Mexican and Central American Cultures—Aztec and Maya Scripts and Calendars—Nahua and Shoshoni—Chichimec and Aztec Empires—Uncultured Mexican Peoples:Otomi;Seri—Early Man in Yucatan—The Maya to-day—Transitions from North to South America—ChontalandChoco—TheCatio—Cultures of the Andean area—The ColombianChibcha—Empire of the Inca—QuichuanRace and Language—Inca Origins and History—TheAymara—ChimuCulture—Peruvian Politico-Social System—TheAraucanians—ThePampas Indians—TheGauchos—PatagoniansandFuegians—Linguistic Relations—TheYahgans—TheCashibo—ThePana Family—TheCaribs—Arawakan Family—TheGes (Tapuyan) Family—TheBotocudo—TheTupi-Guaranian Family—TheChiquito—MatacoandTobaof the Gran Chaco.
Mexican and Central American Cultures—Aztec and Maya Scripts and Calendars—Nahua and Shoshoni—Chichimec and Aztec Empires—Uncultured Mexican Peoples:Otomi;Seri—Early Man in Yucatan—The Maya to-day—Transitions from North to South America—ChontalandChoco—TheCatio—Cultures of the Andean area—The ColombianChibcha—Empire of the Inca—QuichuanRace and Language—Inca Origins and History—TheAymara—ChimuCulture—Peruvian Politico-Social System—TheAraucanians—ThePampas Indians—TheGauchos—PatagoniansandFuegians—Linguistic Relations—TheYahgans—TheCashibo—ThePana Family—TheCaribs—Arawakan Family—TheGes (Tapuyan) Family—TheBotocudo—TheTupi-Guaranian Family—TheChiquito—MatacoandTobaof the Gran Chaco.
Mexican and Central American Cultures.
In Mexico and Central America interest is centred chiefly in two great ethnical groups—theNahuatlanandHuaxtecan—whose cultural, historical, and even geographical relations are so intimately interwoven that they can scarcely be treated apart. Thus, although their civilisations are concentrated respectively in the Anahuac (Mexican) plateau and Yucatan and Guatemala, the two domains overlap completely at both ends, so that there are isolated branches of the Huaxtecan family in Mexico (the Huaxtecs (Totonacs) of Vera Cruz, from whom the whole group is named, and of the Nahuatlan in Nicaragua (Pipils, Niquirans, and others)[873].
This very circumstance has no doubt tended to increase the difficulties connected with the questions of their origins, migrations, and mutual cultural influences. Some of these difficulties disappear if the "Toltecs" be eliminated (see p. 342), who had hitherto been a great disturbing element in this connection, and all the rest have in my opinion been satisfactorilydisposed of by E. Förstemann, a leading authority on all Aztec-Maya questions[874]. This eminent archaeologist refers first to the views of Seler[875], who assumes a southern movement of Maya tribes from Yucatan, and a like movement of Aztecs from Tabasco to Nicaragua, and even to Yucatan. On the other hand Dieseldorff holds that Maya art was independently developed, while the link between it and the Aztec shows that an interchange took place, in which process the Maya was the giver, the Aztec the recipient. He further attributes the overthrow of the Maya power 100 or 200 years before the conquest to the Aztecs, and thinks the Aztecs or Nahuas took their god Quetzalcoatl from the "Toltecs," who were a Maya people. Ph. J. Valentini also infers that the Maya were the original people, the Aztecs "mere parasites[876]."
Now Förstemann lays down the principle that any theory, to be satisfactory, should fit in with such facts as:—(1) the agreement and diversity of both cultures; (2) the antiquity and disappearance of the mysterious Toltecs; (3) the complete isolation at 22° N. lat. of the Huaxtecs from the other Maya tribes, and their difference from them; (4) the equally complete isolation of the Guatemalan Pipils, and of the other southern (Nicaraguan) Aztec groups from the rest of the Nahua peoples; (5) the remarkable absence of Aztec local names in Yucatan, while they occur in hundreds in Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, where scarcely any trace is left of Maya names.
