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Latin American Mythology
By Hartley Burr Alexander

Index

CHAPTER VII. THE ANDEAN SOUTH

I The Empire of the Incas
II The Yunca Pantheons
III The Myths of the Chincha
IV Viracocha and Tonapa
V The Children of the Sun
VI Legends of the Incas

I. THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS

¹ IN this land of Peru," wrote Cieza de Leon, ² "are three desert ranges where men can in no wise exist. One of these comprises the montana (forests) of the Andes, full of dense wilder- nesses where men cannot live, nor ever have lived. The second is the mountainous region, extending the whole length of the Cordillera of the Andes, which is intensely cold, and its summits are covered with eternal snow, so that in no way can people live in this region owing to the snow and the cold, and also because there are no provisions, all things being destroyed by the snow and the wind, which never ceases to blow. The third range comprises the sandy deserts from Tumbez to the other side of Tarapaca, in which there is nothing to be seen but sand-hills and the fierce sun which dries them up, without water, nor herb, nor tree, nor created thing, except birds which, by the gift of their wings, wander wherever they list. This kingdom, being so vast, has great deserts for the reasons I have now given.

"The inhabited region is after this fashion. In parts of the mountains of the Andes are ravines and dales, which open out into deep valleys of such width as often to form great plains between the mountains; and although the snow falls, it all remains on the higher part. As these valleys are closed in, they are not molested by the winds, nor does the snow reach them, and the land is so fruitful that all things which are sown yield abundantly; and there are trees and many birds and animals. The land being so fertile, is well peopled by the natives. They make their villages with rows of stones roofed with straw, and live healthily and in comfort. Thus the mountains of the Andes form these dales and ravines in which there are populous villages, and rivers of excellent water flow near them, some of the rivers send their waters to the South Sea, entering by the sandy deserts which I have mentioned, and the humidity of their water gives rise to very beautiful valleys with great rows of trees. The valleys are two or three leagues broad, and great quantities of algoroba trees [Prosopis horrida] grow in them, which flourish even at great distances from any water. Wherever there are groves of trees the land is free from sand and very fertile and abundant. In ancient times these valleys were very populous, and still there are Indians in them, though not so many as in former days. As it never rains in these sandy deserts and valleys of Peru, they do not roof their houses as they do in the mountains, but build large houses of adobes [sun-dried bricks] with pleasant terraced roofs of matting to shade them from the sun, nor do the Spaniards use any other roofing than these reed mats. To prepare their fields for sowing, they lead channels from the rivers to irrigate the valleys, and the channels are made so well and with so much regularity that all the land is irrigated without any waste. This system of irrigation makes the valleys very green and cheerful, and they are full of fruit-trees both of Spain and of this country. At all times they raise good harvests of maize and wheat, and of everything that they sow. Thus, although I have described Peru as being formed of three desert ridges, yet from them, by the will of God, descend these valleys and rivers, without which no man could live. This is the cause why the natives were so easily conquered, for if they rebelled they would all perish of cold and hunger. Except the land which they inhabit, the whole country is full of snowy mountains, enormous and very terrible."

Cieza de Leon's description brings vividly before the imagination the physical surroundings which made possible the evolution and the long history of the greatest of native American empires. Divided from one another by towering mountains and inhospitable deserts, the tribes and clans that filtered into this region at some remote period were compelled to develop in relative isolation; while, further, the conditions of existence were such that the inhabitants could not be nomadic huntsmen, nor even fishermen. Along the shores are vestiges of ancient shell-heaps, indicative of utterly primitive fisher-folk, and the sea always remained an important source of food for the coastal peoples ; yet even here, as Cieza de Leon indicates, the growth of population was dependent upon an intensive cultivation of the narrow river-valleys rather than upon the conquest of new territories. Thus, the whole environment of life in Peru, montane and littoral, is framed by the fact of more or less constricted and protected valley centres, immensely productive in response to toil, but yielding no idyllic fruits to unlaborious ease. If the peoples who inhabited these valleys were not agriculturists when they entered them, they were compelled to become such in order that they might live and increase; and while the stupendous thrift of the aborigines, as evidenced by their stone-terraced gardens, their elaborate aqueducts, and their wonderful roads, still excites the astonishment of beholders, it is none the less intelligible as the inevitable consequence of prolonged human habitation. It is certain that the Peruvian peoples were the most accomplished of all Americans in the working of the soil; and it is possible that they were the originators of agriculture in America, for it was from Peru, apparently, that the growing of maize spread throughout wide regions of South America, Peru that developed the potato as a food-crop, and in Peru that the cultivation of cotton and various fruits and vegetables added greatest variety to the native farming.

PLATE XXX: Machu Picchu, in the valley of the Urubamba, north of Cuzco. These ruins of an ancient Inca city were discovered by Hiram Bingham, of the Yale University and National Geographical Society expedition, in 1911, and are by him identified with the "Tampu-Tocco" of Inca tradition. From photograph, courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition.

Peru, likewise, was the only American centre in which there was a domestic animal more important than the dog; and the antiquity of the taming of the llama and alpaca useful not only for food and wool, but also as beasts of burden is shown by the fact that these animals show marked differentiation from the wild guanaco from which they are derived. The development of domestic species of this animal and, even more, the development of maize from its ancestral grasses (if indeed this were Peruvian) ³ imply many centuries of settled and industrious life, a consideration which adds strongly to the archaeological and legendary indications of a civilization that must be reckoned in millennia.

The conditions which thus fostered local and intensive cultural evolutions were scarcely less favourable once the local valleys had reached a certain complexity to the formation of extensive empires. As Cieza de Leon remarks, conquest was easy where refuge was difficult; and the Inca conquerors themselves found that the most effective weapon they could employ against the coastal cities was mastery of their aqueducts. The town which lost control of its water, drawn from the hills, could only surrender; and thus, the segregated valleys fell an easy prey to a powerful and aggressive people, gifted with engineering skill, such as the Inca race; while the empire won was not difficult to hold. At the time of the Spanish conquest that empire was truly immense. Tahuantinsuyu ("the Four Quarters") was the native name, and "the Quartered City" (Cuzco), its capital, was regarded as the Navel of the World. The four quarters, or provinces, were oriented from Cuzco: the southerly was Collasuyu, stretching from the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca southward; the eastern province was Antisuyu, extending down the slopes of the Andes into the regions of savagery; to the west lay Cuntisuyu, reaching to the coast and to the lands of the Yunca peoples; while to the north was Chinchasuyu, following the Andean valleys. Shortly before the Conquest the Inca dominion had been imposed upon the realm of the Scyris of Quito, so that the northern boundary lay beyond the equator; while the extreme southerly border had recently been extended over the Calchaqui tribes and down the coast to the edges of Araucania in the neighbourhood of latitude 35 south.

The imperial territories were naturally narrowed to the Andean region, for the tropical forests to the east offered no allurements to the mountain-loving race which, indeed, could endure only temporarily the heat of the western coast, so that Inca campaigners in this direction resorted to frequent reliefs lest their men be debilitated. On the other hand, the immense expanse north and south, notwithstanding the perfection of the roads and fortresses built by astute rulers to facilitate communication, caused a natural tension of the parts and a tendency to break at the appearance of even the least weakness at the centre. Such appears to have been the fatal defect underlying the conflict of Huascar, at Cuzco, with Atahualpa, whose initial strength lay in his possession of Quito, and whose career was brought to an untimely end by the advent of Pizarro. Despite the fact that Inca power had been clearly crescent within the generation, it is by no means certain that the political conditions which the Spaniards used to advantage might not, if left to themselves, have disrupted the great empire.

There is reason to think that such a rupture had occurred at least once before in the history of Andean civilization. The list of more than a hundred Peruvian kings given by the Licentiate Fernando Montesinos (writing about 1650) ⁴ was formerly viewed with much distrust, chiefly for the reason that the kings of the pre-Inca dynasties recorded by Montesinos are almost without exception unnamed by earlier and prime authorities on Peruvian history (including Garcilasso de la Vega and Cieza de Leon). Recent discoveries, however, both scholarly and archaeological, have brought a new plausibility to Montesinos's lists, and it appears probable that he derived them from the lost works of Bias Valera, one of the earliest men in the field, known to have had exceptional opportunities for a study of native lore; while at the same time the archaeological investigations of Max Uhle and the brilliant achievements of the expeditions headed by Hiram Bingham have given a new definiteness to knowledge of pre-Inca conditions.⁵

It has long been known that Inca civilization was only the last in a series of Peruvian culture periods. Back of it, in the highlands, lay the Megalithic Age, so called from the great size of the stone blocks in its cyclopean masonry, the earliest centre of this culture being supposed to have been about Lake Titicaca, and especially Tiahuanaco, at the south of the lake a site remarkable not only for the most extraordinary of all ancient American monuments, the monolithic gate and the surrounding precincts, but also for the importance ascribed to it in legend as a place of origin of nations. Other highland centres, however, hark back to the same period, and Cuzco itself, in old cyclopean walls, shows evidence of an age of Megalithic greatness upon which the later Inca civilization had supervened. Again, in the coastal region from lea to Truxillo the realms of the Yunca, according to the older chroniclers there were several successive culture periods; and though it is possible that traditions such as that of Naymlap (see Chapter VI, Section V) indicate a foreign origin for the Yunca peoples, in any case their differing environment would account for much. The peoples of the littoral could have no herds of llamas, since the animal was unable to live in that region; and hence they looked mainly to cotton for their fabrics, while the sea gave them fair compensation in the matter of food. In the lesser arts, especially in that of the potter, they surpassed the highlanders and, indeed, all other Americans; but their building material was adobe, and they have left no magnificent monuments, as have the stone-workers of the hills. Nevertheless at some remote, pre-Inca period the ideas of the coast and those of the highlands met and interchanged: the art of Tiahuanaco is reflected in motive at Truxillo, while the vases of Nasca repeat the bizarre decoration of the monolith of Chavin de Huantar. The hoary sanctity of the great temple of Pachacamac was such that its Inca conqueror adopted the god into his own pantheon; and it was just here, at the Yunca shrine of Pachacamac, that Uhle found evidence of a series of culture periods leading to a considerable antiquity. The indigenous coastal art had already passed its climax of expressive skill when the influence of Tiahuanaco appeared; but this influence lasted long enough to leave an enduring impress on the interregnum-like period which followed, awaiting, as it were, the return of the hills' influence, which came with the advent of the Inca. Such, in brief, is the restoration, and it seems to fit remarkably with Bingham's discoveries and with Montesinos's lists.

