Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

were all absolute monarchs and the appointment of priests rested with them. Succession to the chieftainship was matrilineal, and installation in the office was attended by much ceremony. A great gulf separated nobles and commoners; slavery existed as an institution but slaves were well treated. Polygyny was permitted, but relatives within certain degrees might not marry[920]. This feebly organised political system broke to pieces at the first shock from without, and so disheartened had the people become under their half theocratic rulers, that they scarcely raised a hand in defence of a government which in their minds was associated only with tyranny and oppression. The conquest was in any case facilitated by the civil war at the time raging between the northern and southern kingdoms which with several other semi-independent states constituted the Muyscan empire. This empire was almost conterminous southwards with that of the Incas. At least the numerous terms occurring in the dialects of the Paes, Coconucos, and other South Colombian tribes, show that Peruvian influences had spread beyond the political frontiers far to the north, without, however, quite reaching the confines of the Muyscan domain.

But for several centuries prior to the discovery the sway of the Peruvian Incas had been established throughout nearly the whole of the Andean lands, and the territory directly ruled by them extended from the Quito district about the equator for some 2500 miles southwards to the Rio Maule in Chili, with an average breadth of 400 miles between the Pacific and the eastern slopes of the Cordilleras. Their dominion thus comprised a considerable part of the present republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chili, and Argentina, with a roughly estimated area of 1,000,000 square miles, and a population of over 10,000,000. Here the ruling race were the Quichua, whose speech, called by themselves ruma-simi, "the language of men," is still current in several well-marked dialects throughout all the provinces of the old empire. In Lima and all the seaports and inland towns Spanish prevails, but in the rural districts Quichuan remains the mother-tongue of over 2,000,000 natives, and has even become the lingua franca of the western regions, just as Tupi-Guarani is the lingoa geral, "general language," of the eastern section of South America. The attempts to find affinities with Aryan (especially Sanskrit), and other linguistic families of the eastern hemisphere, have broken down before the application of sound philological principles to these studies, and Quichuan is now recognised as a stock language of the usual American type, unconnected with any other except that of the Bolivian Aymaras. Even this connection is regarded by some students as verbal rather than structural, an interchange of a considerable number of terms being easily explained by the close contact in which the two peoples have long dwelt.

As to the origin of the Incas we cannot do better than follow the views of Sir Clements Markham, who has made a careful study of the various early authorities. His account (The Incas of Peru, 1910) is based largely on the works of Spanish military writers such as Ciezo de Leon and Pedro Pizarro (cousin of the conqueror), of priests like Molina, Montesinos, and the half-breed Blas Valera, and on those of the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, son of a Spanish knight and an Inca princess. The megalithic ruins of Tiahuanacu, at the southern end of Lake Titicaca, mark the earliest known centre of culture in southern Peru. They are situated on a lofty plateau, over 13,000 feet above the sea, and are the remains of a great city built by highly skilled masons who used enormous stones. The placing of such monoliths, unrivalled except by those of ancient Egypt, indicates a dense and well-organised population. The famous monolithic doorway is elaborately carved, the central figure apparently representing the deity, while on either side are figures, human- or bird-headed, kneeling in adoration (op. cit., pls. at pp. 26, 28). Now it seems probable that the builders of this megalithic city were the ancestors of the Incas, assuming that a substratum of truth underlies the Paccari-tampu myth.

The end of the early civilisation is stated to have been caused by a great invasion from the south, when the king was killed in a battle in the Collao, north of Lake Titicaca. A state of barbarism ensued. A remnant of the royal house took refuge in a district called Tampu-Tocco ("Window Tavern")[921] and there preserved a vestige of their ancient traditions and civilisation. Elsewhere religion deteriorated to nature worship, here the kings declared themselves to be children of the sun. Montesinos' list of kings gives 27 names for this period of Tampu-Tocco, which may cover 650 years.

The myth, which is "certainly the outcome of a real tradition, ... the fabulous version of a distant historical event," tells how Manco Ccapac and the three other Ayars, his brothers, the children of the sun, came forth with their wives from the central opening or window in the hill Tampu-Tocco. They advanced slowly at the head of several ayllus(lineages). Ayar Manco took the lead, and he had with him a falcon-like bird revered as sacred, and a golden staff which he flung ahead; when it reached soil so fertile that the whole length sank in, there the final halt was to be made. This happened in the fertile vale of Cuzco. The date of these events would be about four centuries before the Spanish conquest.

Farther north at about 15 deg. S. lat. the Inca civilisation was preceded, according to Uhle, by the very ancient one of Ica and Nazca, where dwelt a people who made pottery but were ignorant of weaving. The same authority has also discovered about Lima the remains of a tall people, who made rude pottery, nets, and objects of bone[922].

