Living in the Aztec Empire, once a boy hit the age of 17 he began his military training. Not only till he captured an enemy and brought him back as a prisoner to be sacrificed would he be considered a man of the empire. However if he wanted to become a jaguar or eagle warrior he would have to capture twenty more prisoners and commit twenty more sacrifices. This was all part of a ritual called xochiyaoyotl or “the flower war” / “flowery war”. The whole point wasn’t to gain territory or to kill the enemy but to use them as a sacrifice to the gods. They believed that they had a blood debt to the gods and this was just another way added on to the many other sacrifices the Aztecs carried on throughout the years. Sacrifices of their own children would be made to the gods so sacrificing an enemy wasn’t such a burden on their souls as it would be to us in modern days.
As a coming of age ritual the Algonquin Indian tribe would take their boys into a secluded area and often they would cage them up. While restrained they would then be given a drug called wysoccan, a hallucinogen that is assumed to be a hundred times stronger than LSD. The whole point of the ritual was to take away all of the memories the boy had of being a child. But due to the strong nature of the drug sometimes the boys would lose memories of their family, they would forget their whole identity, and in even worse cases they would lose the ability to speak altogether. If at any time the boys were to have some of their memories resurface they would be forced to endure the ritual all over again. They did this ritual so that the boy could become a man and leave behind all the traces of a child he once had.
The differences in each ritual is that with the Aztecs becoming this great warrior helps you find yourself and even though you risk your life in doing so you don’t risk your true identity, you just build onto it. The Algonquins make you forget your weaknesses and forget the childhood things that built you into who you are. One of the similarities is that both groups of boys don’t really have a choice in the matter. It’s not a decision that they get to choose but more of a rite of passage they are bound to take. They live around the idea that you are not a “real man” until you prove yourself or rather devote yourself to the life.
Aztec Sacrifices
Indian "Trips" 