Of the one hundred and two kings in these lists, the last ten form the Inca dynasty (a group with respect to which Montesinos is in essential agreement with other chroniclers), whose beginning is placed 1100-1200 A. D.; back of these are the twenty-eight lords of Tampu-Tocco; and still earlier the sixty-four rulers of the ancient empire, forty-six of them forming the amauta (or priest-king) dynasty which followed after the primal line of eighteen Sons of the Gods. Were this scheme of regal succession followed out in extenso the beginnings of the Megalithic Empire of the highlands should fall near the beginning of the first millenium before Christ, and that of the Tampu Tocco dynasty in the early years of our Era. Archaeological and other considerations lead, however, to estimates somewhat more conservative, placing the culmination of the early empire in the first centuries of the Christian era, and the sojourn at Tampu Tocco from about 600 1 100 A. D. 6

The Inca dynasty, established at Cuzco toward 1200 A. D., was the creator of the great empire which the Spaniards found, and its record is the traditional history of Peru, recounted by Garcilasso and Cieza. According to the legend, the Inca tribes had come to Cuzco from a place called Tampu-Tocco, a city of refuge in an inaccessible valley, where for centuries their ancestors had lived in seclusion, the cause of the retirement being as follows : in past generations, it was said, the Amauta dynasty held sway over a great highland realm, extending from Tucuman in the south to Huanuco in the north, the empire having been formed perhaps by the earlier royal house, which was called Pirua, after the name of its first King. In the reign of the forty-sixth Amauta, there came an invasion of hordes from the south and east, preceded by comets, earthquakes, and dire divinations. The King Titu Yupanqui, borne on a golden litter, led his soldiers out to battle; he was slain by an arrow, and his discouraged followers retreated with his body. Cuzco fell, and after war came pestilence, leaving city and country uninhabitable, while the remnants of the Amauta people fled away to Tampu-Tocco, where they established themselves, leaving at Cuzco only a few priests who refused to abandon the shrine of the Sun. It was said that the art of writing was lost in this debacle, and that the later art of reckoning by quipus, or knotted and coloured cords, was invented at Tampu-Tocco. Here, in a city free from pests and unmoved by earthquakes, the Kings of Tampu-Tocco reigned in peace, going occasionally to Cuzco to worship at the ancient shrine, over which, with its neighborhood, some shadowy authority was preserved. Finally a woman, Siyu-Yacu, of noble birth and high ambition, caused the report to be spread that her son, Rocca, had been carried off to be instructed by the Sun himself, and a few days later the youth, appearing in a garment glittering with gold, told the people that corruption of the ancient religion had caused their fall, but that their lost glories should be restored to them under his leadership. Thus Rocca became the first of the Incas, Cuzco was restored as capital, and the new empire started on a career which was to exceed the old in grandeur.

With the removal to Cuzco, Tampu-Tocco became no more than a monumental shrine where priests and vestals preserved the rites of the old religion and watched over the caves made sacred by the bones of former monarchs. The native writer Salcamayhua, who, like Garcilasso, makes Manco Capac the founder of the Incas (Montesinos regards Manco Capac I as the first native-born king of the Pirua dynasty), tells how "at the place of his birth he ordered works to be executed, consisting of a masonry wall with three windows, which were emblems of the house of his fathers, whence he descended"; and the name Tampu-Tocco actually means "Tavern of the Windows," windows being an unusual feature of Peruvian architecture. As the event proves, the commemorative wall is still standing.

In 1911, Hiram Bingham, the leader of the expedition sent out by Yale University and the National Geographical Society, discovered in the wild valley of the Urubamba, north of Cuzco, the ruins of a mountain-seated city, one of the most wonderful, and (in its natural context) beautiful ruins in the world. Machu Picchu the place is called, and its discoverer identifies it with the Tampu-Tocco of Inca tradition. One of its most striking features is a wall with three great windows; it contains cave-made graves and temples; bones of the more recent dead indicate that those who last dwelt in it were priestesses and priests; and it gives evidence of long occupation. The more ancient stonework is the more beautiful in execution, seeming to hark back to the masterpieces of Megalithic civilization; the later portion is in Inca style. Especially interesting is the discovery of record stones, associated with the older period, indicating that an earlier method of chronology had been replaced in later times, for it is to the reign of the thirteenth King of Tampu-Tocco that the invention of quipus is ascribed. Ideally placed as a city of refuge in a remote canon, so that its very existence was unknown to the Spanish conquerors; seated on a granite hill unmoved by earthquakes; with its elaborate structures and complicated terraces indicating generations of residence, Machu Picchu represents the connecting link between the old and the new empires in Peru and gives a suddenly vivid plausibility to the traditions recorded by Montesinos.

PLATE XXXI

Sculptured monolith from Chavin de Huantar, now in the Museum of Lima. The design appears to be a deity armed with thunderbolts or elaborate wands, with a monster head surmounted by an elaborate head-dress. If the figure be viewed reversed the head-dress will be seen to consist of a series of masks each pendent from the protruding tongue of the mask above, a motive frequent in Nasca pottery (cf. Plate XXXII). The figure strongly suggests the central image of the Tiahuanaco monolithic gateway, but it is to be observed that serpent heads, from the girdle, the rays of the head-dress, and in the caduceus-like termination of the headdress, take the place of the puma, fish and condor accessories of the Tiahuanaco monument. The relationship of this deity to those represented on Plates XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, and XXXVII, is scarcely to be doubted. Markham, Incas of Peru, page 34.

Thus, in shadowy fashion, the cycles of Andean civilization are restored. There are two great regions, the highland and the littoral, Inca and Yunca, each with a long history. The primitive fisher-families of the coast gave way to a civilization which may have received its impetus, as traditions indicate, from tribes sailing southward in great balsas, at any rate it had developed, doubtless before the Christian era, important and characteristic culture centres Truxillo in the north, Nasca to the south and great shrines, Pachacamac and Rimac, venerable to the Incas; while long after its own acme, and long before the Inca conquest, the coastal civilization had had important commerce with the ancient culture of the highlands. The origin of the pre-Inca empire from the Megalithic culture of Tiahuanaco leads back toward the middle of the first millemum B. c., perhaps to dimly remote centuries. It passed its floruit, marked by the rise of Cuzco as a great capital, and then followed barbarian migrations and wars; the retirement of a defeated handful to Tampu-Tocco; a long period of decline; and finally, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, a renaissance of culture, marked by a religious reform amounting to a new dispensation and stamping the revived power as essentially ecclesiastical in its claims, for all Inca conquests were undertaken with a Crusader's plea for the expansion of the faith in the beneficent Sun and for the spread of knowledge of the Way of Life revealed through his children, the Inca.

It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between the development of this civilization and that of Europe during the same period. Cuzco and Rome rise to empire simultaneously; the ancient civilizations of Tiahuanaco, Nasca, and Truxillo, excelling the new power in art, but inferior in power of organization and engineering works, are the American equivalents of Greece and the Orient. Almost synchronously, Rome and Cuzco fall before barbarian invasions; and in each case centuries follow which can only be known as dark, during which the empire breaks in chaos. Finally, both civilizations rise, again during the same period, as leaders in a new movement in religion, animated by a crusading zeal and basing their authority upon divine will. It is true that Rome does not attain the material power that was restored to Cuzco, but Christendom, at least, does attain this power. Such is the picture, though it must be added that in the present state of knowledge it is plausible restoration only, not proven truth.

II. THE YUNCA PANTHEONS

It is not possible to reconstruct in any detail the religions and mythologies of the pre-Inca civilizations of the central Andes, but of the four culture centres which have been most studied some traits are decipherable. Two of these centres are montane, two coastal. Of the former, the Megalithic highland civilization, whose first home is supposed to have been the region of Lake Titicaca, is assuredly ancient; the civilization of the Calchaqui, to the south of this, was a late conquest of the Incas and was doubtless a contemporary of Inca culture. On the coast, the Yunca developed in two branches, both, apparently, as ancient as the Megalithic culture, and both, again, late conquests of the Incas. To the north, extending from Tumbez to Paramunca, with Chimu (Truxillo) as its capital, was the realm of the Grand Chimu a veritable empire, for it comprised some twenty coastal valleys while the twelve adjoining southern valleys, from Chancay to Nasca, were the seat of the Chincha Confederacy, a loose political organization with a characteristic culture of its own, though clearly akin to that of the Chimu region. All these centres having fallen under the sway of conquerors with a creed to impose (the Incas even erected a shrine to the Sun on the terraces of oracular Pachacamac), their religious traditions were waning in importance in the time of the conquistadores, who, unhappily, secured little of the lore that might have been salved in their own day. There are fragments for the Chimu region in Balboa and Calancha, for the Chincha in Arriaga and Avila; but in the main it is upon the monuments vases, burials, ruins of temples that, in any effort to define the beliefs of these departed peoples, we must depend for a supplementation of the meagre notices recorded in Inca tradition or preserved by the early chroniclers. ⁷

Fortunately these monuments permit of some interesting guesses which, surely, are no unjustified indulgence of human curiosity when the mute expression of dead souls is their matter; and in particular the wonderful drawings of the Truxillo and Nasca vases and the woven figures of their fabrics suggest analogical interpretation. Despite their family likeness, the styles of the two regions are distinct; and, as the investigations of Uhle show, they have undergone long and changing developments, with apogees well in the past. The zenith of Chimu art was marked by a variety and naturalism of design rivaled, if at all in America, only by the best Maya achievements; while Chincha expression realized its acme in polychrome designs truly marvellous in complexity of convention. That the art of both regions is profoundly mythological is obvious from the portrayals.

Striking features of this Yunca art are the monster-forms ⁸ - man-bird, man-beast, man-fish, man-reptile and, again, the multiplication of faces or masks, both of men and of animals. The repetition of the human countenance is especially frequent in the art of Nasca, where series of masks are often enchained in complex designs, one most grotesque form of this concatenation representing a series of masks issuing, as it were, from the successive mouths, and joined by the protruding tongues. Again, there are dragon-like or serpentine monsters having a head at each extremity, recalling not only the two-headed serpent of Aztec and Maya art, but also the Sisiutl of the North-West Coast of North America a region whose art, also, furnishes an impressive analogue, in complexity of convention, to that of the Yunca. Frequently, in Nasca art, the fundamental design is a man-headed bird, or fish, or serpent, whose body and accoutrements are complexly adorned with representations of the heads or forms of other animals the puma, for example, or even the mouse. Oftentimes heads, apparently decapitations, are borne in the hands of the central figure; and on one Truxillo vase there is a depiction ⁹ of what is surely a ceremonial dance in which the participants are masked and disguised as birds and animals; the remarkable Nasca robes in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (see Plates XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV) also suggest masked forms, the representations of the same personage varying in colour and in the arrangement of facial design.