To account for these facts he assumes that in the earliest known times Central America from about 23° to 10° N. was mainly inhabited by Maya tribes, who had even reached Cuba. While these Mayas were still at quite a low stage of culture, the Aztecs advanced from as far north as at least 26° N. but only on the Pacific side, thus leaving the Huaxtecs almost untouched in the east. The Aztecs called the Mayas "Toltecs" because they first came in contact with one of their northern branches living in the region about Tula (north of Mexico city)[877]. But when all the relations became clearer, the Toltecsfell gradually into the background, and at last entered the domain of the fabulous.
Now the Aztecs borrowed much from the Mayas, especially gods, whose names they simply translated. A typical case is that of Cuculcan, which becomes Quetzalcoatl, wherecuc=quezal= the birdTrogon resplendens, andcan=coatl= snake[878]. With the higher culture developed in Guatemala the Aztecs came first in contact after passing through Mixtec and Zapotec territory, not long before Columbian times, so that they had no time here to consolidate their empire and assimilate the Mayas. On the contrary the Aztecs were themselves merged in these, all but the Pipils and the settlements on Lake Nicaragua, which retained their national peculiarities.
But whence came the hundreds of Aztec names in the lands between Chiapas and Nicaragua? Here it should be noted that these names are almost exclusively confined to the more important stations, while the less prominent places have everywhere names taken from the tongues of the local tribes. But even the Aztec names themselves occur properly only in official use, hence also on the charts, and are not current to-day amongst the natives who have kept aloof from the Spanish-speaking populations. Hence the inference that such names were mainly introduced by the Spaniards and their Mexican troops during the conquest of those lands, say, up to about 1535, and do not appear in Yucatan which was not conquered from Mexico. Förstemann reluctantly accepts this view, advanced by Sapper[879], having nothing better to suggest.
The coastal towns of Yucatan visited by Spaniards from Cuba in 1517 and onwards were decidedly inferior architecturally to the great temple structures of the interior, though doubtless erected by the same people. The inland cities of Chichen-Itza and Uxmal by that time had fallen from their ancient glory though still religious centres[880].
Aztec and Maya Scripts
The Maya would thus appear to have stood on a higher plane of culture than their Aztec rivals, and the same conclusionmay be drawn from their respective writing systems. Of all the aborigines these two alone had developed what may fairly be called a script in the strict sense of the term, although neither of them had reached the same level of efficiency as the Babylonian cuneiforms, or the Chinese or the Egyptian hieroglyphs, not to speak of the syllabic and alphabetic systems of the Old World. Some even of the barbaric peoples, such as most of the prairie Indians, had reached the stage of graphic symbolism, and were thus on the threshold of writing at the discovery. "The art was rudimentary and limited to crude pictography. The pictographs were painted or sculptured on cliff-faces, boulders, the walls of caverns, and even on trees, as well as on skins, bark, and various artificial objects. Among certain Mexican tribes, also, autographic records were in use, and some of them were much better differentiated than any within the present area of the United States. The records were not only painted and sculptured on stone and moulded in stucco, but were inscribed in books or codices of native parchment and paper; while the characters were measurably arbitrary,i.e.ideographic rather than pictographic[881]."
The Aztec writing may be best described as pictographic, the pictures being symbolical or, in the case of names, combined into a rebus. No doubt much diversity of opinion prevails as to whether the Maya symbols are phonetic or ideographic, and it is a fact that no single text, however short, has yet been satisfactorily deciphered. It seems that many of the symbols possessed true phonetic value and were used to express sounds and syllables, though it cannot be claimed that the Maya scribes had reached that advanced stage where they could indicate each letter sound by a glyph or symbol[882]. According to Cyrus Thomas, a symbol was selected because the name or word it represented had as its chief phonetic element a certain consonant sound or syllable. If this werebthe symbol would be used wherebwas the prominent element of the wordto be indicated, no reference, however, to its original signification being necessarily retained. Thus the symbol forcab, 'earth,' might be used in writingCaban, a day name, orcabil, 'honey,' becausecabis their chief phonetic element.... One reason why attempts at decipherment have failed is a misconception of the peculiar character of the writing, which is in a transition stage from the purely ideographic to the phonetic[883]. From the example here given, the Maya script would appear to have in part reached the rebus stage, which also plays so large a part in the Egyptian hieroglyphic system.Cabis obviously a rebus, and the transition from the rebus to true syllabic and alphabetic systems has already been explained[884]. The German Americanists on the other hand have always regarded Maya writing as more ideographic, and H. Beuchat adopts this view, for "no symbol has ever been read phonetically with a different meaning from that which it possesses as an ideogram[885]."
