I.

Introduction

Pre-Columbian Religions, religions of the native cultures of Mesoamerica, the Andes, and adjacent regions before they were conquered by Europeans in the 16th century. Most prominent among these cultures were three major civilizations, the Classic-period Maya culture of Mesoamerica (300?-900?), the Aztec Empire (1428-1521) of Mesoamerica, and the Inca Empire (1440?-1532) of the Andes. For more information about Pre-Columbian religions in Native American history, see Native Americans of North America: Spirituality and Religious Practices.

II.

Common Features

The Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations developed independently of each other. Further, the religious heritage of each was heavily influenced by preceding cultures. Nevertheless, despite their historical uniqueness, the Maya, Aztec, and Inca religions had important features in common.

A.

Nature of the Universe

The Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas all believed that the universe was composed of the heavens, the earth's surface, and an underworld. The earth's surface was divided into four quadrants. As in many other archaic cultures, each of the three peoples claimed to inhabit the center of the universe, where the earthly and supernatural realms came together. Because the boundaries between the worlds of nature, human society, and the supernatural were not sharply defined, pre-Columbian religious leaders were essentially shamans, people who were believed to be capable of moving back and forth between the earthly and supernatural realms. This travel between realms was often associated with hallucinatory trances.

B.

Gods and Goddesses

Many Maya, Aztec, and Inca deities were derived from astronomical observations. However, pre-Columbian civilizations identified their deities not only with particular planets and stars, but also with the cyclical movements of the heavens as a whole. Just as the heavenly bodies move and replace each other in specific sectors of the sky, a number of major pre-Columbian deities had shifting, overlapping identities. Consequently, individual gods and goddesses are probably best interpreted not as distinct personages, but as fluid and shifting components of complex supernatural powers.

It is possible that in each of the three major pre-Columbian civilizations the various divine powers were seen as multiple facets of a single supernatural force. Many of the deities incorporated pairs of opposing qualities, such as male/female, day/night, and life/death. If all deities were indeed different expressions of a single divine force, it is likely that the first differentiation in this all-encompassing godhead was that between male and female powers. For example, the Aztecs' highest and most remote deity was Ometeotl (Lord and Lady of Duality). This primeval creator of all things was viewed both as a single being and as a combination of the god Ometecutli and the goddess Omecihuatl.

C.

Religious Leadership and Rituals

For the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas, there was no clear separation of civil and religious life. The king was the primary spiritual leader and served as the principal intermediary between humans and the gods. Rulers were believed to be divine or semidivine beings who traced their descent from one or more of the gods. The cosmic order depended on a reciprocal relationship between humans and the gods, maintained through elaborate ceremonies. Since humans needed favorable treatment from the gods in order to survive, rituals solicited, for example, the help of agricultural deities in order to secure good harvests. However, gods were less clearly differentiated from humans than they are in modern monotheistic religions (see Monotheism), and few, if any, pre-Columbian deities were all-knowing or all-powerful. Many gods required human support and could weaken or die if people did not sustain them by means of sacrifices. The preferred offerings varied, but the most solemn rituals required human sacrifice.

D.

The Destination of Souls

In each of the three major pre-Columbian civilizations, the primary determinant of a person's fate after death was his or her position in life. Rulers, who were divine or semidivine, enjoyed a more glorious afterlife than their subjects. Beyond this basic similarity, conceptions of the afterlife differed among the three cultures, and only the Incas saw the afterlife as a happy experience for most people.

III.

Classic Maya Religion

Sources of information on pre-Columbian religions include both archaeological evidence and written documents (see Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture). The literary sources fall into three broad categories: Spanish chronicles, which are descriptive accounts of native Mesoamerican and Andean history and culture; Spanish colonial administrative records (civil and religious); and the works of native Mesoamerican and Andean authors. In the case of the Mayas, a few preconquest (before the 16th century) codices (bark-paper books) have survived, as has a relatively rich body of native literature starting from the beginning of the Spanish colonial era.