Manco established himself in the Cuzco valley, his third successor finally subjugating the tribes there. The early position of the Incas, cemented by judicious marriages, seems to have been one of priority in a very loose confederacy. The rise of the Incas was due to the ambition of the lady Siuyacu whose son, Inca Rocca, appears to have been the pioneer of empire; material prosperity began under him, schools were erected and irrigation works begun. Then from a strip of land 250 miles long between the gorge of the Apurimac and the wide fertile valley of Vilcamayu, the empire was extended to form the Ttahua-ntin-suyu, "the four provinces," of which the northern one, Chinchay-suyu, reached to Quito, and the southern, Colla-suyu, into Chili. This southward extension was due to the efforts of Pachacuti who succeeded after hard fighting in annexing the region around Lake Titicaca, and the new territory was named after the Collas, the largest and most powerful tribe thereabouts. In order to pacify the region permanently large numbers of Collas were sent as mitimaes, or colonists, as far as the borders of Quito, while their places were filled by loyal colonists from Inca districts. Among these were a number of Aymaras from the Quichuan region of the Pachachaca, a left bank tributary of the Apurimac, who were settled among the remaining Lupacas on the west shore of Lake Titicaca at Juli. Thither came Jesuit fathers in 1572 and learnt the language of the Lupacas from these Aymara colonists, who had been there three generations; the name Aymara was given by the priests not only to the Lupaca language but to those spoken by Collas and other Titicacan tribes. Thus the name Aymara is now generally but quite erroneously applied to the language and people of this region; it was first so used in 1575. It must be pointed out, however, that other authorities regard the Aymara and Quichua as entirely distinct. A. Chervin[923] discusses the physical differences at great length and concludes that they are two separate brachycephalic peoples.

The Peruvians were primarily agriculturists, maize and at higher altitudes the potato being their chief crops. Their aqueducts and irrigation systems moved the admiration of early chroniclers, as did also their roads and suspension bridges[924]. The supreme deity and creator was Uira-cocha, who was worshipped by the more intellectual and had a temple at Cuzco. The popular religion was the worship of the founder of each ayllu, or clan, and all joined in adoration of the sun as ancestor of the sovereign Incas. Sun-worship was attended by a magnificent ritual, the high priest was an official of highest rank, often a brother of the sovereign, and there were over 3000 Virgins of the Sun (aclla) connected with the cult at Cuzco. The peasants put their trust in conopas, or household gods, which controlled their crops and their llamas. The calendar had been calculated with considerable ingenuity, and certain festivals took place annually and were usually accompanied with much chicha-drinking. It is remarkable that so advanced a people kept all their elaborate records by means of quipus (coloured strings with knots).

Here is not the place to enter into the details of the astonishing architectural, engineering, and artistic remains, often assigned to the Incas, whose empire had absorbed in the north the old civilisation of the Chimu, perhaps of the Atacameno, and other cultured peoples whose very names have perished. The Yunga (Mochica or Chimu), conquered by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, had a language radically distinct from Quichuan, but have long been assimilated to their conquerors.

The ruins of Grand Chimu (modern Trujillo) cover a vast area, nearly 15 miles by 6, which is everywhere strewn with the remains of palaces, reservoirs, aqueducts, ramparts, and especially huacas, that is, truncated pyramids not unlike those of Mexico, whence the theory that the Chimus, of unknown origin, were "Toltecs" from Central America. One of these huacas is described by Squier as 150 feet high with a base 580 feet square, and an area of 8 acres, presenting from a distance the appearance of a huge crater[925]. Still larger is the so-called "Temple of the Sun," 800 by 470 feet, 200 feet high, and covering an area of 7 acres. An immense population of hundreds of thousands was assigned to this place in pre-Inca times; but from some rough surveys made in 1897 it would appear that much of the space within the enclosures consists of waste lands, which had never been built over, and it is calculated that at no time could the number of inhabitants have greatly exceeded 50,000.

We need not stop to describe the peculiar civil and social institutions of the Peruvians, which are of common knowledge. Enough to say that here everything was planned in the interests of the theocratic and all-powerful Incas, who were more than obeyed, almost honoured with divine worship by their much bethralled and priest-ridden subjects. "The despotic authority of the Incas was the basis of government; that authority was founded on the religious respect yielded to the descendant of the sun, and supported by a skilfully combined hierarchy[926]." From remote antiquity the peoples of this area were organised into aylluseach occupying part of a valley or a limited area. It was a patriarchal system, land belonging to the ayllu, which was a group of families. The Incas systematised this institution, the ayllu was made to comprise 100 families under a village officer who annually allotted land to the heads of families. Each family was divided by the head into 10 classes based on age. Ten ayllus (now termed pachacas) formed a huaranca. A valley with a varying number of huarancas was termed a hunu; over four hunus there was an imperial officer. "This was indeed Socialism," Markham observes, "existing under an inexorable despotism" (p. 169).

Beyond the Maule, southernmost limits of all these effete civilisations, man reasserted himself in the "South American Iroquois," as those Chilian aborigines have been called who called themselves Molu-che, "Warriors," but are better known by their Quichuan designation of Aucaes, "Rebels," whence the Spanish Aucans (Araucan, Araucanian). These "Rebels," who have never hitherto been overcome by the arms of any people, and whose heroic deeds in the long wars waged by the white intruders