and Calendars.
But not only were the Maya day characters phonetic; the Maya calendar itself, afterwards borrowed by the Aztecs, has been described as even more accurate than the Julian itself. "Among the Plains Indians the calendars are simple, consisting commonly of a record of winters ('winter counts'), and of notable events occurring either during the winter or during some other season; while the shorter time divisions are reckoned by 'nights' (days), 'dead moons' (lunations), and seasons of leafing, flowering, or fruiting of plants, migrating of animals, etc., and there is no definite system of reducing days to lunations or lunations to years. Among the Pueblo Indians calendric records are inconspicuous or absent, though there is a much more definite calendric system which is fixed and perpetuated by religious ceremonies; while among some of the Mexican tribes there are elaborate calendric systems combined with complete calendric records. The perfection of the calendar among the Maya and Nahua Indians is indicated by the fact that not only were 365 days reckoned as a year, but the bissextile was recognized[886]."
Nahua and Shoshoni.
In another important respect the superiority of the Maya-Quiché peoples over the northern Nahuans is incontestable. When their religious systems are compared, it is at once seen that at the time of the discovery the Mexican Aztecs were little better than ruthless barbarians newly clothed in the borrowed robes of an advanced culture, to which they had not had time to adapt themselves properly, and in which they could but masquerade after their own savage fashion.
It has to be remembered that the Aztecs were but one branch of the Nahuatlan family, whose affinities Buschmann[887]has traced northwards to the rude Shoshonian aborigines who roamed from the present States of Montana, Idaho, and Oregon down into Utah, Texas, and California[888]. To this Nahuatlan stock belonged the barbaric hordes who overthrew the civilisation which flourished on the Anahuac (Mexican) table-land about the sixth centuryA.D.and is associated with the ruins of Tula and Cholula. It now seems clear that the so-called "Toltecs," the "Pyramid-builders," were not Nahuatlans but Huaxtecans, who were absorbed by the immigrants or driven southwards.
Chichimec and Aztec Empires.
To north and north-west of the settled peoples of the valley lived nomadic hunting tribes called Chichimec[889], merged in a loose political system which was dignified in the local traditions by the name of the "Chichimec Empire." The chief part was played by tribes of Nahuan origin[890], whose ascendancy lasted from about the eleventh to the fifteenth century, when they were in their turn overthrown and absorbed by the historical Nahuan confederacy of theAztecs[891]whose capital was Tenochtitlan (the present city of Mexico), theAcolhuas(capital Tezcuco), and theTepanecs(capital Tlacopan).
Thus the Aztec Empire reduced by the Conquistadores in 1520 had but a brief record, although the Aztecs themselves as well as many other tribes of Nahuatl speech, must have been in contact with the more civilised Huaxtecan peoples for centuries before the appearance of the Spaniards on the scene. It was during these ages that the Nahuas "borrowed much from the Mayas," as Förstemann puts it, without greatly benefiting by the process. Thus the Maya gods, for the most part of a relatively mild type like the Maya themselves, become in the hideous Aztec pantheon ferocious demons with an insatiable thirst for blood, so that the teocalli, "god's houses," were transformed to human shambles, where on solemn occasions the victims were said to have numbered tens of thousands[892].
Uncultured Mexican Peoples.
