Chapter IV: The Inca Civilization in Peru (4)

The Chimu dominion extended probably from Tumbez, in the extreme north of the Peruvian coast, to Ancon, north of Lima. The Chimus also had a strong colony in the valley of Huarcu, now called Cañete. But the valleys of the Rimac, of Lurin, Chilca, and Mala, north of Cañete; and those of Chincha, Yca, and Nasca, south of Cañete; were not Chimu territory. The names of places in those valleys are all Quichua, as well as the names of their chiefs, as recorded by Garcilasso de la Vega and others. The inhabitants were, therefore, of Inca race, probably colonists from the Huanca nation. Their superstitions as told by Arriaga, and the curious mythological legends recorded by Avila as being believed by the people of Huarochiri and the neighboring coast, all point to an Inca origin. These Inca coast people are said to have had a famous oracle near the present site of Lima, called “Rimac,” or “He who speaks.” But more probably it was merely the name given to the noisy river Rimac, babbling over its stones. It is true that there was a temple on the coast with an oracle, the fame of which had been widely spread. The idol called Pachacamac, or “The world-creator,” was described by the first Spanish visitor, Miguel Estete, as being made of wood and very dirty. The town was then half in ruins, for the worship of this local deity was neglected after the conquest by the Incas. These coast people of Inca race were as industrious as their Chimu neighbors. In the Nasca valley there is a complete network of underground watercourses for irrigation. At Yca “they removed the sand from vast areas, until they reached the requisite moisture, then put in guano from the islands, and thus formed sunken gardens of extraordinary richness.”[1309] Similar methods were adopted in the valleys of Pisco and Chilca.

When the Inca Pachacutec began to annex the coast valleys, he met with slight opposition only from the people of Inca origin, who soon submitted to his rule. But the Chimus struggled hard to retain their independence. Those of the Huarcu (_Cañete_) valley made a desperate and prolonged resistance. When at length they submitted, the Inca built a fortress and palace on a rocky eminence overlooking the sea to overawe them. The ruins now called Hervai are particularly interesting, because they are the principal and most imposing example of Inca architecture in which the building material is adobes and not stone. The conquest of the valleys to the north of Lima and of the grand Chimu himself was a still more difficult undertaking, necessitating more than one hard-fought campaign. When it was completed, great numbers of the best fighting-men among the Chimus were deported to the interior as _mitimaes_. More than a century had elapsed since this conquest when the Spaniards arrived, so that there was but slight chance of the history of the Chimus being even partially preserved. Cieza de Leon and Balboa alone supply us with notices of any value.[1310] The southern valleys of the coast, Arequipa, Moquegua, and Tacna, were occupied by _mitimaes_ or colonists from the Collao. The Incas gave the general name of _yuncas_, or dwellers in the warm valleys, to all the people of the coast.

Much mystery surrounds the history and origin of the _Chimu_ people. That they were wholly separate and unconnected with the other races of Peru seems almost certain. That they were far advanced in civilization is clear. Difficulties surround any further prosecution of researches concerning them. They have themselves disappeared from the face of the earth. Their language has gone with them. But there are the magnificent ruins of their palaces and temples. There are numerous tombs and cemeteries which have never been scientifically examined. There is a grammar and a small vocabulary of words calling for close comparative examination. There are crania awaiting similar comparative study. There is a possibility that further information may be gleaned from inedited Spanish manuscripts. The subject is a most interesting one, and it is by no means exhausted.

[After a cut in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 429, following the colored plate in _The Necropolis of Ancon_. Wiener reproduces in black and white many of the Ancon specimens.—ED.]]

=II.= THE QUICHUA LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.—No real progress can be made in the work of elucidating the ancient history of Peru, and in unravelling the interesting but still unsolved questions relating to the origin and development of Inca civilization, without a knowledge of the native language. The subject has accordingly received the close attention of laborious students from a very early period, and the present essay would be incomplete without appending an enumeration of the Quichua grammars and vocabularies, and of works relating to Inca literature.

