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INKA
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Guamán Poma de Ayala ([1936])[1]:
"From little girls they are taught not to indulge themselves or to sin in fornication." (p225)
Cobo (1893:p185-6)[2] notes:
"In various ways and by various rights did those Indians obtain the numbers of women they had in addition to the legitimate wife, and sometimes their numbers were excessive. The first of those ways was based on a barbarous custom alien to all good sense and decency, and this was that parents gave to their sons when they were children a woman to wash them and serve them until they came of age; and before the boys were married, these governesses taught them vices and slept with them, with the parents' approval; and this woman always remained in the house as a mistress after the boys married. The second way of obtaining these women was also based on another custom, which, although at first sight and taken in itself was laudable, was, nevertheless, considering what really occurred, no less reprehensible than the first; this was that among these people great care was taken to bring up the orphans, and one of the practices when one of them was very poor was to hand him over to some plebeian widow who had no children and was not to remarry. When the boy came of age, although the woman might be old, she became his mistress until the Governor gave the youth a wife and he was married; nevertheless, he retained his liaison with the first woman as before, until he had paid her back for the labor of having raised him; this payment used to be deferred for a long time, and when they could not come to an agreement between the two of them, the Governor set the price himself."
Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. Last revised: May 2005 |
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