it is directly inflicted on the guilty woman by the husband or the parents.
With the Pipiles of Salvador the man who committed adultery was put to death, or became the slave of the offended husband.[1] In Yucatan the guilty ones were stoned or pierced with arrows; before this they were impaled or disjointed.[2] According to Herrara, among the Yzipecs the injured husband cut off the nose and ears of the adulterous woman.[3] The same author tells us that among the Guaxlotillans the woman was taken before the Cacique, and if found guilty she was cut in pieces and eaten.[4]
In ancient Mexico adultery was generally punished with stoning,[5] and in certain districts this crime entailed the quartering of the guilty woman; elsewhere, the judges simply ordered the husband to cut off her nose and ears.[6]
In Peru the law also punished ordinary adultery with capital punishment.[7] There was no chastisement terrible enough for adultery committed with one of the wives of the Inca, the son of the Sun: the guilty man was burnt, his parents were put to death, and his house destroyed (Pizarro).
Guatemala offered an exception;[8] there the affair was arranged by a composition—a fine of precious feathers paid to the husband. The latter could also repudiate his wife, or pardon her, in which last case he was much honoured. If the adultery was committed with the wife of a great lord, the crime naturally acquired an exceptional gravity; the guilty man was then strangled if he was noble, and if servile, was thrown down a precipice. We shall find elsewhere this hierarchic iniquity, for in this matter, as in others, various human societies and races repeat themselves.
- ↑ Bancroft, Native Races, vol. ii. p. 675.
- ↑ Id., ibid. vol. ii. p. 674.
- ↑ Démeunier, loc. cit., t. I^{er.} p. 224.
- ↑ Id., ibid. t. I^{er.} p. 225.
- ↑ Prescott, Hist. Conq. of Mexico, vol. i. p. 26.
- ↑ L. Biart, Les Aztèques, p. 168.
- ↑ Prescott, Hist. Conq. of Peru, vol. i. p. 59.
- ↑ Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. ii. p. 673.