Besides the Aztecs and their allies, the elevated Mexican plateaus were occupied by several other relatively civilised nations, such as theMiztecsandZapotecsof Oajaca, theTarascoand neighbouringMatlaltzinca, of Michoacan[893], all of whom spoke independent stock languages, and theTotonacsof Vera Cruz, who were of Huaxtecan speech, and were in touch to the north with the Huaxtecs, a primitive Maya people. The high degree of civilisation attained by some of these nations before their reduction by the Aztecs is attested by the magnificent ruins of Mitla, capital of the Zapotecs, which was captured and destroyed by the Mexicans in 1494[894]. Of the royal palace Viollet-le-Duc speaks in enthusiastic terms, declaring that "the monuments of the golden age of Greece and Rome alone equal the beauty of the masonry of this great building[895]." In general their usages and religious rites resembled those of the Aztecs, although the Zapotecs, besides the civil ruler, had a High Priest who took part in the government. "His feet were never allowed to touch the ground; he was carried on the shoulders of his attendants; and when he appeared all, even the chiefs themselves, had to fall prostrate before him, and none dared to raise their eyes in his presence[896]." The Zapotec language is still spoken by about 260 natives in the State of Oajaca.
Otomi—Seri.
Farther north the plains and uplands continued to be inhabited by a multitude of wild tribes speaking an unknown number of stock languages, and thus presenting a chaos of ethnical and linguistic elements comparable to that which prevails along the north-west coast. Of these rude populations one of the most widespread are the Otomi of the central region, noted for the monosyllabictendencies of their language, which Najera, a native grammarian, has on this ground compared with Chinese, from which, however, it is fundamentally distinct. Still more primitive are the Seri Indians of Tiburon island in the Gulf of California and the adjacent mainland, who were visited in 1895 by W. J. McGee, and found to be probably more isolated and savage than any other tribe remaining on the North American Continent. They hunt, fish, and collect vegetable food, and most of their food is eaten raw, they have no domestic animals save dogs, they are totally without agriculture, and their industrial arts are few and rude. They use the bow and arrow but have no knife. Their houses are flimsy huts. They make pottery and rafts of canes. The Seri are loosely organised in a number of exogamic, matrilineal, totemic clans. Mother-right obtains to a greater extent perhaps than in any other people. At marriage the husband becomes a privileged guest in the wife's mother's household, and it is only in the chase or on the war-path that men take an important place. Polygyny prevails. The most conspicuous ceremony is the girls' puberty feast. The dead are buried in a contracted position. "The strongest tribal characteristic is implacable animosity towards aliens.... In their estimation the brightest virtue is the shedding of alien blood, while the blackest crime in their calendar is alien conjugal union[897]."
Early Man in Yucatan.
It is noteworthy that but few traces of such savagery have yet been discovered in Yucatan. The investigations of Henry Mercer[898]in this region lend strong support to Förstemann's views regarding the early Huaxtecan migrations and the general southward spread of Maya culture from the Mexican table-land. Nearly thirty caves examined by this explorer failed to yield any remains either of the mastodon, mammoth, and horse, or of early man, elsewhere so often associated with these animals. Hence Mercer infers that the Mayas reached Yucatan already in an advanced state of culture, which remained unchanged till the conquest. In the caves were found great quantities of good pottery, generally well baked and of symmetrical form, the oldest quite as good as the latest where they occur in stratified beds, showing no progress anywhere.
The caves of Loltun (Yucatan) and Copan (Honduras),examined by E. H. Thompson and G. Byron-Gordon, yielded pre-Mayan débris from the deep strata. Perhaps this very ancient population was of the same race as the little known tribes still living in the forests of Honduras and San Salvador[899].
The Maya to-day.