None of the surviving Maya books actually date to the Classic period (about 300 to about 900). All of the known examples were either written during the Post-Classic period (about 900-1540) or based on Post-Classic traditions but transcribed after the Spanish conquest. (The latter include a remarkable epic, the Popol Vuh, which was written secretly in the mid-16th century and rediscovered 300 years later.) There are, however, abundant examples of Classic-period Maya hieroglyphic writing on carved stone monuments and painted pottery (see Hieroglyphs). Recent advances in deciphering Maya glyphs (symbolic figures or characters) have revealed a strong continuity in religious beliefs from the Classic period through the Post-Classic.

A.

The Nature of the Universe

The Mayas believed that the universe had been, and would continue to be, created and destroyed multiple times, and that each such cycle lasted somewhat longer than 5000 years. By their estimate, the current universe had begun in the equivalent of the year 3114 bc and would be destroyed in the equivalent of the year ad 2012. Evidently the Mayas believed that the cycle of creation and destruction would repeat itself forever, with each successive universe being an exact duplicate of the previous one. The Mayas had a complicated calendar that integrated repetitive cycles within each creation with a 365-day solar year. These cycles included a 260-day ritual year, a 584-day year based on the movement of the planet Venus, and others. Individual days were destined to be either lucky or unlucky, and one of the calendar's functions was to serve as a perpetual fortune-telling device.

The Mayas conceived of the earth as the back of a giant caiman (an alligator-like reptile) floating in a pool. The exposed portion of the caiman's back was flat and four-cornered. The corners lay at the cardinal points of the compass, each of which was associated with a color: white for north, red for east, yellow for south, and black for west, with green at the center. Above the earth was a heaven with 13 levels (7 going up to a peak and 6 coming down, like the rising and setting of the sun). Below the earth was an underworld with 9 levels (5 descending and 4 ascending). The entire universe was linked by a green ceiba tree that stood at the center of the world, its branches extending into the heavens and its roots into the underworld. The rulers of Maya city-states, as well as the temples built to honor deceased rulers, could be seen as embodiments of this tree, and thus as physical links between the earth and the supernatural world.

B.

Gods and Goddesses

The Maya pantheon (family of gods) included what seems to be a host of gods and goddesses, one reason being that every god and goddess had four color-direction aspects. The rain god Chac, for example, was actually a composite of four different Chacs of different colors who lived at the corners of the world. Furthermore, every deity of the heavens had a counterpart in the underworld and vice versa; many deities also had counterparts of the opposite sex. For example, the supreme celestial god was Itzamna, the aged patron of culture and learning. Kinich Ahau, the sun god, may have been a youthful aspect of Itzamna, in addition to being his son. Ix Chel and Ix Ch'up were old and young aspects of the moon goddess, the mates and female equivalents of Itzamna and Kinich Ahau, respectively. When Kinich Ahau descended below the horizon at nightfall, he became the Jaguar Lord of the underworld, and Itzamna took the guise of a deity called God D by archaeologists. Instances like these suggest that the many gods and goddesses were actually different manifestations of relatively few divine powers.

C.

Religious Leadership and Rituals

For the Mayas, religious leadership was the responsibility of the kings and nobles. One of the rulers' principal duties was to determine proper courses of action by communicating with their ancestors and the gods in visionary trances. Self-mutilation for the purpose of shedding blood was a central element of vision-seeking rituals. The loss of blood helped to bring on hallucinations, and the shed blood was offered as a sacrifice to the gods. The prophecies provided by the calendrical cycles governed the scheduling of rituals. The most solemn ceremonies were reenactments of the death and rebirth of the gods. In these rituals a ruler or noble who had been captured in battle was dressed as a god and then killed as a sacrificial offering. The capture of high-ranking individuals who could be sacrificed as god-impersonators was the primary goal of warfare among the Maya city-states throughout most of the Classic period.

D.