Fray Domingo de San Tomas, a Dominican monk, was the first author who composed a grammar and vocabulary of the language of the Incas. He gave it the name of Quichua, probably because he had studied with members of that tribe, who were of pure Inca race, and whose territory lies to the westward of Cuzco. The name has since been generally adopted for the language of the Peruvian empire.[1311]

Diego de Torres Rubio was born in 1547, in a village near Toledo, became a Jesuit at the age of nineteen, and went out to Peru in 1577. He studied the native languages with great diligence, and composed grammars and vocabularies. His grammar and vocabulary of Quichua first appeared at Saville in 1603, and passed through four editions.[1312] A long residence in Chuquisaca enabled him to acquire the Aymara language, and in 1616 he published a short grammar and vocabulary of Aymara. In 1627 he also published a grammar of the Guarani language. Torres Rubio was rector of the college at Potosi for a short time, but his principal labors were connected with missionary work at Chuquisaca. He died in that city at the great age of ninety-one, on the 13th of April, 1638. Juan de Figueredo, whose Chinchaysuyu vocabulary is bound up with later editions of Torres Rubio, was born at Huancavelica in 1648, of Spanish parents, and after a long and useful missionary life he died at Lima in 1724.

The most voluminous grammatical work on the language of the Incas had for its author the Jesuit Diego Gonzales Holguin. This learned missionary was the scion of a distinguished family in Estremadura, and was befriended in his youth by his relation, Don Juan de Obando, President of the Council of the Indies. After graduating at Alcalá de Henares he became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1568, and went out to Peru in 1581. He resided for several years in the Jesuit college at Juli, near the banks of Lake Titicaca, where the fathers had established a printing-press, and here he studied the Quichua language. He was entrusted with important missions to Quito and Chili, and was nominated interpreter by the Viceroy Toledo. His later years were passed in Paraguay, and when he died at the age of sixty-six, in 1618, he was rector of the college at Asuncion. His Quichua dictionary was published at Lima in 1586, and a second edition appeared in 1607,[1313] the same year in which the grammar first saw the light.[1314] The Quichua grammar of Holguin is the most complete and elaborate that has been written, and his dictionary is also the best in every respect.

While Holguin was studiously preparing these valuable works on the Quichua language in the college at Juli, a colleague was laboring with equal zeal and assiduity at the dialect spoken by the people of the Collao, to which the Jesuits gave the name of Aymara. Ludovico Bertonio was an Italian, a native of the marches of Ancona. Arriving in Peru in 1581, he resided at Juli for many years, studying the Aymara language, until, attacked by gout, he was sent to Lima, where he died at the age of seventy-three, in 1625. His Aymara grammar was first published at Rome in 1603,[1315] but a very much improved second edition,[1316] and a large dictionary of Aymara,[1317] were products of the Jesuit press at Juli in 1612. Bertonio also wrote a catechism and a life of Christ in Aymara, which were printed at Juli.

A vocabulary of Quichua by Fray Juan Martinez was printed at Lima in 1604, and another in 1614. Four Quichua grammars followed during the seventeenth century. That of Alonso de Huerta was published at Lima in 1616; the grammar of the Franciscan Diego de Olmos appeared in 1633; Don Juan Roxo Mexia y Ocon, a native of Cuzco, and professor of Quichua at the University of Lima, published his grammar in 1648; and the grammar of Estevan Sancho de Melgar saw the light in 1691.[1318] Leon Pinelo also mentions a Quichua grammar by Juan de Vega. The anonymous Jesuit refers to a Quichua dictionary by Melchior Fernandez, which is lost to us.

In 1644 Don Fernando de la Carrera, the Cura of Reque, near Chiclayo, published his grammar of the Yunca language, at Lima. This is the language which was once spoken in the valleys of the Peruvian coast by the civilized people whose ruler was the grand Chimu. Now the language is extinct, or spoken only by a few Indians in the coast village of Eten. The work of Carrera is therefore important, as, with the exception of a specimen of the language preserved by Bishop Oré, it is the only book in which the student can now obtain any linguistic knowledge of the lost civilization. The Yunca grammar was reprinted in numbers in the _Revista de Lima_ of 1880 and following years.[1319]

There was a professorial chair for the study of Quichua in the University of San Márcos at Lima, and the language was cultivated, during the two centuries after the conquest, as well by educated natives as by many Spanish ecclesiastics. The sermons of Dr. Don Fernando de Avendaño have already been referred to.[1320] Dr. Lunarejo, of Cuzco, was another famous Quichuan preacher, and the _Confesionarios_ and catechisms in the language were very numerous. Bishop Louis Geronimo Oré, of Guamanga, in his ritualistic manual, gives the Lord’s prayer and commandments, not only in Quichua and Aymara, but also in the Puquina language spoken by the Urus on Lake Titicaca, and in the Yunca language of the coast, which he calls Mochica.[1321]