Since the conquest the Aztecs, and other cultured nations of Anahuac, have yielded to European influences to a far greater extent than the Maya-Quiché of Yucatan and Guatemala. In the city of Mexico the Nahuatl tongue has almost died out, and this place has long been a leading centre of Spanish arts and letters[900]; yet the Mexicans yearly celebrate a feast in memory of their great ancestors who died in defence of their country[901]. But Merida, standing on the site of the ancient Ti-hoó, has almost again become a Maya town, where the white settlers themselves have been largely assimilated in speech and usages to the natives. The very streets are still indicated by the carved images of the hawk, flamingo, or other tutelar deities, while the houses of the suburbs continue to be built in the old Maya style, two or three feet above the street level, with a walled porch and stone bench running round the enclosure.
One reason for this remarkable contrast may be that the Nahua culture, as above seen, was to a great extent borrowed in relatively recent times, whereas the Maya civilisation is now shown to date from the epoch of the Tolan and Cholulan pyramid-builders. Hence the former yielded to the first shock, while the latter still persists to some extent in Yucatan. Here about 1000A.D.the cities of Chichen-Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan formed a confederacy in which each was to share equally in the government of the country. Under the peaceful conditions of the next two centuries followed the second and last great Maya epoch, the Age of Architecture, as it has been termed, as opposed to the first epoch, the Age of Sculpture, from the second to the sixth centuryA.D.During this earlier epoch flourished the great cities of the south, Palenque, Quirigua, Copan, and others[902]. Despite their more gentle disposition,as expressed in the softer and almost feminine lines of their features, the Mayas held out more valiantly than the Aztecs against the Spaniards, and a section of the nation occupying a strip of territory between Yucatan and British Honduras, still maintains its independence. The "barbarians," as the inhabitants of this district are called, would appear to be scarcely less civilised than their neighbours, although they have forgotten the teachings of the padres, and transformed the Catholic churches to wayside inns. Even as it is the descendants of the Spaniards have to a great extent forgotten their mother-tongue, and Maya-Quiché dialects are almost everywhere current except in the Campeachy district. Those also who call themselves Catholics preserve and practise many of the old rites. After burial the track from the grave to the house is carefully chalked, so that the soul of the departed may know the way back when the time comes to enter the body of some new-born babe. The descendants of the national astrologers everywhere pursue their arts, determining events, forecasting the harvests and so on by the conjunctions of the stars, and every village has its native "Zadkiel" who reads the future in the ubiquitous crystal globe. Even certain priests continue to celebrate the "Field Mass," at which a cock is sacrificed to the Mayan Aesculapius, with invocations to the Trinity and their associates, the four genii of the rain and crops. "These tutelar deities, however, have taken Christian names, the Red, or God of the East, having become St Dominic; the White, or God of the North, St Gabriel; the Black, or God of the West, St James; and the 'Yellow Goddess' of the South, Mary Magdalene[903]."
Transitions from North to South America.
To the observer passing from the northern to the southern division of the New World no marked contrasts are at first perceptible, either in the physical appearance, or in the social condition of the aborigines. The substantial uniformity, which in these respects prevails from the Arctic to the Austral waters, is in fact well illustrated by the comparatively slight differences presented by the primitive populations dwelling north and south of the Isthmus of Panama.
At the discovery the West Indies were inhabited by twodistinct peoples, both apparently of South American origin. The populations of the Greater Antilles, Cuba, Jamaica, Santo Domingo and Porto Rico were of Arawak stock, as were also the Lucayans of the Bahamas. The Lesser Antilles were peopled by Caribs, whose culture had been somewhat modified by the Arawaks who had preceded them. As regards influences from the north-west and west, Joyce considers that intercourse between Yucatan and Western Cuba was confined to occasional trading voyages and did not long antedate the arrival of the Spaniards. The same applies to Florida where, however, Antillean influences may be traced, especially in pottery designs[904]. According to Beuchat, however, the Guacanabibes of Cuba are of common origin with the Tekestas of Florida. Other tribes from Florida spread to the Bahamas, Cuba[905], and perhaps Hayti, but were checked by Arawaks from South America who mastered the whole of the West Indies. Last came the more vigorous but less advanced Caribs, also from the southern mainland (of Arawak origin according to Joyce and Beuchat). The statement of Columbus that the Lucayans[906]were "of good size, with large eyes and broader foreheads than he had ever seen in any other race of men" is fully borne out by the character of some old skulls from the Bahamas measured by W. K. Brooks, who regarded them as belonging to "a well-marked type of the North American Indian race which was at that time distributed over the Bahama Islands, Hayti, and the greater part of Cuba. As these islands are only a few miles from the peninsula of Florida, this race must at some time have inhabited at least the south-eastern extremity of the continent, and it is therefore extremely interesting to note that the North American crania which exhibit the closest resemblance to those fromthe Bahama Islands have been obtained from Florida[907]." This observer dwells on the solidity and massiveness of the Lucayan skulls, which bring them into direct relation with the races both of the Mississippi plains and of the Brazilian and Venezuelan coast-lands, though the general ethnography of Panama and Costa Rica reveals no active influence exerted by tribes of Colombia and Venezuela, except in eastern Panama[908].