The heads which are held in the hands and which adorn the costumes of these figures are regarded by some authorities as trophy heads, remotely related, perhaps, to those which are prepared as tokens of prowess by some of the Brazilian tribes; and, in fact, the discovery of the decapitated mummies of women and girls, buried in the guano deposits of the sacred islands of Guafiape and Macabi, points to a remote period when human sacrifices were made, perhaps to a marine power, and certainly connected with some superstition as to the head. Another suggestion, however, will account for a greater variety of the forms. The dances with animal masks irresistibly recall the ancestral and totemic masked dances of such peoples as the Pueblo Indians of North America and of the tribes of the North-West Coast; the figures of bird-men, fish-men, and snake-men, with their bodies ornamented with other animal figures, are again reminiscent of the totemic emblems of the far North-West; and surely no image is better adapted to suggest the descent of a series of generations from an ancestral hero than the sequence of tongue-joined masks figured on the Nasca vases, each generation receiving its name, as it were, from the mouth of the preceding. The recurrence of certain constant designs, both on vases and in fabrics, is at least analogous to the use of totemic signs on garments and utensils in the region of the North-West Coast.

PLATE XXXII: Polychrome vase from the Nasca valley, showing the multi-headed deity represented also by Plate XXXI. The succession of masks connected by protruded tongues is a striking form of Nasca design. Examples are found elsewhere, even into Calchaqui territory. The vase here pictured is in the American Museum of Natural History.

It is certain that ancestor-worship was an important feature of Yunca religion, for Arriaga, speaking of the Chincha peoples, says that for festivals they gathered in ayllus (tribes or clans), each with mummies of its kinsfolk to which were offered vases, clothes, plumes, and the like. They had household gods (called Conopa or Huasi-camayoc), as distinguished from the communal deities, which were of several classes; more than three thousand of these Conopas it is said, were destroyed by the Spaniards. Garcilasso informs us that each coastal province worshipped a special kind of fish, "telling a pleasant tale to the effect that the First of all the Fish dwells in the sky" a statement which is certainly in tone with a totemic interpretation.

In addition to the special idols of each province, says Garcilasso, ¹⁰ all the peoples of the littoral from Truxillo to Tarapaca adored the ocean in the form of a fish, out of gratitude for the food that it yielded, naming it Mama Cocha ("Mother Sea"); and it is indeed plausible that the Food-Giver of the Sea was a great deity in this region, although some of the Truxillo vases seem to indicate that the ocean was also regarded as the abode of dread and inimical monsters, since they portray the conflicts of men or heroes with crustacean and piscine monsters of the deep. Antonio de la Calancha, who was prior of the Augustines at Truxillo in 1619, gives a brief account of the Chimu pantheon. ¹¹ The Ocean (Ni) and the earth (Vis) were worshipped, prayers being offered to the one for fish and to the other for good harvests. The great deity, however, was the Moon (Si), to which sacrifices of children were sometimes made; and this heavenly body, regarded as ruler of the elements and bringer of tempests, was held to be more powerful than the Sun. Possibly the crescent or knife-shaped symbol which appears on the head-gear of vase representations of chieftains, in Truxillo ware, is a token of this cult, which finds a parallel among the Araucanians of the far south, among whom, too, the Moon, not the Sun, is the lofty deity.

The language of the subjects of the Grand Chimu was Mochica, which was unrelated to any other in Peru; but though they regarded the Quichua-speaking Chincha as hereditary enemies, the religious conceptions of the two groups were not very different. In Arriaga's account, ¹² the Chincha worshipped the Earth (Mama Pacha) as well as Mama Cocha (the Sea) ; and they also venerated the "Mamas," or Mothers, of maize and cacao. There were likewise tutelary deities for their several villages just as each family had its Penates and Garcilasso states that the god Chincha Camac was adored as the creator and guardian of all the Chincha. The worship of stones in fields and stones in irrigating channels is also mentioned (both for Chimu and for Chincha), and these may well have been in the nature of herms in valleys where fields were narrowly limited; while in addition there were innumerable huacas sacred places, fetishes, oracles, idols, and, in short, anything marvellous, for Garcilasso, in explaining the meaning of the word, says that it was applied to everything exciting wonder, from the great gods and the peaks of the Andes to the birth of twins and the occurrence of hare-lip. It is in this connexion that he speaks of "sepulchres made in the fields or at the corners of their houses, where the devil spoke to them familiarly," a description suggestive of ancestral shrines; and it is quite possible that the word huaca is most properly applied in that sense in which it has survived, to tombs.

In Chincha territory were located the two great shrines of Rimac and Pachacamac, whose oracles even the Incas courted. Rimac, says Garcilasso, signifies "He who Speaks"; he adds that the valley was called Rimac from "an idol there, in the shape of a man, which spoke and gave answers to questions, like the oracle of the Delphic Apollo"; and Lima, which is in the valley of Rimac, receives its appellation from a corruption of this name. A greater shrine, however, and an older oracle was Pachacamac. According to Garcilasso, the word means "Maker and Sustainer of the Universe" (pacha, "earth," camac, "maker"); and he is of opinion that the worship of this divinity originated with the Incas, who, nevertheless, regarded the god as invisible and hence built him no temples and offered him no sacrifices, but "adored him inwardly with the greatest veneration." Markham (not very convincingly) identifies Pachacamac with the great fish-deity of the coast, considering him as a supplanter of the older and purer deity, Viracocha.

One of the most interesting of coastal myths, quoted by Uhle, tells how Pachacamac, having created a man and a woman, failed to provide them with food; but when the man died, the woman was aided by the Sun, who gave her a son and taught the pair to live upon wild fruits. Angered at this interference, Pachacamac killed the youth, from whose buried body sprang maize and other cultivated plants; the Sun gave the woman another son, Wichama, whereupon Pachacamac slew the mother; while Wichama, in revenge, pursued Pachacamac, driving him into the sea, and thereafter burning up the lands in passion, transformed men into stones. This legend has been interpreted as a symbol of the seasons, but it is evident that its elements belong to wide-spread American cycles, for the mother and son suggest the Chibcha goddess, Bachue, while the formation of cultivated plants from the body of the slain youth is a familiar element in myths of the tropical forests and, indeed, in both Americas. From the story it is clear that Pachacamac is a creator god, antagonistic (if not superior) to the Sun, who seems to supplant him in power; but surely it is anomalous that the Earth-Maker should find his end by being driven into the sea unless, indeed, Pachacamac, spouse of Mother Sea, be the embodied Father Heaven, descending in fog and damp and driven seaward by the dispolling Sun. Such an interpretation would make Pachacamac simply a local form of Viracocha; and this, certainly, is suggested in the descriptions, by Garcilasso and others, of the reverence paid to this divinity.

From Francisco de Avila's account ¹³ of the myths of the Huarochiri, in the valley of the Rimac, "we may infer that Viracocha was known to the Chincha tribes, at one period probably as a supreme god. An idol called Coniraya (meaning according to Markham, "Pertaining to Heat") they addressed as "Coniraya Viracocha," saying, "Thou art Lord of all; thine are the crops, and thine are all the people"; and in every toil and difficulty they invoked this deity for aid.

One of the decorative designs that occurs and recurs on the vases of both the Chimu and Chincha regions in the characteristic style of each is the plumed serpent. What is apparently a modification of this is the man-headed serpent, or the warrior with a serpent's or dragon's tail, a further modification representing the man or deity as holding the serpent in one hand, while frequently, in the other hand, is a symbolic staff or weapon that in certain forms is startlingly like the classical thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. Another step shows only the serpent's head held in the one hand, while the staff, or thunderbolt, is made prominent; and, finally, in the style known as that of Tiahuanaco, from its resemblance to the ancient art of the highlands, a squat deity, holding a winged or snake-headed wand in each hand gives the counterfeit presentment of the central figure on the Tiahuanaco arch and the monolith of Chavin. In Central and North America the plumed serpent is a sky-symbol, associated with rainbow, lightning, rain, and weather; and it is not too much to follow the guesses hitherto ventured that this cycle of images, appearing in various forms in the different periods of Yunca art, is intimately associated with the ancient and nearly universal Jovis Pater of America Father Sky.

PLATE XXXIII: Embroidered figure from a Nasca robe in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Nasca fabrics represent the highest achievement in textile art of aboriginal America. Figures of the type here shown are repeated with minor variations, each, no doubt, of symbolic significance, in a chequered or "all-over" design. The deity represented may be totemic, but obviously belongs to the same group as those shown in such pottery paintings as are represented in Plates XXXII and XXXIV.

As in the old world, the eagle, so in South America the condor and the falcon are the especial ministers of this deity; as also are the most powerful of the beasts of prey known in the region the puma, or mountain lion; and, again, a fish, which we may suppose to typify lordship over the waters, as the condor and lion symbolize dominion over air and earth. Thus, as it were, through their grotesque masks and gorgeous fantasies, the pots and jars of the Yunca peoples mutely attest the universal reverence of mankind for the great powers of Nature.

III. THE MYTHS OF THE CHINCHA

What were the tales which the Yunca peoples told of their gods? The little that we know is almost wholly due to the unfinished manuscript of Francisco de Avila, ¹⁴ composed in 1608; but brief and fragmentary though this treatise be, ending abruptly with the heading of a Chapter VIII, which was never written, it throws a curiously suggestive light upon the archaeological discoveries of our own day, with their revelation of successive civilizations and successive cults in the coastal valleys.

Avila's narrative tells of a series of ages of the gods, each marked by its new ruler, which he confesses he did not well comprehend because of the contradictoriness of the legends. At all events, however, in the most ancient period there were "certain huacas, or idols, . . . supposed to have walked in the form of men. These huacas were called Yananamca Intanamca; and in a certain encounter they had with another huaca, called Huallallo Caruincho, they were conquered and destroyed by the said Huallallo, who remained as Lord and God of the land. He ordered that no woman should bring forth more than two children, of which one was to be sacrificed for him to eat, and the other, whichever of the two the parents chose, might be brought up. It was also a tradition that, in those days, all who died were brought to life again on the fifth day; and that what was sown in that land also sprouted, grew, and ripened on the fifth day; and that all these three provinces [Huarochiri, Mama, Chaclla] were then a very hot country, which the Indians call Yunca or Ande" The last allusion probably refers to some recollection of a migration from the coast, for the Huarochiri region is in the highlands drained by the Rimac and Lurin rivers.

The story goes on to record the overthrow of Huallallo by another hero-god, Pariacaca; but before narrating this event, Avila turns aside to tell the tale of Coniraya Viracocha, whom he regards as certainly a great deity at one time, though whether before or after the rise of Pariacaca is not evident.

In ancient times Coniraya appeared as a poor Indian, clothed in rags and reviled by all. Nevertheless, he was the creator of all things, at whose command terraces arose to support the fields and channels were formed to irrigate them feats which he accomplished by merely hurling his hollow cane. He was also all-wise with respect to gods and oracles, and the thoughts of others were open to him. This Coniraya fell in love with a certain virgin, Cavillaca; and as she sat weaving beneath a lucma-tree, he dropped near her a ripe fruit, containing his own generative seed. Eating the fruit unsuspectingly, she became with child; and when the babe was old enough to crawl, she assembled all "the huacas and principal idols of the land," determined to discover the child's father; but as, to her amazement and disgust, the infant crawled to the beggar-like Coniraya, she snatched it up and fled away toward the sea. "But Coniraya Viracocha desired the friendship and favour of the goddess; so, when he saw her take flight, he put on magnificent golden robes, and leaving the astonished assembly of the gods, he ran after her, crying out: '0 my lady Cavillaca, turn your eyes and see how handsome and gallant am I,' with other loving and courteous words ; and they say that his splendour illuminated the whole country." But Cavillaca only increased her speed, and plunging into the sea, mother and child were transformed into two rocks, still to be seen. Coniraya, distanced, kept on his quest. He met a condor, and the condor having promised him success in his pursuit, he gave the condor the promise of long life, power to traverse wildernesses and valleys, and the right to prey; and upon those who should slay the condor he set the curse of death. Next he met a fox, but the fox told him his quest was vain; so he cursed the fox, telling it that it must hunt at night and be slain by men. The lion next promised him well, and he gave the lion power over prey and honour among men. The falcon was similarly blessed for fair promises, and parrots cursed for their ill omen. Arrived at the seaside, Coniraya discovered the vanity of his pursuit, but he was easily consoled; for on the beach he met two daughters of Pachacamac. In the absence of their mother, who was visiting Cavillaca in the sea, they were guarded by a great serpent, but Coniraya quieted the serpent by his wisdom. One of the maidens flew away in the form of a dove, whence their mother was called Urpihuachac, "Mother of Doves"; but the other was more complaisant. "In those days it is said that there were no fishes in the sea, but that this Urpihuachac reared a few in a small pond. Coniraya was enraged that Urpihuachac should be absent in the sea, visiting Cavillaca; so he emptied the fishes out of her pond into the sea, and thence all the fishes now in the sea have been propagated."

That Coniraya is a deity of sun or sky appears evident from this tale; and he is, clearly, at the same time a demiurgic transformer, with not a little of the mere trickster about him. The condor, falcon, and lion are his servants and beneficiaries; foxes and parrots are his antipathies; he has something to do with the provision of fish, and he conquers the serpent of the sea-goddess. Avila says that the tradition is rooted in the customs of the province: the people venerate the condor, which they never kill, as also the lion; they have a horror of the fox, slaying it where they can; "as to the falcon, there is scarcely a festival in which one does not appear on the heads of the dancers and singers; and we all know that they detest the parrots, which is not wonderful considering the mischief they do, though their chief reason is to comply with the tradition."

Cataclysmic events which apparently followed the deeds of the Demiurge were a five-day deluge, in which all men were destroyed save one who was led by a speaking llama to a mountain height where he was safe; and a five-day darkness, during which stones knocked together, while both the stones with which they ground grain and the animals of their herds arose against their masters. It was after these cataclysms, in the days when there were as yet no kings, that five eggs appeared on a certain mountain, called Condor-coto: round them a wind blew, for until that time there had been no wind. These eggs were the birth-place of Pariacaca and his four brothers; but before the hero had come forth from his egg, one of his brothers, a great and rich lord, built his house on Anchicocha, adorning it with the red and yellow feathers of certain birds. This lord had llamas whose natural wool was of brilliant colours some red, some blue, some yellow so that it was unnecessary to dye it for weaving; but notwithstanding he was very wise, and even pretended to be God, the Creator, misfortune befell him in the form of a disgusting disease of which he was unable to cure himself, though he sought aid in every direction. Now at this time there was a poor and ill-clad Indian named Huathiacuri, "who, they say, was a son of Pariacaca and who learned many arts from his father," whom, in his egg, he visited in search of advice. This youth, having fallen in love with a daughter of the rich man, one day overheard foxes conversing about the great lord's illness. "The real cause," said a fox, "is that, when his wife was toasting a little maize, one grain fell on her skirt, as happens every day. She gave it to a man who ate it, and afterward she committed adultery with him.

PLATE XXXIV: Vase from Nasca representing a deity with serpentiform body. The commonest motive in Nasca designs is the multiplication, in grotesque forms, of human masks. The deity here represented is commonly shown with a mask head-dress, masks upon either cheek, with a girdle of masks or trophy heads, and with masks elsewhere; while either the body is shown as serpentiform or serpent-like wands are wielded by the hands. It is probable that a sky-god is represented, possibly a local form of Viracocha. Compare Plates XXXI, XXXVI, XXXVII. The vase pictured is in the American Museum of Natural History.

This is the reason that the rich man is sick, and a serpent is now hovering over his beautiful house to eat it, while a toad with two heads is waiting under his grinding-stone with the same object." When Huathiacuri learned this, he told the girl that he knew the cure for her parent's malady; and though she did not believe him, she informed her father, who had the young man brought before him.

Promised the price he demanded the maiden's hand the youth revealed her mother's iniquity and gave orders to kill two serpents, which were found in the roof, as well as a two-headed toad, which hopped forth when the grind ing-stone was lifted. After this the rich man became well, and Huathiacuri received his bride. The sister of this girl, however, was married to a man who, resenting so beggarly a person in the family as Huathiacuri, challenged the latter to a series of contests first, to a drinking-bout; next, to a match in splendour of costume, at which the youth appeared in a dress of snow; then to a dance, in lions' skins, wherein he won because of a rainbow that appeared round the head of the magic lion's skin which he wore; and, finally, to a contest in house-building, wherein all the animals aided him at night.

Thus having vanquished his brother-in-law, Huathiacuri in turn issued a challenge to a dance, ending it in a wild race during which he transformed the brother-in-law into a deer and his wife into rock. The deer lived for some time by devouring people, but finally deer began to be eaten by men, not men by deer. Subsequent to all this, Pariacaca and his brothers issued from the eggs, causing a great tempest in which the rich man and his house were swept into the sea. Pariacaca is also said to have destroyed by a torrent a village of revellers who refused him drink when he appeared among them as a thirsty beggar, all but one girl who took pity upon him; and there is a story of his love for Choque Suso, a maiden whom he found in tears beside her withering maize-fields and for whom he opened an irrigation-channel, converting the girl herself into a stone which still guards the headwaters. After this, in Avila's narrative, comes a heading: "How the Indians of the Ayllu of Copara still worship Cheque Suso" and this channel, a fact which I know not only from their stories, but also from judicial depositions which I have taken on the subject" and there the manuscript abruptly ends.

Nevertheless, this fragment has given us enough to see, if not the system, at least the character of Chincha mythology. There are the generations of the elder gods, with transformations and cataclysms. There are the cosmic eggs perhaps earth's centre and the four winds symbolized in the five of them. There is the toad-symbol of the underworld, and the serpent-symbol of the sky-world. The Rich Man, in his house of red and yellow feathers, is surely a sky-being perhaps a sun-god, perhaps a lunar divinity whose ceaseless crescence and senescence, to and from its glory, may be imaged in his cureless disease. Pariacaca is clearly a deity of waters, probably a divine mountain, giving rain and irrigating streams, and clothing his son in the snow and the rainbow; while the women Cavillaca, and the Mother of Doves, and Cheque Suso, the Nymph of the Channel who were turned into rocks speak again the hoary sanctity of these images of perdurability.

IV. VIRACOCHA AND TONAPA

The Yunca peoples, both Chimu and Chincha, recalled a time when their ancestors entered the coastal valleys to make them their own, "destroying the former inhabitants, ... a vile and feeble race," as Chincha tradition has it. In the uplands the followers of the Scyris of Quito were remembered as coming from the littoral; but for the rest, highland legends point almost uniformly to a southerly or south-easterly origin where, indeed, the tale is not of an autochthonous beginning and with general agreement it is to the plains about Titicaca that the stories lead, as to the most ancient seat of mankind. These traditions, coupled with the immemorial and wonderful ruins of the sacred place at Tiahuanaco whether the precinct of a city or of a temple give a special fascination to this region as being plausibly the key to the solution of the problem of central Andean civilization.

Certainly no more puzzling key was ever given for the unlocking of a mystery, since the basin of Lake Titicaca is a plateau, some thirteen to fourteen thousand feet above sealevel, where cereals will not ripen, so that only potatoes and a few other roots, along with droves of hardy llamas and alpacas, form the reliance for subsistence of a population which at best is sparse. Yet in the midst of this plateau are ruins characterized by the use of enormous stones only less than the great monoliths of Egypt and by a skill in stone-working which implies an extraordinary development of the mason's art. It is the judgement of archaeologists who have visited the scene that nothing less than the huge endeavour of a dense population could have created the visible works; and there is a tradition, derived from an Indian quipu-reader and recorded by Oliva, that the real Tiahuanaco is a subterranean city, in vastness far exceeding the one above the ground. The apparent discrepancy between the capacity of the region for the support of population and the effort required to produce the megalithic works has led Sir Clements Markham to suggest that these structures may date from a period when the plateau was several thousand feet lower than at present (for the elevation of the Andes is geologically recent); it would seem, however, in view of the huge tasks which Inca engineers accomplished, and of the fact that sacred cities in remote sites were venerated by the Andeans, more reasonable to assume that the ruins of Tiahuanaco and the islands represent, in part at least, the devotion of distant princes, who here maintained another Delphi or Lhassa.