A very curious book was published at Lima in 1602, which, among other things, treats of the Quichua language and of the derivations of names of places. The author, Don Diego D’Avalos y Figueroa, appears to have been a native of La Paz. He was possessed of sprightly wit, was well read, and a close observer of nature. We gather from his _Miscelanea Austral_[1322] the names of birds and animals, and of fishes in Lake Titicaca, as well as the opinions of the author on the cause of the absence of rain on the Peruvian coast, on the lacustrine system of the Collao, and on other interesting points of physical geography.[1323]

In modern times the language of the Incas has received attention from students of Peruvian history. The joint authors, Dr. Von Tschudi and Don Mariano Eduardo de Rivero, in their work entitled _Antigüedades Peruanas_, published at Vienna in 1851, devote a chapter to the Quichua language. Two years afterwards Dr. Von Tschudi published a Quichua grammar and dictionary, with the text of the Inca drama of Ollantay, and other specimens of the language.[1324] The present writer’s contributions towards a grammar and dictionary of Quichua were published by Trübner in 1864, and a few years previously a more complete and elaborate work had seen the light at Sucre, the capital of Bolivia. This was the grammar and dictionary by Father Honorio Mossi, of Potosi, a large volume containing thorough and excellent work.[1325] Lastly a Quichua grammar by José Dionisio Anchorena was published at Lima in 1874.[1326]

The curious publication of Don José Fernandez Nodal in 1874 is not so much a grammar of the Quichua Language as a heterogeneous collection of notes on all sorts of subjects, and can scarcely take a place among serious works. The author was a native of Arequipa, of good family, but he was carried away by enthusiasm and allowed his imagination to run riot.[1327]

The gospel of St. Luke, with Aymara and Spanish in parallel columns, was translated from the vulgate by Don Vicente Pazos-kanki, a graduate of the University of Cuzco, and published in London in 1829;[1328] and more recently a Quichua version of the gospel of St. John, translated by Mr. Spilsbury, an English missionary, has appeared at Buenos Ayres.[1329] These publications and others of the same kind have a tendency to preserve the purity of the language, and are therefore welcome to the student of Incarial history.

Quichua has been the subject of detailed comparative study by more than one modern philologist of eminence. The discussion of the Quichua roots by the learned Dr. Vicente Fidel Lopez is a most valuable addition to the literature of the subject; while the historical section of his work is a great aid to a critical consideration of Montesinos and other early authorities. Whatever may be thought of his theoretical opinions, and of the considerations by which he maintains them, there can be no doubt that Dr. Lopez has rendered most important service to all students of Peruvian history.[1330] The theoretical identification of Quichuan roots with those of Turanian and Iberian languages, as it has been elaborated by Mr. Ellis, is also not without its use, quite apart from the truth or otherwise of any linguistic theory.[1331]

[After a cut in William Bollaert’s _Antiquarian Researches_, etc., p. 41, showing a stone figure from Timana in New Granada, an antiquity of the Muiscas, found in a dense forest, with no tradition attached.—ED.]]

Editorial labors connected with the publication of the text and of translations of the Inca drama of Ollantay have recently conduced, in an eminent degree, to the scholarly study of Quichua, while they have sensibly contributed to a better knowledge of the subject. Von Tschudi was the first to publish the text of Ollantay, in the second part of his _Kechua Sprache_, having given extracts from the drama in the chapter on the Quichua language in the _Antigüedades Peruanas_. After a long interval he brought out a revised text with a parallel German translation,[1332] from his former manuscript, collated with another bearing the date of La Paz, 1735.