The Destination of Souls

For the average Maya the prospect of the afterlife was wretched (see Eschatology). After death souls descended into the underworld, called the Place of Fright. It was a cold, damp, foul-smelling region ruled by cruel and fearsome deities. For most souls there was no escape. Deceased Maya rulers, however, could flee the underworld and be reborn as the sun, the moon, or Venus—that is, as an astronomical body that descends below the horizon and then rises again. In being reborn this way, rulers reenacted the deeds of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who defeated the rulers of the underworld in an athletic contest, then rose victorious to the sky, where they were deified as the sun and the moon.

IV.

Aztec Religion

As in the case of the Mayas, a few Aztec codices survive. In addition, after the Spanish conquest, Mesoamerican peoples such as the Aztecs were quick to begin writing in Spanish and to transcribe their own languages into the Roman alphabet. As a result, sources written by native authors are much more common in Mesoamerica than in the Andes.

A.

The Nature of the Universe

Like the Mayas, the Aztecs believed in multiple creations and destructions of the universe, but with important differences. Most notably, the Aztecs thought they were living in the fifth and final cycle of creation, the so-called Fifth Sun. At the end of this cycle everything would be swallowed by eternal darkness, and there would be no Sixth Sun. The ultimate destruction of the universe could not be prevented, but it could be delayed. The Aztecs saw the sun as a warrior who fought a daily battle across the sky against the forces of darkness. As long as the sun remained strong, he would prevail in combat and the universe would survive. The Aztecs believed they could keep the sun strong by nourishing him with a source of vital energy: human blood, preferably the vigorous blood of warriors captured in battle. To the Aztecs, unceasing warfare and human sacrifice were sacred duties upon which the preservation of the universe depended.

Befitting their central role as allies of the sun, the Aztecs thought they lived at the center of the universe. Their earth was divided into four quadrants, each with typical Mesoamerican color-direction symbolism, though the specific pairings of colors and directions were different from those of the Mayas. The four quarters met at the main temple (Templo Mayor) of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. This temple was also the point where supernatural forces from the heavens and the underworld came together. The heavens were composed of 13 ascending levels. The sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars traveled through the lower levels. The upper levels were the homes of winds, storms, colors, and remote gods. The underworld contained 9 levels, all descending, unpleasant, and dangerous.

B.

Gods and Goddesses

The Aztecs, relative newcomers to central Mexico, joined their tribal deities with older Mesoamerican concepts of godhood, including color-direction symbolism and a complicated ceremonial calendar. The result was a pantheon of shifting and overlapping gods and goddesses—actually divine complexes that could take different forms in different ceremonial contexts. Some of these gods were ancient Mesoamerican deities related to fertility and agricultural production, such as the rain god Tlaloc. Others were personages with complicated origins, combinations of heroes and gods from the Mesoamerican historical and mythological pasts. Examples of these god-hero combinations included Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) and Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror), the creators of the fifth universe.

The patron and sponsor of the Aztec empire was Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird on the Left). His origins were obscure, but he probably developed as a combination of hero and god before the Aztecs migrated into central Mexico. During the Aztecs' rise to imperial power he became identified with Tonatiuh, who was the warrior sun, and with the Blue Tezcatlipoca of the south (the young, strong sun of spring and summer). Through this blending, Huitzilopochtli emerged as the sun who defended the universe and had to be fed with human blood. The Templo Mayor, the main temple of Aztec state religion, was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc.

C.

Religious Leadership and Rituals

Aztec rulers, who claimed descent from Quetzalcoatl, were deified during their coronation ceremonies. The king was the most important living link between the earthly and supernatural realms, and he bore primary responsibility for maintaining the order of the universe. However, he rarely appeared before his subjects. Instead, priests presided over most ceremonies. The chief priests of the Templo Mayor presided over the hierarchy of priests. Potential priests, both male and female, were chosen as youths and underwent extensive training.

Most Aztec rituals involved blood sacrifice. Some ceremonies required only self-sacrifice, bloodletting like that practiced by the Mayas. At the other extreme, during the four-day dedication of the Templo Mayor in 1487, at least 10,000 captives were sacrificed. On the whole, Aztec religion increased the scale of human sacrifice far beyond anything previously known in Mesoamerica.

D.

