When a sun or chief died, one or several
of his wives and his highest officers were knocked on the head and
buried with him, and at such times the barbarous privilege was allowed
to any of the lowest caste to at once gain admittance to the highest by
the deliberate murder of their own children on the funeral pyre--a
privilege which respectable writers tell us human beings were found base
enough to take advantage of.[239-1]
Oviedo relates that in the province of Guataro, in Guatemala, an actual
rivalry prevailed among the people to be slain at the death of their
cacique, for they had been taught that only such as went with him would
ever find their way to the paradise of the departed.[240-1] Theirs was
therefore somewhat of a selfish motive, and only in certain parts of
Peru, where polygamy prevailed, and the rule was that only one wife was
to be sacrificed, does the deportment of husbands seem to have been so
creditable that their widows actually disputed one with another for the
pleasure of being buried alive with the dead body, and bearing their
spouse company to the other world.
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