The drama, in the exact form that it existed when represented before the Incas, is of course lost to us. It was handed down by tradition until it was arranged for representation, divided into scenes, and supplied with stage directions in Spanish times. Several manuscripts were preserved, which differ only slightly from each other; and they were looked upon as very precious literary treasures by their owners. The drama was first publicly brought to notice by Don Manuel Palacios, in the _Museo Erudito_, a periodical published at Cuzco in 1837; but it was not until 1853 that the text was printed by Von Tschudi. His manuscript was copied from one preserved in the Dominican monastery at Cuzco by one of the monks. The transcription was made between 1840 and 1845 for the artist Rugendas, of Munich, who gave it to Von Tschudi. There was another old manuscript in the possession of Dr. Antonio Valdez, the priest of Sicuani, who lived in the last century, and was a friend of the unfortunate Tupac Amaru. Dr. Valdez died in 1816; and copies of his manuscript were possessed by Dr. Pablo Justiniani, the aged priest of Laris, a village in the heart of the eastern Andes, and by Dr. Rosas, the priest of Chinchero. The present writer made a copy of the Justiniani manuscript at Laris, which he collated with that of Dr. Rosas. In 1871 he published the text of his copy, with an attempt at a literal English translation.[1333] In 1868 Dr. Barranca published a Spanish translation from the text of Von Tschudi, now called the Dominican text.[1334] The Peruvian poet Constantino Carrasco afterwards brought out a version of the drama of Ollantay in verse, paraphrased from the translation of Barranca.[1335] The enthusiastic Peruvian student, Dr. Nodal, printed a different Quichua text with a Spanish translation, in parallel columns, in 1874.[1336]

There are other manuscripts, and a text has not yet been derived from a scholarly collation of the whole of them. There is one in the possession of Dr. Gonzalez de la Rosa, which belonged to Dr. Justo Sahuaraura Inca, Archdeacon of Cuzco, and descendant of Paullu, the younger son of Huayna Ccapac. In 1878 the Quichua scholar and native of Cuzco, Don Gavino Pacheco Zegarra, published the text of Ollantay at Paris, from a manuscript found among the books of his great-uncle, Don Pedro Zegarra. He added a very free translation in French, and numerous valuable notes. The work of Zegarra is by far the most important that has appeared on this subject, for the accomplished Peruvian has the great advantage of knowing Quichua from his earliest childhood. With this advantage, not possessed by any previous writer, he unites extensive learning and considerable critical sagacity.[1337]

The reasons for assigning an ancient date to this drama of Ollantay are conclusive in the judgment of all Quichua scholars. On this point there is a consensus of opinion. But General Mitre, the ex-President of the Argentine Republic, published an essay in 1881, to prove that Ollantay was of Spanish origin and was written in comparatively modern times.[1338] The present writer replied to his arguments in the introduction (p. xxix) to the English translation of the second part of _Cieza de Leon_ (1883), and this reply was translated into Spanish and published at Buenos Ayres in the same year, by Don Adolfo F. Olivares, accompanied by a critical note from the pen of Dr. Vicente Lopez.[1339] The latest publication on the subject of Ollantay consists of a series of articles in the _Ateneo de Lima_, by Don E. Larrabure y Unanue, the accomplished author of a history of the conquest of Peru, not yet published. The general conclusion which has been arrived at by Quichua scholars, after this thorough sifting of the question, is that, although the division into scenes and the stage directions are due to some Spanish hand, and although some few Hispanicisms may have crept into some of the texts, owing to the carelessness or ignorance of transcribers, yet that the drama of Ollantay, in all essential points, is of Inca origin. Several old songs are imbedded in it, and others have been preserved by Quichua scholars at Cuzco and Ayacucho, and in the neighborhood of those cities. The editing of these remains of Inca literature will, at some future time, throw further light on the history of the past. There are several learned Peruvians who devote themselves to Incarial studies, besides Señor Zegarra, who now resides in Spain. Among them may be mentioned Dr. Villar of Cuzco, a ripe scholar, who has recently published a closely reasoned essay on the word _Uira-cocha_, Don Luis Carranza, and Don Martin A. Mujica, a native of Huancavelica.

=III.= THE NEW GRANADA TRIBES.—The incipient civilization of the Chibchas or Muiscas of New Granada was first made generally known by Humboldt (_Vues des Cordillères_, octavo ed., ii. 220-67; _Views of Nature_, Eng. trans., 425). Cf. also, E. Uricoechea’s _Memorias sobre las Antigüedades néo-granadinas_ (Berlin, 1854); Bollaert; Rivero and Von Tschudi; Nadaillac, 459; and Joseph Acosta’s _Compendio historico del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada_ (Paris, 1848; with transl. in Bollaert).