Marriage
How husbands and wives were chosen, how weddings were made, what each owed the other, and how marriages could end.
A Lord's Advice to His Daughter
Bernardino de Sahagún and his Nahua collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, book 6, chapter 18: the speech a lord made to his daughter, edited by Carlos María de Bustamante (Mexico, 1829) · compiled from the 1550s to the 1570s, from speeches remembered from before the Spanish conquest; printed 1829
Mira que no escojas entre los hombres el que mejor te parezca, como hacen los que van á comprar las mantas al tianguiz ó mercado: recibe el que te manda, y mira que no hagas como se hace cuando se crian las mazorcas verdes que son xilotes ó elotes, que se buscan las mejores y mas sabrosas. Mira que no desees algun hombre por ser mejor dispuesto, ni te enamores de él apasionadamente. Si fuere bien dispuesto el que te demandare, recíbele, y si fuere mal dispuesto y feo, no le deseches, toma aquel porque lo envia dios, y si no le quisieres recibir, él burlaráse de tí, deshonrarte há trabajando á ver tu cuerpo por mala via, y despues te pregonará por mala muger.
Do not pick out the man who looks best to you, the way people do when they go to the tianguiz, the market, to buy cloaks. Take the one who asks for you. And do not do what people do when the green ears of corn, the xilotes or elotes, are growing, searching for the best and tastiest. Do not want a man because he is better looking, and do not fall passionately in love with him. If the man who asks for you is handsome, accept him. If he is ill-favored and ugly, do not turn him down either. Take him, because god sends him. If you will not accept him, he will mock you. He will dishonor you, trying by wicked means to see your body, and afterward he will go about calling you a bad woman.
Teotihuacan Answers the King
The elders of San Juan Teotihuacan, answers to the king's questionnaire, recorded by the corregidor Francisco de Castañeda, March 1, 1580 · March 1, 1580 (customs remembered from before the Spanish conquest of 1521)
Aviendose casado algun yndio y yndia con las serimonias que acostumbraban, si por ventura no se trataban bien y reñian a menudo, el principal yndio, que era mayoral del barrio donde moraban, los llamaba y preguntaba que por que rrazon reñian, y siendo muger natural si se quejaba que su marido no la probeia de lo neçesario ni trauajaba en sus millpas y grangerias para sustentarse, sino que andaba olgazan, era causa a que los apartauan y lo mesmo si la muger era holgazana y no acudia a seruir a su marido y, apartados, partian entre si los bienes que tenian ygualmente.
When a man and a woman had married with the usual ceremonies, and then did not treat each other well and quarreled often, the leading man who was headman of their ward called them in and asked why they quarreled. If the wife, a woman of the town, complained that her husband did not provide for her or work his cornfields and other plots to support them, but went about idle, that was grounds for separating them. The same held if the wife was lazy and did not see to her husband's needs. Once separated, they divided what they owned equally between them.