The speaking monument of this ancient shrine (and there is no more remarkable monolith in the world) is the carved monolithic gate, now broken. Above the portal (see Plate XXXV) is the decoration, a broad band in low relief; while a central figure, elevated above the others, is a divine image the god with rayed head and with wands or bolts in each hand, whose likeness is met in the Yunca region and on the Chavin stele. On either side, in three ranks of eight each, are forty-eight obeisant figures kings, some have called them, but others see in them totemic symbols of clan ancestors, although it is not impossible that they are genii of earth and air and water: all are winged, all bear wands, and those of the middle tier are condor-headed, while the wand and crest and garb of each is adorned with heads of condor and puma and fish. In case of the central figure the two wands are adorned with condors' heads, and some of the rays of the head-dress terminate in pumas' heads, while on his dress are not only heads of condors, pumas, and human beings, but centrally, on the breast, is a crescent design most resembling a fish. Another curious feature, alike of the forty-eight and of the central god, are circles under the eyes, seemingly tears, which recall the wide-spread trope that rain is heaven's tears, and the fact that tears were sometimes painted on ceremonial masks used in supplications for rain. Beneath the design just described is a meander, perhaps the symbol of earth, 16 adorned with the same condor-heads and framing plaque-like representations of what are surely celestial divinities (still with tearful eyes) ; and it is not beyond reason to suppose that the tiny trumpeter who appears above one of these rayed masks may be the Morning Star, herald of the day.

There is little ground to doubt that this monument is cosmical in meaning (it may also be totemic, for at least the ruling Andeans became "Children of the Sun"), and that the central figure is a heaven-god or a sun-god. The most curious of its emblems, taking into account the nature of the region, is the fish; for while there are fish in Lake Titicaca, the natives (at least today) are little given to taking them. It is possible, as suggested by the crescent on the breast of the god, that the fish is here a symbol of the moon, which may have been mistress of the waves; and this would lead us, analogically, to the capital of the Grand Chimu and the temple of Si An, where were the great deities, the Moon above and the Sea below. Certainly, if an animal form were sought to symbolize the crescent of the skies, none could be found more perfect than that of the fish; or, by extension, the bark by which man conquers the piscine realm might be conceived and imaged as symbol of the lunar ship.

PLATE XXXV: Monolithic Gateway, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. This is regarded by many as the most remarkable pre-historic monument in America. It is approximately ten by twelve and a half feet in front dimension, and is estimated to weigh nine to twelve tons. The decoration consists of a central figure, above the doorway, which is certainly a sky-god and probably Viracocha, and a banded frieze showing groups of mythic beings. For description see pages 233-34. After a photograph in the Peabody Museum.

Such an hypothesis implies a relation of Tiahuanaco to the coastal regions as well as to the mountain valleys; and this relationship, in a period long past, is demonstrated, representations of the deity of Tiahuanaco being found, drawn in Tiahuanaco style, on the Yunca vases. But what of its extension in the highlands? The Chavin stone (see Plate XXXI) from the region of the headwaters of Rio Maranon far to the north of Cuzco is, as monumental evidence of the ancient cult, second in importance only to the Tiahuanaco arch. The figure on this monument is in Nasca rather than in Tiahuanaco style, having as its head-dress an elaborate structure which, when viewed reversed, is found to be formed of that series of masks, each depending from the lolling tongue of its predecessor, which is so common on Nasca vases; while snakes' heads replace the condor-puma-fish adornments of the southern monument, and it is interesting to note that the whole structure terminates in a caduceus-like twist of serpents. The main figure, however, with its elaborate wands, ending exactly in the form of Jove's bolt, certainly follows the style of the central figure of Tiahuanaco, so that we are justified in assuming that it represents a similar conception a celestial deity, from which proceed the serpentine rays, sunlight or lightning. To the far south, in the Calchaqui-Diaguite region, potsherds have been discovered implying the same central conception the deity with mask and bolt, the dragon with head at each extremity, and a series of dragons' heads united by protruding tongues (a design whose far extension leads into the country of the unconquered Araucanians in the Chilean Andes). ¹⁷ More remarkable are the ceremonial and votive objects discovered in this region, among them certain plaques which include a masterpiece (Plate XXXVI) bearing many traits that identify it with the monumental images: the rayed head, the tears beneath the eyes, the crescent-shaped breast-ornament, and, on either side of the central image, crested dragons which appear to take the place of the wands in the type figures.

The names of this heaven-god, ancient in origin and wide in the range of his cult, have doubtless been many in the course of history; but though several of them have survived in the traditions which have been recorded, paramount among them all is that by which the divinity was known to the Inca Viracocha (or Uiracocha). Montesinos's list of kings commences, says Markham, ¹⁸ "with the names of the deity, Ilia Tici Uiracocha. We are told that the first word, Ilia, means 'light.' Tici means 'foundation or beginning of things.' The word Uira is said to be a corruption of Pirua, meaning the 'depository or store-house of creation' . . . The ordinary meaning of Cocha is a lake, but here it is said to signify an abyss profundity. The whole meaning of the words would be, 'The splendour, the foundation, the creator, the infinite God.' The word Yachachic was occasionally added 'the Teacher.'"

Molina, Salcamayhua, Huaman Poma, all give Inca prayers addressed to Viracocha prayers which are our best evidence for the character in which he was regarded. In the group recorded by Molina ¹⁸ the deity appears as lord of generation of plants and animals and humankind; and to him are addressed supplications for increase. But he is very clearly, also, a supreme creator: "O conquering Viracocha! Ever-present Viracocha! Thou who art in the ends of the earth without equal! Thou gavest life and valour to men, saying, 'Let this be a man!' and to women, saying, 'Let this be a woman!' Thou madest them and gavest them being! Watch over them that they may live in health and peace. Thou who art in the high heavens, and among the clouds of the tempest, grant this with long life, and accept this sacrifice, Creator!"

PLATE XXXVI: Plaque probably representing Viracocha. The head is surmounted by a rayed disk, doubtless the sun; tears, symbolic of rain, stream from the eyes; above the hands, on either side, are dragon-like creatures which are doubtless the equivalent of the wands or serpents shown in the hands of similar figures, and which may represent the two servants of the god, as they appear in legend. After CA xii, Plate VIII.

In other prayers Viracocha is represented as creator of the sun, and hence as supreme over the great national god of the Incas: and in the rites which Molina describes, Viracocha (the creator), the Sun, and the Thunder form a triad, addressed in the order named. The same supremacy of Viracocha is recognized in the elaborate hymn recorded by Salcamayhua and translated by Markham after the emended text of Dr. Mossi and the Spanish version of Lafone Quevado : ¹⁹

"O Uira-cocha! Lord of the universe;
Whether thou art male
Whether thou art female
Lord of reproduction
Whatsoever thou mayest be
O Lord of divination
Where art thou?
Thou mayest be above
Thou mayest be below
Or perhaps around
Thy splendid throne and sceptre. Oh hear me!
From the sky above
In which thou mayest be
From the sea beneath
In which thou mayest be
Creator of the world
Maker of all men;
Lord of all Lords
My eyes fail me
For longing to see thee;
For the sole desire to know thee.
Might I behold thee
Might I know thee
Might I consider thee
Might I understand thee.
Oh look down upon me
For thou knowest me.
The sun the moon
The day the night

Are not ordained in vain
By thee, O Uira-cocha!
They all travel
To the assigned place;
They all arrive
At their destined ends,
Whithersoever thou pleasest.
Thy royal sceptre
Thou holdest.
Oh hear me!
Oh choose me!
Let it not be
That I should tire,
That I should die."

It were easy to accept a pantheistic interpretation of a divinity so addressed; it is plausible to regard that deity as androgynous, as Lafone Quevado suggests. What is certain is that here we have a creator-god superior to the world of visible nature, so that he was represented, according to Salcamayhua, by an oval plate of fine gold above the symbols of the heavenly bodies in the great temple at Cuzco. Salcamayhua, moreover, connects with Viracocha two other names, Tonapa and Tarapaca, which, he declares, are appellatives of a servant (or servants) of Viracocha; and here we have a glimpse into another cycle of mythic history.

The story, as Salcamayhua tells it, ²⁰ begins with the remote Purunpacha the time when all the nations were at war with each other, and there was no rest from tumults. "Then, in the middle of the night, they heard the Hapi-riunos [harpy-like daemones] disappearing with mournful complaints, and crying, 'We are conquered, we are conquered, alas that we should lose our bands!" This Salcamayhua interprets as a New-World equivalent of the death-cry of Old-World paganism, "Great Pan is dead!" for from their cry, he says, "it must be understood that the devils were conquered by Jesus Christ our Lord on the cross on Mount Calvary."

Some time after the devils departed, there appeared "a bearded man, of middle height, with long hair, and a rather long shirt. They say that he was somewhat past his prime, for he already had grey hairs, and he was lean. He travelled by aid of a staff, teaching the natives with much love and calling them all his sons and daughters. As he went through the land, he performed many miracles. The sick were healed by his touch. He spoke all languages better than the natives." They called him, Salcamayhua says, Tonapa or Tarapaca (" Tarapaca means an eagle"), associating these names with that of Vira-cocha; "but was he not the glorious apostle, St. Thomas?"

Many tales are told of the miracles performed by Tonapa, among others the story, which Avila narrates' of Pariacaca, of the overwhelming by flood of a village, the inhabitants of which had abused him; and similar legends in which the offenders were transformed into stones. "They further say that this Tonapa, in his wanderings, came to the mountains of Caravaya, where he erected a very large cross; and he carried it on his shoulders to the mountain of Carapucu, where he preached in a loud voice, and shed tears." In 1897 Bandelier ²¹ visited the village of Carabuco, on Lake Titicaca, and there saw the ancient cross, known for more than three centuries, which tradition associates with pre-Columbian times. "The meaning of Carapucu," Salcamayhua continues, "is when a bird called pucu-pucu sings four times at early dawn." May there not be here a clue to the meaning both of the myth and of the emblem ? At dawn, when the herald birds first sing, the four quarters of the world, of which the cross is symbol, are shaped by the light of day a token and a reminiscence of the first creation of Earth by shining Heaven.

Molina, Cieza de Leon, Sarmiento, Huaman Poma ²² tell of the making of sun and moon, and of the generations of men, associating this creation with the lake of Titicaca, its islands, and its neighbourhood. Viracocha is almost universally represented as the creator, and the story follows the main plot of the genesis narratives known to the civilized nations of both Americas a succession of world aeons, each ending in cataclysm. As told by Huaman Poma, five such ages had preceded that in which he lived. The first was an age of Viracochas, an age of gods, of holiness, of life without death, although at the same time it was devoid of inventions and refinements ; the second was an age of skin-clad giants, the Huari Runa, or "Indigenes," worshippers of Viracocha; third came the age of Puron Runa, or "Common Men," living without culture; fourth, that of the Auca Runa, "Warriors," and fifth that of the Inca rule, ended by the coming of the Spaniards. As related by Sarmiento the first age was that of a sunless world inhabited by a race of giants, who, owing to the sin of disobedience, were cataclysmically destroyed; but two brothers, surviving on a hill-top, married two women descended from heaven (in Molina's version these are bird-women) and repeopled a part of the world. Viracocha, however, undertook a second creation at Lake Titicaca, this time with sun, moon, and stars; but out of jealousy, since at first the moon was the brighter orb, the sun threw a handful of ashes over his rival's face, thus giving the shaded colour which the moon now presents. Viracocha, we are told, was assisted by three servants, one of whom, Taguapaca, rebelled against him; for this he was bound and set adrift upon the lake (an event which, in a different form, is given by Salcamayhua as a part of the persecution of Tonapa); and then, taking his two remaining servitors with him, the deity "went to a place now called Tiahuanacu . . . and in this place he sculptured and designed on a great piece of stone all the nations that he intended to create," after which he sent his servants forth to command all tribes and all nations to multiply. The last act of Viracocha's career was his miraculous departure across the western sea, "travelling over the water as if it were land, without sinking," and leaving behind him the prophecy that he would send his messengers once again to protect and to teach his people.

PLATE XXXVII: Vase painting of the sky-god, Tiahuanaco style, from Pachacamac. Compare Plates XXXI, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI. After Baessler, Contributions to the Archaeology of the Empire of the Incas, Vol. IV, Plate CIV.

The tales are surely explanatory of the monuments; and in both we see the general outlines of the ancient Peruvian religion. Supreme in the pantheon was the great creator-god, High Heaven itself, Ilia Tici Viracocha. Attendant upon this divinity (perhaps ancient doublets in some cases) was a group of two or three servants or sons, who were assuredly also celestial Sun and Moon, or Sun and Moon and Morning Star, or Sun and Thunder (for in Peru bidentalia were everywhere). Tonapa (whom Markham regards as properly Conapa, "Heat-Bearing," and the same being as Coniraya) is the Peruvian equivalent of Quetzalcoatl and Bochica ²³ the robed and bearded white man, bearing a magic staff, who comes from the east and after teaching men the way of life, departs over the sea. It is no marvel that the first missionaries and their converts saw in this being, with his cruciform symbol, an apostle of their own faith who had journeyed by way of the Orient to preach the Gospel. Yet certainly it is no mere imagination to find another interpretation of the story what better image could fancy suggest for the daily course of the sun than that of a bright-faced man, bearded with rays, mantled in light, transforming the world of darkness into a world of beauty and the domain of the concealed into a domain of things known, before his departure across the western waters, promising to return, or to send again his messengers of light, to renew the luminous mission? When the Spaniards came, bearded and white, in shining mail and weaponed with fire, the Indians beheld the embodied form of the mythic hero, and so they applied to them the name which is still theirs for a white man viracocha. In such devious ways have the faiths and the fancies of Earth's two worlds commingled.

What ground there is for the ascription of something approaching monotheism to the Peruvians centres in the sky-deity rather than in the Sun, whose cult under the Incas, to some extent replaced that of the elder supreme god. "No one can doubt," says Lafone Quevado, ²⁴ "that Pachacamac and Vira-cocha were gods who correspond to our idea of a Supreme Being and that they were adored in America before the coming of Columbus; and it is logical to attribute to the same American soil the idea of such a conception, even when it occurs among the most savage tribes, since that simply presupposes an ethnic contact to which are opposed no insuperable difficulties of geography. The solar cult is farther from fetishism than is the idea of the Yahveh of the Jews from the solar cult: from this to the true God is a step, and the most savage nations of America found themselves surrounded by worshippers of the light of day."

V. THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN

The most striking feature of the Inca conquests is their professed motive professed, that is, in Inca tradition, especially as represented by the writings of Garcilasso de la Vega for the Incas proclaimed themselves apostles of a new creed and teachers of a new way of life; they were Children of the Sun, sent by their divine parent to bring to a darkened and barbarous world a purer faith and a more enlightened conduct. Garcilasso tells ²⁵ how, when a boy, he inquired of his Inca uncle the origin of their race. "Know," said his kinsman, "that in ancient times all this region which you see was covered with forests and thickets, and the people lived like brute beasts without religion nor government, nor towns, nor houses, without cultivating the land nor covering their bodies, for they knew how to weave neither cotton nor wool to make garments.

They dwelt two or three together in caves or clefts of the rocks, or in caverns under ground; they ate the herbs of the field and roots or fruit like wild beasts, and they also devoured human flesh; they covered their bodies with leaves and with the bark of trees, or with the skins of animals; in fine they lived like deer or other game, and even in their intercourse with women they were like brutes, for they knew nothing of cohabiting with separate wives. . . . Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human race in the condition I have described, had compassion upon them and from heaven he sent down to earth a son and daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father, the Sun, that adoring Him, they might adopt Him as their God; and also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable and civilized men, and to teach them to dwell in houses and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks, and to use the fruits of the earth as rational beings, instead of existing like beasts. With these commands and intentions our Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the lake of Titicaca, saying to them that they might go where they pleased and that at every place where they stopped to eat or sleep they were to thrust into the ground a sceptre of gold which was half a yard long and two fingers in thickness, giving them this staff as a sign and a token that in the place where, by one blow on the earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the desire of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and establish their court. Finally He said to them: 'When you have reduced these people to our service, you shall maintain them in habits of reason and justice by the practice of piety, clemency, and meekness, assuming in all things the office of a pious father toward his beloved and tender children; for thus you will form a likeness and reflection of me. I do good to the whole world, giving light that men may see and do their business, making them warm when they are cold, cherishing their pastures and crops, ripening their fruits and increasing their flocks, watering their lands with dew and bringing fine weather in proper season. I take care to go around the earth each day that I may see the necessities that exist in the world and supply them, as the sustainer and benefactor of the heathen. I desire that you shall imitate this example as my children, sent to earth solely for the instruction and benefit of these men who live like beasts; and from this time I constitute and name you as kings and lords over all the tribes that you may instruct them in your rational works and government."

Viewed as theology, this utterance is remarkable. Even if it be taken (as perhaps it should be) rather as an excuse for conquests made than as their veritable pretext, the story still reflects an advanced stage of moral thinking, since utterly barbarous races demand no such justification for seizing from others what they desire; and in this broader scope the successors of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo soon interpreted their liberal commission. The third Inca, Lloque Yupanqui, decided, Garcilasso says, ²⁶ that "all their policy should not be one of prayer and persuasion, but that arms and power should form a part, at least with those who were stubborn and pertinaceous." Having assembled an army, the Inca crossed the border, and entering a province called Cana, he sent messengers to the inhabitants, "requiring them to submit to and obey the child of the Sun, abandoning their own vain and evil sacrifices, and bestial customs" a formula that became thenceforth the Inca preliminary to a declaration of war. The Cana submitted, but, the chronicler says, when he passed to the province of Ayaviri, the natives "were so stubborn and rebellious that neither promises, nor persuasion, nor the examples of the other subjugated aborigines were of any avail; they all preferred to die defending their liberty." And so fell many a province, after vainly endeavouring to protect its native gods, as the realm of the Incas grew, always advancing under the pretext of religious reform, the mandate of the Sun.

But while the extension of the solar cult was made the excuse for the creation of an empire, it was more than a political device; for the Incas called themselves "children of the Sun" in the belief that they were directly descended from this deity and under his special care. Molina ²⁷ tells of an adventure which he ascribes to Inca Yupanqui, meaning, apparently, Pachacuti, the greatest of the Incas. While, as a young man, the Inca prince was journeying to visit his father, Viracocha Inca, he passed a spring in which he saw a piece of crystal fall, wherein appeared the figure of an Indian. From the back of his head issued three very brilliant rays, even as those of the Sun; serpents were twined round his arms, and on his head there was a llautu [the fringe, symbol of the sun's rays, worn on the forehead by the Incas as token of royalty] like that of the Inca. His ears were bored, and ear-pieces, resembling those used by the Incas, were inserted; he was also dressed in the manner of the Inca. The head of a lion came from between his legs, and on his shoulders there was another lion whose legs appeared to join over the shoulders of the man; while, furthermore, a sort of serpent was twined about his shoulders.

This apparition said to the youth: "Come hither, my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt conquer many nations; therefore be careful to pay great reverence to me and remember me in thy sacrifices." The vision vanished, but the piece of crystal remained, "and they say that he afterward saw in it everything he wanted." The solar imagery and the analogy of this figure, with its lions and serpents, to the monumental representations of celestial deities, are at once apparent; and there is, too, in the tale, with its prophecy and its crystal-gazing more than a suggestion of the fast in the wilderness by which the North American Indian youth seeks a revelation of his personal medicine-helper, or totem. The Incas all had such personal tutelaries. That of Manco Capac was said to have been a falcon, called Inti; and the word came to mean the Sun itself in its character as deity or, perhaps, as tutelary of the Inca clan, since the name Inti appears in the epithets applied to the "brothers" of more than one later Inca. Serpents, birds, and golden images were forms of these totemic familiars, each buried with the body of the Inca to whom it had pertained. Just as individuals had their personal Genii of this character, so each clan had for ancestor its Genius, or tutelary, which might be a star, a mountain, a rock, or a spring. The Sun was such a Genius of the Incas, and it came to be an ever greater deity as Inca power spread by very reason of the growing importance of their clan; while its recognition by members of allied and conquered septs came to be demanded very much, we may suppose, as the cultic acknowledgement of the Genius of the Roman Emperor was required in expression of loyalty to the reigning race.

The Inca pantheon was not narrow. ²⁸ Besides the ancestral deities, there were innumerable huacas sacred places, oracles, or idols and whole classes of nature-powers; the generative Earth (Pacha Mama) and "mamas" of plant and animal kinds; meteorological potencies, especially the Rainbow and Thunder and Lightning, conceived as servants of the Sun; and, in the heaven itself, the Moon and the Constellations, by which the seasons were computed. Remote over all was the heaven-god and creator, Viracocha, with respect to whom the Sun itself was but a servitor. Salcamayhua declares that Manco Capac had set up a plate of fine gold, oval in shape, "which signified that there was a Creator of heaven and earth." Mayta Capac renewed this image despising, tradition said, all created objects, even the highest, such as men and the sun and moon and "he caused things to be placed round the plate, which I have shown that it may be perceived what these heathen thought." In illustration Salcamayhua gives a drawing which many authorities regard as the key to Peruvian mythology. At the top is a representation of the Southern Cross, the pole of the austral heavens. Below this is the oval symbol of the Creator, on one side of which is an image of the Sun, with the Morning Star beneath, while opposite is the Moon above the Evening Star. Under these is a group of twelve signs a leaping puma, a tree, "Mama Cocha," a chart of this mountainous Earth surmounted by a rainbow and serving as source for a river into which levin falls, a group of seven circles called "shining eyes," and other emblems the whole representing, so Stansbury Hagar argues, the Peruvian zodiac. Salcamayhua goes on to say that Huascar placed an image of the Sun in the place where the symbol of the Creator had been, and it was as thus altered that the Spaniards found the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco.

It would appear, indeed, that the action of Huascar was only a final step in the rise of the solar cult to pre-eminence in Peru. Doubtless the sun had been a principal deity from an early period, but its close relation to the Inca clan made it progressively more and more important, so that by the time of the coming of the Spaniards it had risen, as a national divinity, to a position analogous to that of Ashur in the later Assyrian empire. Meantime the older heaven-god, Viracocha, presumably the tutelary of the pre-Inca empire and of Tia-huanaco, had faded into obscurity. To be sure, there was a temple to this god in Cuzco (so Molina and Salcamayhua attest) ; but to the Sun there were shrines all over the land, with priests and priestesses; while Cuzco was the centre of a magnificent imperial cult, the sanctuary honoured by royalty itself and served not only by the sacerdotal head of all Inca temple-service, a high priest of blood royal, but also by hundreds of devoted Virgins of the Sun, who, like the Roman Vestals, kept an undying fire on the altars of the solar god.

Yet Viracocha was not forgotten, even by the Incas who subordinated him officially to the Sun; and few passages in American lore are more striking than are the records of Inca doubt as to the Sun's divinity and power. Molina says of that very Inca to whom the vision of the crystal appeared that "he reflected upon the respect and reverence shown by his ancestors to the Sun, who worshipped it as a god; he observed that it never had any rest, and that it daily journeyed round the earth; and he said to those of his council that it was not possible that the Sun could be the God who created all things, for if he was, he would not permit a small cloud to obscure his splendour; and that if he was creator of all things, he would sometimes rest, and light up the whole world from one spot. Thus, it cannot be otherwise but there is someone who directs him, and this is the Pacha-yachachi, the Creator." Garcilasso (quoting Bias Valera) states that the Inca Tupac Yupanqui likened the Sun rather to a tethered beast or to a shot arrow than to a free divinity, while Huayna Capac is credited with a similar judgement. In the prayers recorded by Molina, Viracocha is supreme, even over the Sun; and these petitions, it must be supposed, represent the deepest conviction of Inca religion.

VI. LEGENDS OF THE INCAS

Stories of Inca origins, as told by the chroniclers, present a certain confusion of incident that probably goes back to the native versions. There are obviously historical narratives mingled with clearly mythic materials and influencing each other. The islands of Titicaca and the ruins of Tiahuanaco appear as the source of remote provenance of the Incas; a place called Paccari-Tampu ("Tavern of the Dawn"), not far from Cuzco, and the mysterious hill of Tampu-Tocco ("Tavern of the Windows") are recorded as sites associated with their more immediate rise; yet as Manco Capac is associated with both origins, and as the narratives pertaining to both contain cosmogonic elements, the tales give the impression of blending and duplication.

PLATE XXXVIII: "Temple of the three Windows," Machu Picchu. Windows are not a frequent feature of Inca architecture, and when Bingham discovered at Machu Picchu the temple with three conspicuous windows, here shown, this discovery seemed to give added plausibility to the theory that Machu Picchu is indeed the Tampu-Tocco of the Incas. See pages 248 ff. and compare Plate XXX. From photograph, courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition.

With different degrees of confusion all the chroniclers (Cieza de Leon, Garcilasso, Molina, Salcamayhua, Betanzos, Montesinos, Huaman Porno, and others) tell the story of the coming forth of Manco Capac and his brothers from Tampu-Tocco to create the empire; but of all the accounts Markham regards that given by Sarmiento as the most authentic. ²⁹ According to this version, Tampu-Tocco was a house on a hill, provided with three windows, named Maras, Sutic, and Capac. Through the first of these came the Maras tribe, through Sutic came the Tampu tribe, and through Capac, the regal window, came four Ayars with their four wives Ayar Manco and Mama Ocllo; Ayar Auca (the "joyous," or "fighting," Ayar) and Mama Huaco (the "warlike"); Ayar Cachi (the "Salt" Ayar) and Mama Ipacura (the "Elder Aunt"); Ayar Uchu (the "Pepper" Ayar) and Mama Raua. The four pairs "knew no father nor mother, beyond the story they told that they came out of the said window by order of Ticci Viracocha; and they declared that Viracocha created them to be lords"; but it was believed that by the counsel of the fierce Mama Huaco they decided to go forth and subjugate peoples and lands. Besides the Maras and Tampu peoples, eight other tribes were associated with the Ayars, as vassals, when they began their quest, taking with them their goods and their families. Manco Capac carrying with him, as a palladium, a falcon, called Indi, or Inti the name of the Sun-god bore also a golden rod which was to sink into the land at the site where they were to abide; and Salcamayhua says that, in setting out, the hero was wreathed in rain-bows, this being regarded as an omen of success.

The journey was leisurely, and in course of it Sinchi Rocca, who was to be the second Inca, was born to Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac; but then came a series of magic transformations by which the three brothers disappeared, leaving the elder without a rival. Ayar Cachi (who, Cieza de Leon says, ³⁰ "had such great power that, with stones hurled from his sling, he split the hills and hurled them up to the clouds") was the first to excite the envy of his brothers; and on the pretext that certain royal treasures had been forgotten in a cave of Tampu-Tocco, he was sent back to secure them, accompanied by a follower who had secret instructions from the brothers to immure him in the cave, once he was inside. This was done, and though Ayar Cachi made the earth shake in his efforts to break through, he could not do so. Nevertheless (Cieza tells us) he appeared to his brothers, "coming in the air with great wings of coloured feathers"; and despite their terror, he commanded them to go on to their destiny, found Cuzco, and establish the empire. "I shall remain in the form and fashion that ye shall see on a hill not distant from here; and it will be for your descendants a place of sanctity and worship, and its name shall be Guanacaure [Huanacauri]. And in return for the good things that ye will have received from me, I pray that ye will always adore me as god and in that place will set up altars whereat to offer sacrifices. If ye do this, ye shall receive help from me in war; and as a sign that from henceforth ye are to be esteemed, honoured, and feared, your ears shall be bored in the manner that ye now behold mine." It was from this custom of boring and enlarging the ears that the Spaniards called the ruling caste Orejones ("Big-Ears"); and it was at the hill of Huanacauri that the Ayar instructed the Incas in the rites by which they initiated youths into the warrior caste.

At this mount, which became one of the great Inca shrines, both the Salt and the Pepper Ayars were reputed to have been transformed into stones, or idols, and it was here that the rainbow sign of promise was given. As they approached the hill so the legend states they saw near the rainbow what appeared to be a man-shaped idol; and "Ayar Uchu offered himself to go to it, for they said that he was very like it." He did so, sat upon the stone, and himself became stone, crying:

"O Brothers, an evil work ye have wrought for me. It was for your sakes that I came where I must remain forever, apart from your company. Go! go! happy brethren, I announce to you that ye shall be great lords. I therefore pray that, in recognition of the desire I have always had to please you, ye shall honour and venerate me in all your festivals and ceremonies, and that I shall be the first to whom ye make offerings, since I remain here for your sakes. When ye celebrate the huarochico (which is the arming of the sons as knights), ye shall adore me as their father, for I shall remain here forever."

Finally Manco Capac's staff sank into the ground "two shots of an arquebus from Cuzco" and from their camp the hero pointed to a heap of stones on the site of Cuzco. " Showing this to his brother, Ayar Auca, he said, 'Brother! thou rememberest how it was arranged between us that thou shouldst go to take possession of the land where we are to settle. Well! behold that stone.' Pointing it out, he continued, 'Go thither flying,' for they say that Ayar Auca had developed some wings; 'and seating thyself there, take possession of the land seen from that heap of rocks. We will presently come and settle and reside.' When Ayar Auca heard the words of his brother, opening his wings, he flew to that place which Manco Capac had pointed out; and seating himself there, he was presently turned into stone, being made the stone of possession. In the ancient language of this valley the heap was called cozco, whence the site has had the name of Cuzco to this day."

Markham placed the events commemorated in this myth at about 100 A. D., and Bingham's remarkable discoveries of Machu Picchu and of the Temple of the Three Windows appear to prove the truth of tales of a Tampu-Tocco dynasty, preceding the coming to Cuzco. The tribal divisions (in their numbers, three and ten, strikingly suggestive of Roman legend) are surely in part historical, for Sarmiento gives names of members of the various ayllus in Cuzco in his own day. Yet it is clear that the Ayars are mythical beings. Garcilasso says ³¹ that the four pairs came forth in the beginning of the world; that in the various legends about them the three brothers disappear in allegory, leaving Manco Capac alone; and that the Salt Ayar signifies "instruction in the rational life," while the Pepper Ayar means "delight received in this instruction." The association of the two Ayars with initiation ceremonies and civic destiny points, in fact, to the character of culture heroes; and their names, Salt and Pepper, again suggest association with economic life, perhaps, in some way, as genii of earth and vegetation, though in the myth of Ayar Cachi the suggestion of a volcanic power is almost irresistible. Ayar Auca is clearly the genius loci of Cuzco, while Manco Capac himself, conceived as an Ayar, is little more than a culture hero. Perhaps the solution is to be found in Montesinos's lists, where Manco Capac is the first ruler of the dynasty of the oldest emperors, after the god Viracocha himself, while the first Inca is Sinchi Rocca. The myth of the Ayars would then hark back to the Megalithic age and to the cosmogonies associated with Titicaca, while their connexion with the Incas, after the dynasty of Tampu-Tocco, would be, as it were, but a natural telescoping of ancient myth and later history, adding to Inca prestige.

