In their other customs, such as those relating to marriage, the Indians of that heathen time were no better than in their habits of eating and clothing themselves. For, in many nations, they cohabited like beasts, without any special wife, but just as chance directed. Others followed their own desires, without excepting sisters, daughters, or mothers. Others excepted their mothers, but none else. In other provinces it was lawful, and even praiseworthy, for the girls to be as immodest and abandoned as they pleased, and the most dissolute were more certain of marriage than those who were faithful. At all events the abandoned sorts of girls were held to be more lusty, while of the modest it was said that they had had no desire for any one because they were torpid. In other provinces they had an opposite custom, for the mothers guarded their daughters with great care; and when they were sought in marriage, they were brought out in public, and, in presence of the relations who had made the contract, the mothers deflowered them with their own hands, to show to all present the proof of the care that had been taken of them.

In other provinces the nearest relations of the bride and her most intimate friends had connection with her, and on this condition the marriage was agreed to, and she was thus received by the husband. Pedro de Cieza (chap, xxiv) says the same. There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret.