Bartolomé de las Casas

Turning the attention to Bartolomé de las Casas (a religious man and explorer), who was alive from 1484 to 1566 and “...was one of the passengers on the train of conquistadors that sailed from Spain to the “New World” in search of fame and fortune.” (7). Once in the New World, he explored the religions practiced there. He describes human sacrifices he observed in Mexico where the victim would have his heart ripped out by a priest, thrown at an altar and then placed in a bowl for worship. In some instances, the priest(s) would even eat the heart of the sacrificed. Other times, if the human sacrifice was a prisoner captured in war, the sacrifice involved cooking the body for a first afterwards (8).

De las Casas believed that these sacrifices were done to show the full faith that individuals had in their deity. Thus, the more costly the sacrifice, the stronger one believes in their God. If a religion did not include human sacrifices, then the religion was not as strong. De las Casas noted that the Indigenous people of Mexico performed these sacrifices (9). Thus after many centuries, these aspects could have been integrated into the fictional Tuttle cult.