Chontal and Choco.
Equally close is the connection established between the surviving Isthmian and Colombian peoples of the Atrato and Magdalena basins. The Chontal of Nicaragua are scarcely to be distinguished from some of the Santa Marta hillmen, while the Choco and perhaps the Cuna of Panama have been affiliated to the Choco of the Atrato and San Juan rivers. The cultural connection between the tribes of the Isthmus and of Colombia appears especially in the gold-work and pottery of the Chiriqui; at the Chiriqui Lagoon, however, Nahuan influence is perceptible[909]. Attempts, which however can hardly be regarded as successful, have even been made to establish linguistic relations between the Costa Rican Guatuso and the Timote of the Merida uplands of Venezuela, who are themselves a branch of the formerly widespread Muyscan family.
The Catio.
But with these Muyscans we at once enter a new ethnical and cultural domain, in which may be studied the resemblances due to the common origin of all the American aborigines, and the divergences due obviously to long isolation and independent local developments in the two continental divisions. In general the southern populations present more violent contrasts than the northern in their social and intellectual developments, so that while the wild tribes touch a lower depth of savagery, some at least of the civilised peoples rise to a higher degree of excellence, if not in letters—where the inferiority is manifest—certainly in the arts of engineering, architecture, agriculture, and political organisation. Thus we need not travel many miles inland from the Isthmus without meeting the Catio, a wild tribe between the Atrato and theCauca, more degraded even than the Seri of Tiburon island, most debased of all North American hordes. These Catio, a now nearly extinct branch of the Choco stock, were said to dwell like the anthropoid apes, in the branches of trees; they mostly went naked, and were reported, like the Mangbattus and other Congo negroes, to "fatten their captives for the table." Their Darien neighbours of the Nore valley, who gave an alternative name to the Panama peninsula, were accustomed to steal the women of hostile tribes, cohabit with them, and carefully bring up the children till their fourteenth year, when they were eaten with much rejoicing, the mothers ultimately sharing the same fate[910]; and the Cocoma of the Marañon "were in the habit of eating their own dead relations, and grinding their bones to drink in their fermented liquor. They said it was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed up by the cold earth[911]." In fact of the Colombian aborigines Herrera tells us that "the living are the grave of the dead; for the husband has been seen to eat his wife, the brother his brother or sister, the son his father; captives also are eaten roasted[912]."
Thus is raised the question of cannibalism in the New World, where at the discovery it was incomparably more prevalent south than north of the equator. Compare the Eskimo and the Fuegians at the two extremes, the former practically exonerated of the charge, and in distress sparing wives and children and eating their dogs; the latter sparing their dogs because useful for catching otters, and smoking and eating their old women because useless for further purposes[913]. In the north the taste for human flesh had declined, and the practice survived only as a ceremonial rite, chiefly amongst the British Columbians and the Aztecs, except of course in case of famine, when even the highest races are capable of devouring their fellows. But in the south cannibalism in some of its most repulsive forms was common enough almost everywhere. Killing and eating feeble and agedmembers of the tribe in kindness is still general; but the Mayorunas of the Upper Amazon waters do not wait till they have grown lean with years or wasted with disease[914]; and it was a baptized member of the same tribe who complained on his death-bed that he would not now provide a meal for his Christian friends, but must be devoured by worms[915].
