Native Americans were eager enough to accept the Christian faith, but they were just as ready to abandon it. Between 1524 and 1531 the Franciscans baptized more than a million Mexicans. The practice of mass baptisms had the same effect as mass conversions in northern Europe in the early Middle Ages: conversion because of coercion and conformity, and ignorance and superstition regarding Christian symbols. One well-known story has it that Cortes left the strictest instructions in one town that the citizens were to worship the Christian God and to care for one of his horses, which was lame. The natives faithfully obeyed. They fed the horse fruit and flowers until it died; they supposed that the horse and the Christian God were the same. Later two Franciscans discovered that the natives had made an image of the horse and were worshiping it as the god of thunder and lightning.