The Destination of Souls

Except for the kings, who were gods, the ultimate destiny of most Aztecs depended on the manner of their deaths, not on their positions in life. Sacrificial victims and warriors who were killed in battle joined the attendants of the sun in his daily battle across the sky. After four years they were reborn as hummingbirds or butterflies. Women who died in childbirth—producing the next generation of warriors—also joined the sun for four years but then became frightening spirits who roamed the world at night. The souls of most dead Aztecs were thought to enter the underworld and start on a difficult downward journey. After four years they reached the lowest level, known as the Place of the Dead. There they dwelled in eternal darkness, emptiness, and oblivion.

V.

Inca Religion

Whereas the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica developed systems of writing, their Andean counterparts did not. As a result, only two Inca accounts by Native American authors survive. Both authors wrote in the second decade of the 17th century, in a mixture of Spanish and native languages. Neither man was ethnically Inca; both traced their ancestry to tribes that had been conquered by the Incas. Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno (translated as Letter to a King, 1978), by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, is a 1200-page letter addressed to the King of Spain, illustrated with the author's own line drawings. It was lost for nearly 300 years and was discovered in the royal library of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1906. The second work is Relación de Antigüedades deste Regno del Pirú (about 1615; An Account of the Antiquities of Peru, 1873), by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, much of which is virtually incomprehensible because the author was only semiliterate. A third figure who could be considered a native author is Garcilaso de la Vega, called El Inca (Spanish for “The Inca”). He was born in Peru, the son of a Spanish father and an Inca mother. However, he went to Spain at the age of 21 and did not write Comentarios Reales de los Incas (1609; Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, 1966), an account of Inca culture and history, until he was an old man.

A.

The Nature of the Universe

Like the Mayas and Aztecs, the Incas believed in previous creations and destructions of the universe. However, the division of cosmological time into major epochs of creation was not a central concern of Inca religion. Instead, the Incas emphasized the arrangement of space into a sacred geography. A crucial aspect of this sacred geography was the concept of huaca. This term referred to any person, place, or thing with supernatural power; almost anything unusual was considered a huaca. Examples ranged from prominent features of the landscape (mountain peaks, stone outcroppings, springs) to oddly shaped or colored pebbles and plants. There were countless huacas in the Inca world, and major ones defined the organization of sacred space.

Cuzco, the Incas' capital, was the center of their universe. More than 300 of the most important huacas in the area around Cuzco were conceived of as lying along 41 lines called ceques. These lines radiated outward from the Coricancha, the principal temple of Inca state religion, and extended to the horizon or beyond. Like the Mayas and Aztecs, the Incas also saw the earth as being composed of four quarters, whose dividing lines intersected in Cuzco. The ceques subdivided the four quarters. Each ceque belonged to one of the quarters, and the care of each huaca on each ceque was assigned to a particular group of people. In this way the ceques helped to coordinate social relations among people, as well as to organize sacred space.

Above the earth were the heavens, while the underworld lay below. Neither the heavens nor the underworld seems to have had the elaborate vertical layering common in Mesoamerican conceptions, but the heavens had a complex geography. Like the earth, the heavens were divided into four quarters, separated by a giant cross formed by the Milky Way as it passed through its zenith. The movement of astronomical bodies through the four quadrants determined the Inca agricultural and ceremonial calendars, and the ceques also served as sight lines for astronomical observations.

B.

Gods and Goddesses

As in other pre-Columbian religions, Inca gods and goddesses actually represented a number of shifting and overlapping divine powers. The upper pantheon contained a creator-sky-weather complex with three principal components: Viracocha, the creator; Inti, the sun god and ancestor of the ruling dynasty; and Illapa, the thunder or weather god. The most important female supernaturals were Pachamama, the earth; Mamacocha, the sea; and Mamaquilla, the moon.

The core of Inca religion was ancestor worship. Ancestors were venerated as protective spirits, and the bodies and tombs of the dead were treated as sacred objects. Many other important huacas were also explicitly identified with the ancestors. For example, some of the most important shrines around Cuzco were believed to be the petrified forebears of the Incas. The bodies of dead rulers were among the holiest huacas in the Inca realm. As sons of Inti and embodiments of Illapa, the mummies of past rulers were the direct, visible links between the Incas and their pantheon. Maintaining these links, and through them the proper order of the universe, required perpetual care of the royal mummies.