In Inca lore there are other legends the tale of the prince who was stolen by his father's enemies and who wept tears of blood, by this portent saving his life; the legend of the virgin of the Sun who loved a pipe-playing shepherd and of their transformation into rocks; the story of Ollantay, the general, who loved the Inca's daughter, preserved in the drama which Markham has translated; and along with these are many fragments of creation-stories and aetiological myths chronicled by the early writers. History and poetic fancy combine in these to give materials into which are woven beliefs and practices far more ancient than the Inca race, just as Hellenic myth contains distorted reflections of the pre-Greek age of the Aegean. By means of such tales the ancient shrines are made to speak again, as through oracles.

NOTES

I. The history and archaeology of aboriginal Peru is summarized by Markham, The Incas of Peru (1910), to which his notes and introductions to his many translations of Spanish works, published by the Hakluyt Society, form a varied supplementation. Among earlier authorities E. G. Squier, Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877), and Castelnau, Expedition (1850-52), are eminent; while of later authorities the more conspicuous are: for Inca monuments, Bingham, of the Yale Expedition, and Baessler; for Tiahuanaco, Crequi-Montfort, of the Mission scientifique francaise a Tiahuanaco, Bandelier, Gonzalez de la Rosa, Posnansky, Uhle and Stiibel; for the coastal regions, Baessler, Reiss and Stiibel, Uhle, Tello; and for the Calchaqui territories, Ambrosetti, Boman, and Lafone Quevado. General and comparative studies are presented in Wissler, The American Indian; Beuchat, Manuel; Joyce, South American Archeology; Spinden, Handbook; while a careful effort to restore the sequences of cultures in Peru is Means, "Outline of the Culture Sequence in the Andean Area," in CA xix (Washington, 1917).

2. Cieza de Leon [a], ch. xxxvi.

3. The origin of agriculture in America is regarded by Spinden, "The Origin and Distribution of Agriculture in America," CA xix (Washington, 1917), as probably Mexican. From Mexico it passed north and south, reaching its limiting areas in the neighbourhoods of the St. Lawrence and of La Plata. Cf. Wissler, The American Indian.

4. Montesinos's lists are analyzed by Markham [a]. See, also, Means; cf. Pietschmann.

5. Uhle, especially [a], [c], and art., CA xviii (London, 1913), "Die Muschelhiigel von Ancon, Peru"; Bingham [b], [c].

6. Means, CA xix (Washington, 1917), p. 237, gives as the general chronological background of Peruvian culture:

circa 200 B.C. - Preliminary migrations.
circa 200 B.C. 600 A. D. - Megalithic Empire.
circa 600-1100 A. D. - Tampu-Tocco Period, decadence.
circa I IOO-I53O A. D. - Inca Empire.

He also gives in the same article, p. 241, a most interesting comparative restoration of the chronologies of the sequence of culture in the several Peruvian and Mexican centres, namely:

TABLE DESIGNED TO SHOW THE SEQUENCE OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN CULTURES AND THEIR CHRONOLOGIC RELATIONS

7. For the myths and religion of the coastal peoples of Peru the important early authorities are Arriaga, Avila, Balboa, Cieza de Leon, and Garcilasso de la Vega. Markham [a], especially chh. xiv, xv, is the primary authority here followed. For archaeological details the authorities are Baessler; Bastian; Joyce [c], ch. viii; Squier [e]; Tello; Putnam; and Uhle. It is from this coastal region that the most striking Peruvian pottery comes, the Truxillo and Nasca styles respectively typifying the Chimu and Chincha groups.

8. Tello, "Los antiguos cementerios del valle de Nasca," p. 287, suggests three criteria by means of which the mythological nature of such figures is to be inferred: When symbolical attributes are indicated by the animal's carrying mystical or thaumaturgical objects; when the figure retains, through a variety of representations, certain constant, individualizing traits; and when the same image is used repeatedly on the more notable types of cultural and artistic objects. Senor Tello believes Nasca religion to have been totemic in character.

9. It is reproduced by Joyce [c], p. 155.

10. Garcilasso's accounts of the coastal religion are scattered through his inchoate work, the more important passages being bk. ii, ch. iv; bk. vi, chh. xvii, xviii.

11. Summarized by Markham [a], p. 216.

12. Summarized by Markham [a], pp. 235-36.

13. Avila [b].

14. Avila's Narrative in Rites and Laws of the Yncas (#S), 1883, pp. 121-47, is the authority for the myths given in the text; but several of the stories appear also in Molina, Salcamayhua, and Sarmiento, showing that the mythic cycle was widespread, extending into the highlands as well as along the coast. The people from whom Avila received his tales were of a tribe that had migrated from the coast to higher valleys.

15. The Tiahuanaco monolith is interpreted by Squier [e], ch. xv; Markham [a], ch. ii; Gonzalez de la Rosa, "Les deux Tiahuanaco," CA xvi (1910); and by Posnansky, "El signo escalonado," CA xviii (1913). The latter regards the meander design, or its element, the stair-design in its various forms, as a symbol of the earth; and he believes Tiahuanaco to be the place of origin of this symbol, whence it spread northward into Mexico. It is, of course, among the Pueblo Indians of the United States an earth-symbol. If this be the correct interpretation, the central figure is the sun, rising or standing above the earth. Bandelier [e] gives ancient and modern myths in regard to Titicaca and its environs.

1 6. Representations of pottery and other designs from the Diaguite region showing the influence of Tiahuanaco and possibly Nasca influence are to be found in the publications of Ambrosetti, Boman, Lafone Quevado and others. Perhaps the most interesting is the potsherd showing the figure of a deity (?) bearing an axe with a trident-like handle, while near him is what seems clearly to be a representation of a thunderbolt; a trophy head is at his girdle.

17. Markham [a], pp. 41-42. Caparo y Perez, Proceedings of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress, section i, pp. 12122, interprets the name "Uirakocha" as composed of uira, "grease," and kocha, "sea"; and, since grease is a symbol for richness and the sea for greatness, it "signified that which was great and rich."

18. Molina (Markham, Rites and Laws), p. 33.

19. Markham [a], ch. viii; another version is given by Markham [c]; while the text and Spanish translation are in Lafone Quevado [a]. Cf. the fragments from Huaman Poma given by Pietschmann [b], especially the prayer, p. 512: "Supreme utmost Huiracocha, wherever thou mayest be, whether in heaven, whether in this world, whether in the world beneath, whether in the utmost world, Greater of this world, where thou mayest be, oh, hear me!"

20. Salcamayhua (Markham, Rites and Laws), pp. 7072.

21. Bandelier [d], [e], especially pp. 291-329.

22. Molina, op. cit.; Cieza de Leon [b], ch. v, pp. 5-10; Sarmiento, pp. 27-39; an d f r summary of the narrative of Huaman Poma, Pietschmann, CA xviii (London, 1913), pp. 511-12.

23. Viracocha and Tonapa obviously belong to the group, or chain, of hero-deities of a like character, extending from Peru to Mexico, and, in modified forms, far to the north and far to the south of each of these centres. This personage, as a hero, is a man, bearded, white, aided by a magic wand or staff, who brings some essential element of culture and departs; as a god, he is a creator, who appeared after the barbaric ages of the world and introduced a new age (there are exceptions to this, as the narrative of Huaman Poma) ; further, he is a deity of the heavens, the plumed or the double-headed serpent is his emblem, perhaps his incarnation, and he is closely associated with the sun, which seems to be his servant. Is it not entirely possible that this interesting mythic complex is historically associated, in its spread, with the spread of the cultivation of maize at some early period? In the Navaho representations of Hastsheyalti, the white god of the east, bearded with pollen, and himself creator and maize-god, with the Yei as his servants, and his two sons (in the tale of "The Stricken Twins") genii respectively of rain (vegetation) and of animals we have the essential attributes of this deity and at the same time an image of his probable function, as sky-god associated especially with the whiteness of dawn, with rain-giving, and hence with growing corn. The staff, which is the conspicuous attribute of Tonapa and Bochica in particular, may well bear a double significance: in the hands of the hero, as the dibble of the maize-planter; in the hands of the god, as the lightning. In any case, there are a multitude of analogies, not only in the myths, but also in the art-motives and symbolisms of the group of tribes which extends from the Diaguite to the North American Pueblo regions that powerfully suggest a common origin of the ideas which centre about the cult of heaven and earth, of descending rain and upspringing maize. Many partial parallels for the same group of ideas are to be found among the less advanced tribes of the plains and forest regions of both South and North America. Possibly, the myth, or at least the rites upon which it rests, accompanied the knowledge of agriculture into these regions.

24. Lafone Quevado [a], p. 378.

25. Garcilasso de la Vega, bk. i, chh. xv, xvi. The myth is also given by Acosta, bk. i, ch. xxv; bk. vi, ch. xx; by Sarmiento, chh. xi-xiv; and by Salcamayhua (Markham, Rites and Laws), pp. 74-75.

26. Garcilasso de la Vega, bk. ii, ch. xviii; bk. viii, ch. viii; cf. bk. ix, ch. x.

27. Molina, pp. 11-12.

28. The Inca pantheon is described by Markham [a], chh. viii, ix, and by Joyce [c], ch. vii. The primary sources are Garcilasso de la Vega, Cieza de Leon, Molina, Salcamayhua, and Sarmiento, and perhaps most important of all Bias Valera, the "Anonymous Jesuit" whose writings were utilized by various early narrators. Salcamayhua's chart is published by Markham, in a corrected form, in Rites and Laws of the Yncas, p. 84. The literal reproduction accompanies Hagar's discussion of it, CA xii, and it has been several times reproduced. Its interpretation is discussed by Hagar, loc. cit.; Spinden, A A, new series, xviii (1916); Lafone Quevado [b], and "Los Ojos de Imaymana," with a reproduction of the chart which he characterizes as "the key to Peruvian symbolism"; cf., also, Ambrosetti, CA xix (Washington, 1913).

29. The myth of the Ayars is recorded by Sarmiento, x-xiii; it is discussed by Markham [a], ch. iv, where are the interpretations of the names adopted in this text.

30. Cieza de Leon [b], chh. vi-viii (pp. 13, 16, quoted).

31. Garcilasso de la Vega, bk. i, ch. xviii.

Index