with the Navajos, the Comanches, etc., a man has as many wives as he can buy.[1]
With the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec there is no polygamy; it is forbidden.[2] On the contrary, with all the Indians of Columbia polygamy is general; but the Otomacs, who are reckoned among the most savage, are monogamous.[3] Necessity makes the law; and although it may be the legal form of marriage adopted by the superior races, monogamy does not imply in itself an advanced civilisation. Besides, the numerous facts that I have previously quoted abundantly prove that polygamy and monogamy can coexist in the same society—the former for the sole use of the ruling classes, the latter for the common people.
II. Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America.
It was thus in Mexico,[4] where, among the wives of the great men, one alone was called lawful; her children inherited the paternal title and wealth, to the exclusion of the others.[5] In Peru, as in Mexico, the law, with the bold partiality which there is no attempt to disguise in barbarous societies, permitted polygamy to the Inca and to the enormous family of the Incas, while exacting a strict monogamy from the poor. State communism, imposed on the country, regulated the sexual unions somewhat as our rural proprietors regulate the coupling of their domestic animals. Peruvian marriage was a civil act, very comparable to enforced military service in modern Europe. Every year in the kingdom of Cuzco it was the practice to assemble together in the squares of the towns and villages all the individuals of marriageable age, from twenty-four to twenty-six years for the men, and from eighteen to twenty for the women. At Cuzco the Inca himself married the persons of his own family, and always in a public square, by putting in each other the hands of the different couples. In their
