The natives of South America were not more clement than their congeners in the north. The Caribees put both guilty ones to death.[656] The Guarayos also punished with death the accomplice in adultery as if he were a thief.[657]
From this rapid survey of savage countries we may conclude that adultery is everywhere considered as a robbery only, but at the same time as one of the gravest of robberies. The man who is guilty of adultery suffers consequently, by virtue of the right of retaliation, a punishment more or less severe. As for the adulterous woman, she is generally chastised by the husband-proprietor with extreme cruelty, no restraint existing to moderate his vengeance.
VI. Adultery in Barbarous America.
In the barbarous monarchies of all countries the chastisement of adultery is scarcely mitigated, and for a long time 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.[658] In Yucatan the guilty ones were stoned or pierced with arrows; before this they were impaled or disjointed.[659] According to Herrara, among the Yzipecs the injured husband cut off the nose and ears of the adulterous woman.[660] 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.[661]
In ancient Mexico adultery was generally punished with stoning,[662] 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.[663]
In Peru the law also punished ordinary adultery with capital punishment.[664] 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;[665] 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.
VII. Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya.
Thus the Mongols of Asia seem to have copied the Mongoloids of America. With the nomad Tartars a man of inferior class who has committed adultery with a woman of his own class pays the injured husband forty-five head of cattle; but the husband must revenge himself on the inconstant wife. The law invites him to do so; for if he kills her, the compensation of cattle remains his property; if not, it goes to the prince. But if it happens that a man of low condition has illicit intercourse with the wife of a prince, then the crime is terrible; the man is cut to pieces, the faithless wife is decapitated, and the family of the guilty man reduced to slavery.[666] If we may believe a modern traveller, Mongol customs have become considerably modified on this point, adultery being now extremely common in Mongolia, and so little repressed that the women hardly take the trouble to conceal it.[667]