CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN EXAMPLES

It has long been fashionable among historians to attribute to certain Indians of Central and South America a very high degree of culture.  This tendency has received a check in these critical days.[230] We have seen that morally the Mexicans, Central Americans, and Peruvians were hardly above other Indians.  In the matter of allowing females to choose their mates we likewise find them on the same low level.  In Guatemala even the men wore obliged to accept wives selected for them by their parents, and Nicaraguan parents usually arranged the matches.  In Peru the Incas fixed the conditions under which matrimony might take place as follows: 

“The bridegroom and bride must be of the same town or tribe, and of the same class or position; the former must be somewhat less than twenty-four years of age, the latter eighteen.  The consent of the parents and chiefs of the tribes was indispensible.” (Tschudi, 184.)

Unless the consent of the parents had been obtained the marriage was considered invalid and the children illegitimate. (Garcilasso de la Vega, I., 207.) As regards the Mexicans, Bandelier shows (612, 620) that the position of woman was “little better than that of a costly animal,” and he cites evidence indicating that as late as 1555 it was ordained at a concile that since it is customary among the Indians “not to marry without permission of their principals ... and the marriage among free persons is not as free as it should be,” etc.

As for the other Indians of the Southern Continent it is needless to add that they too are habitually guided by the thought that daughters exist for the purpose of enriching their parents.  To the instances previously cited I may add what Schomburgk says in his book on Guiana—­that if the girl to whom the parents betroth their son is too young to marry, they give him meanwhile a widow or an older unmarried woman to live with.  This woman, after his marriage, becomes his servant.  Musters declares (186) that among the Tehuelches (Patagonians) “marriages are always those of inclination.”  But Falkner’s story is quite different (124): 

“As many of these marriages are compulsive on the side of the woman, they are frequently frustrated.  The contumacy of the woman sometimes tires out the patience of the man, who then turns her away, or sells her to the person on whom she has fixed her affections.”

Westermarck fancies he has a case on his side in Tierra del Fuego, where, “according to Lieutenant Bove, the eagerness with which young women seek for husbands is surprising, but even more surprising is the fact that they nearly always attain their ends.”  More careful study of the pages of the writer referred to[231] and a moment’s unbiassed reflection would have made it clear to Westermarck that there is no question here either of choice or of marriage