Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/201



told on good authority that he had one hundred and fifty pregnant at one time, all of whom killed their offspring in the womb;[79] yet notwithstanding this wholesale abortion, he had more than fifty sons and daughters. His father had one hundred and fifty children, of whom Montezuma II. killed all his brothers and forced his sisters to marry whom he pleased;&emdash;at least such is the import of Oviedo's statement.[80] Nezahualpilli, of Tezcuco, had between seventy and one hundred children.[81] Camargo tells us that Xicotencatl, one of the chiefs of Tlascala had a great number of sons by more than fifty wives or concubines.[82] These women were the daughters of the nobles, who thought themselves honored by having a child in the royal harem. Occasionally the monarch presented one of his concubines to some great lord or renowned warrior, a mark of favor which thenceforth distinguished the recipient as a man whom the king delighted to honor. The seraglio was presided over by a number of noble matrons, who kept close watch and ward over the conduct of their charges and made daily reports to the king, who invariably caused the slightest indiscretion to be severely punished. Whether eunuchs were employed in the Aztec harems is uncertain; this, however, we read in Motolinia: "Moteuczomatzin had in his palace dwarfs and little hunchbacks, who when children were with great ingenuity made crook-backed, ruptured,[83] and disjointed, because the lords in this country made the same use of them as at the present day the Grand Turk does of eunuchs."[84]