To proceed:
"Prostitution is the rule among the (Yuma) women, not the exception."
The Colorado River Indians "barter and sell their women into
prostitution, with hardly an exception." (Bancroft, I., 514.) In his
_Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, C.C. Jones says of the Creeks,
Cherokees, Muscogulges, etc. (69):
"Comparatively little virtue existed among the
unmarried women. Their chances of marriage were not
diminished, but rather augmented, by the fact that they
had been great favorites, provided they had avoided
conception during their years of general pleasure."
The wife "was deterred, by fear of public punishment, from the
commission of indiscretions." "The unmarried women among the Natchez
were unusually unchaste," says McCulloh (165).
This damning list might be continued for the Central and South
American Indians. We should find that the Mosquito Indians often did
not wait for puberty (Bancroft, I., 729); that, according to Martius,
Oviedo, and Navarette,
"in Cuba, Nicaragua,[205] and among the Caribs and
Tupis, the bride yielded herself first to another, lest
her husband should come to some ill-luck by exercising
a priority of possession.... This _jus primae noctis_
was exercised by the priests" (Brinton, _M.N.W._, 155);
that the Waraus give girls to medicine men in return for professional
services (Brett, 320); that the Guaranis lend their wives and
daughters for a drink (Reich, 435); that among Brazilian tribes the
_jus primae noctis_ is often enjoyed by the chief (_Journ.
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