Issue of Sacrifice

[Craig Berry]

On Mon, 26 Jul 1999 maestas at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu wrote:

> Why is Nahua war practice set apart as human sacrifice when it actually
> cut down on the number of civilian deaths by restricting battle zones.
> On the other hand, war practices introduced from the other side of the
> Atlantic tended to inhumanly sacrifice women and children as well as
> soldiers.

You have to be careful about the word 'sacrifice'.  Literally and
technically, it means "to make sacred"; a sacrifical death is one which
occurs explicitly and primarily for religious purposes.  Not every murder
is a sacrifice; in fact, most are not.  The Nahua practice of obtaining
sacrifical 'victims' on a ritual battleground is intensely interesting
precisely because it is unique in its particulars, and very uncommon even
in general terms.

Note also that European war practices before the present century generally
did not target civilians (during the actual battles).  Noncombatants were
eliminated (if they were) by other means (displacement, starvation,
terrorism, and so forth).  The Spaniards did not *directly* kill all tha
many Nahua, and most of those were warriors.  Disease and societal
collapse did the bulk of the work of native depopulation.

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