EMPIRES CHILDREN: THE PEOPLE OF TZINTZUNTZAN FOSTER 



11 



house builders and temple repairers, and still 

 others makers of bows and arrows. 



In the major towns there were periodic mar- 

 kets for the interchange of local products. 

 Rea speaks of evening markets, from 5 to 9 

 o'clock, where people bought, sold, and barter- 

 ed. Splinters of a resinous pine, ocote, were 

 tied to dried quiotes, the stalks of maguey, to 

 light the market place, and to light the way- 

 home, the light being so bright that this author 

 compares the market place to a burning Troy 

 (Rea, 1882, p. 112). In the lake region trans- 

 portation was to a large extent by boat; in other 

 places, owing to the lack of a suitable pack ani- 

 mal, by the human back. 



Clothing depended on the rank of a person. 

 Male commoners wore loin cloths of leather 

 while female commoners wore a short skirt and 

 left their breasts exposed. More important per- 

 sons wore long garments of cotton, white, black, 

 or painted, and some had capes woven of rab- 

 bit hair and cotton fibers. All persons wore deer- 

 hide sandals tied around the ankles. Lip plugs 

 of obsidian inlaid with turquoise, and earrings, 

 bracelets, and necklaces of gold, silver, gilded 

 copper and turquoise, capes and robes ot feath- 

 ers, and garlands and wreaths of flowers were 

 the marks of nobility. Cranial deformation was 

 practiced at least among the distinguished fam- 

 ilies. 



MARRIAGE 



Among tlie nobility, marriage was always 

 within the same clan or lineage, which suggests 

 that social distinctions were due to a conquering 

 tribe setting itself up over the subject people. 

 A father, desirous of marrying his son, sent a 

 go-between to the father of the girl, who ex- 

 plained his mission. If the father were pleased 

 he said, "Yes, it is good, for he is of our fam- 

 ily." Subsequently the girl and her family 

 came to the groom's house where a priest ad- 

 monished them both to be good, and faithful to 

 each other. A banquet followed, featuring spe- 

 cial tamales filled with beans, in addition to 

 other foods. The groom was then expected to 

 spend 4 days bringing wood to the temples, 

 while the girl swept the house and a path out 

 into the street, symbolizing a clean and unfet- 

 tered life ahead of them. Only after this period 

 was the marriaee consummated. 



Among the lower classes marriage was often 

 a more informal affair, and several forms were 

 recognized. Most acceptable was a modified 

 imitation of that of the nobles. The parents 

 decided on the spouses for tlieir children, made 

 the arrangements, and, lacking a priest, they 

 themselves admonished the new couple to live 

 happily and honestly. The modern marriage 

 custom of the Tarascans existed at the time of 

 the Conquest, and was perhaps the most com- 

 mon form. The boy, enamored of the girl, and 

 she accepting, carried her to the house of a rela- 

 tive or friend and then sent a relative to her 

 home to ask for her hand. The father, either 

 following custom or giving vent to his true feel- 

 ings, made a great show of anger, raged at the 

 girl for dishonoring him, and then accepted 

 the fait accompli. A practice which was par- 

 ticularly shocking to the friars was that of 

 taking as wife a woman with a daughter by 

 another man, and then also taking the daughter 

 when she reached the age of puberty, the older 

 woman accepting the arrangement so as to have 

 a home in her old age. Marriage of an uncle 

 and his niece is mentioned, but that of aunt and 

 nephew, and of a man and his dead wife's sister 

 (sororate) are specifically denied. While the 

 nobles commonly had more than one wife or 

 concubine, monogamy seems to have been the 

 rule for commoners, though polygyny was not 

 forbidden, as in the case of a man married to 

 a mother and daughter. The existence of a clan 

 organization for the lower classes is not made 

 clear in the literature. Surviving traces in mo- 

 dern Tarascan social organization suggest that 

 there were patrilineal exogamous clans or line- 

 ages. 



If a woman were jealous of her husband's 

 second wife or concubine, she might go to divin- 

 ers who would place two grains of maize in a 

 gourd of water. If the two sank to the bottom 

 and rose together, it meant that the husband 

 would remain with his first wife. If the grains 

 did not remain together it indicated that the hus- 

 band would stay with the other woman. 



POI.ITICAI, ORGANIZATION 



The importance of the king, or calzonci. In 

 Tarascan social and religious structure is shown 

 by the preponderant amount of space given by 