C.

Religious Leadership and Rituals

The Inca ruler and the mummies of his predecessors were the most important religious leaders. They were assisted by a hierarchical priesthood headed by the high priest of the Coricancha. Important shrines also had staffs of female attendants who wove cloth and brewed chicha (maize beer) for use in festivals. Most ceremonies involved sacrifices of cloth, chicha, plants, or animals. Human sacrifice was practiced, but only on the most solemn occasions and in times of disaster.

An elaborate ritual life surrounded the mummies of deceased rulers, who were treated as if they were still alive. They were maintained in state in their palaces, and they continued to own the property they had accumulated during their lifetimes. Their descendants managed the mummies' property for them, consulted them as oracles (bearers of messages from the gods), made sacrifices to them, ate and drank with them, took them to visit one another, and brought them out of their palaces to participate in major ceremonies. Much simpler rituals of ancestor worship were practiced in rural areas.

D.

The Destination of Souls

The Incas had a more optimistic view of the afterlife than the Mayas or Aztecs. As protective ancestral spirits, dead Incas continued to play an active role in the world of the living. They revealed themselves through the huacas and were cared for and worshiped by their descendants. The Incas were strongly moralistic, and they believed the souls of virtuous people joined the sun in heaven. Those souls had plenty to eat and drink. They remained connected to their descendants, and their lives continued much as they had on earth. The souls of evildoers went to the underworld, a cold and barren place where there was nothing to eat but stones.

VI.

Native Religions Today

In the centuries following the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru most Native Americans were at least nominally converted to Catholicism (see Roman Catholic Church). The blending of native and Catholic beliefs was a complicated process, and it followed different courses in different areas. In general, the Aztecs made Catholicism the core of a new religion that also incorporated native beliefs, while the Mayas retained native beliefs as the core of their religion and added Catholic elements. The Inca case, perhaps the most complicated of the three, represented an intricate blending of native and Catholic beliefs, aided by certain parallels between the two.

In essence, the Spanish conquest of 1519-1521 destroyed the core of Aztec religion—the cult of warfare and human sacrifice. The Aztecs were no longer able to feed the sun, yet the universe survived, and Huitzilopochtli was discredited. Aztec religion had lost its focus by 1531, when, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to an Aztec man named Juan Diego. Devotion to the Virgin spread rapidly, and within six years 9 million Indians had been baptized as Catholics in central Mexico. Worship of some Aztec gods and goddesses, most notably ancient agricultural deities, persisted. These deities were blended with Catholic saints in the new religion.

In contrast to the Aztec case, when the Spanish began their conquest of the Maya area, Maya religion was already fragmented. The great religious and political centers of the Classic period had been abandoned more than 600 years earlier, and even the Post-Classic centers were in decline. The religion practiced in hamlets and villages emphasized ancient agricultural deities—such as the rain gods (Chacs)—who proved to endure. Maya folk religion still centers on these agricultural deities, and Catholic and native beliefs are more distinct from each other than they are among the descendants of the Aztecs.

The Incas, like the Aztecs, had a central imperial cult: the worship of the royal mummies. However, the Inca imperial cult, like the Mesoamerican worship of agricultural deities, was an expression of the ancient and widespread religious tradition of ancestor worship. The Spanish destroyed the royal Inca mummies and their cult, but not the underlying tradition of ancestor worship. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Inca and Catholic beliefs were blended, revealing parallels between the two traditions. For example, both the Incas and their Spanish conquerors made special commemoration of the dead during the month of November and had penitential rites that involved confessing sins to priests.

In recent decades evangelical Protestantism, especially in the form of Pentecostalism (see Pentecostal Churches), has been spreading rapidly among Latin American Indians. At the same time, community-based social action movements are a growing force within Latin American Catholicism. Whether these are short- or long-term trends, and what effects they will have on native religious traditions, are unresolved questions.