Ritual exchange

The Spanish brought Christian rituals to the Indians, and teh Indians taught Christians a thing or two as well. Columbus discovered that the Indians fasted and abstained from sex before searching for gold, and Columbus imposed the same purification rites on his men.

Indians adopted Christians rituals, sometimes with horrifying consequences. Edward Muir writes, “Mayas adapted the Christian cross so readily because Maya culture already had a symbol similar to teh Christian cross . . . . The most remarkable Maya appropriation of the cross involved actual crucifixions, usually the sacrifice of children, whose hands were nailed or tied to the cross and whose hearts were torn out. Sometimes the words, ‘Jesus Christ,’ were written on the sacrificed body. There are also reports of pigs and dogs sacrificed on a cross.”

Muir comments that the interchange of rituals helped create a new generalized concept of “ritual.” Spaniards recognized some similarities between their own Christian customs and Indian rites; and vice versa. It was natural to conclude that both were engaged in variations of a single phenomenon.