Note 140 — Chapter II · THEORY OF THE HORDE AND MOTHER-RIGHT

The custom is for the men "to buy the women whom they marry of their fathers and relatives at a high price, and then to take them to a chief, who is considered to be a priest, to deflower them and see if she is a virgin; and if she is not, they have to return the whole price, and he can keep her for his wife or not, or let her be consecrated, as he chooses." In the same connection, Castañeda says, "among them are men dressed like women who marry other men and serve as their wives;" and he describes also a curious kind of legal or consecrated prostitution existing among the same people: see the translation of Castañeda's account in Winship's "Coronado Expedition, 1540-2," XIV. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 513, 514. Cf. Fawcett, "On Basivis: Women, Who, through Dedication to a Deity, Assume Masculine Privileges," Jour. Anth. Soc. (Bombay), II (1891), 322-54.