Historica Chichimeca_,
cap. xlix; and Joseph Joaquin Granados y Galvez, _Tardes Americanas_, p.
90 (Mexico, 1778).]

These traditions have been doubted, for no other reason than because it
was assumed that such thoughts were above the level of the red race. But
the proper names and titles, unquestionably ancient and genuine, which I
have analyzed in the preceding pages refute this supposition.

We may safely affirm that other and stronger instances of the kind could
be quoted, had the early missionaries preserved more extensively the
sacred chants and prayers of the natives. In the Maya tongue of Yucatan a
certain number of them have escaped destruction, and although they are
open to some suspicion of having been colored for proselytizing purposes,
there is direct evidence from natives who were adults at the time of the
Conquest that some of their priests had predicted the time should come
when the worship of one only God should prevail. This was nothing more
than another instance of the monotheistic idea finding its expression, and
its apparition is not more extraordinary in Yucatan or Peru than in
ancient Egypt or Greece.

The actual religious and moral progress of the natives was designedly
ignored and belittled by the early missionaries and conquerors. Bishop Las
Casas directly charges those of his day with magnifying the vices of the
Indians and the cruelties of their worship; and even such a liberal
thinker as Roger Williams tells us that he would not be present at their
ceremonies, "Lest I should have been partaker of Satan's Inventions and
Worships."[1] This same prejudice completely blinded the first visitors to
the New World, and it was only the extravagant notion that Christianity
had at some former time been preached here that saved us most of the
little that we have on record.

[Footnote 1: Roger Williams, _A Key Into the Language of America_, p.
152.]

Yet now and then the truth breaks through even this dense