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 in our sense of the
words. The "husbands" the girls hunted for were boys of fourteen to
sixteen, and the girls themselves began at twelve to thirteen years of
age, or five years before they became mothers, and Fuegian marriage
"is not regarded as complete until the woman has become a mother," as
Westermarck knew (22, 138). In reality the conduct of these girls was
nothing but wantonness, in which the men, as a matter of course,
acquiesced. The missionaries were greatly scandalized at the state of
affairs, but their efforts to improve it were strongly resented by the
natives.[232]