Cultures of the Andean Area.
The Chibcha.
In the southern continent the social conditions illustrated by these practices prevailed everywhere, except on the elevated plateaus of the western Cordilleras, which for many ages before the discovery had been the seats of several successive cultures, in some respects rivalling, but in others much inferior to those of Central America. When the Conquistadores reached this part of the New World, to which they were attracted by the not altogether groundless reports of fabulous wealth embodied in the legend ofEl Dorado, the "Man of Gold," they found it occupied by a cultural zone which extended almost continuously from the present republic of Colombia through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia right into Chili. In the north the dominant people were the semi-civilised Chibcha, already mentioned under the name of Muysca[916], who had developed an organised system of government on the Bogota table-land, and had succeeded in extending their somewhat more refined social institutions to some of the other aborigines of Colombia, though not to many of the outlying members of their own race. As in Mexico many of the Nahuatlan tribes remained little better than savages to the last, so in Colombia the civilised Muyscans were surrounded by numerous kindred tribes—Coyaima, Natagaima, Tocaima and others, collectively known as Panches—who were real savages with scarcely any tribal organisation, wearing no clothes, and according to the early accounts still addicted to cannibalism.
The Muysca proper had a tradition that they owed their superiority to their culture-hero Bochica, who came from the east long ago, taught them everything, and was then placed with Chiminigagua, the creator, at the head of their pantheon,and worshipped with solemn rites and even human sacrifices. Amongst the arts thus acquired was that of the goldsmith, in which they surpassed all other peoples of the New World. The precious metal was even said to be minted in the shape of discs, which formed an almost solitary instance of a true metal currency amongst the American aborigines[917]. Brooches, pendants, and especially grotesque figurines of gold, often alloyed with silver and copper, have been found in great numbers and still occasionally turn up on the plateau. These finds are partly accounted for by the practice of offering such objects in the open air to the personified constellations and forces of nature, for the primitive religion of all the Andean tribes consisted of nature-, in particular sun-cults. Near Bogota was a temple of the Sun, where children were reared for sacrifice[918]. Any mysterious sound emanating from a forest, a rock, a mountain pass, or gloomy gorge, was accepted as a manifestation of some divine presence; a shrine was raised to the embodied spirit, and so the whole land became literally crowded with local deities. This world itself was upborne on the shoulders of Chibchacum, a national Atlas, who now and then eased himself by shifting the burden, and thus caused earthquakes. In most lands subject to underground disturbances analogous ideas prevail, and when their source is so obvious, it seems unreasonable to seek for explanations in racial affinities, contacts, foreign influences, and so forth.
It has often been remarked that at the advent of the whites the native civilisations seemed generally stricken as if by the hand of death, so that even if not suddenly arrested by the intruders they must sooner or later have perished of themselves. Such speculations are seldom convincing, because we never know what recuperative forces may be at work to ward off the evil day. When the Spaniards arrived in Colombia they found at one end of the scale naked and savage cannibals, at the other a people with a feudal form of government, whose political system was progressive, who, though possessing no form of writing, had a system of measures and a calendar, and who were skilled in the arts of weaving, pottery, and metallurgy[919]. The chiefs of the Chibcha were all absolute monarchs and the appointment of priests rested with them.Succession to the chieftainship was matrilineal, and installation in the office was attended by much ceremony. A great gulf separated nobles and commoners; slavery existed as an institution but slaves were well treated. Polygyny was permitted, but relatives within certain degrees might not marry[920]. This feebly organised political system broke to pieces at the first shock from without, and so disheartened had the people become under their half theocratic rulers, that they scarcely raised a hand in defence of a government which in their minds was associated only with tyranny and oppression. The conquest was in any case facilitated by the civil war at the time raging between the northern and southern kingdoms which with several other semi-independent states constituted the Muyscan empire. This empire was almost conterminous southwards with that of the Incas. At least the numerous terms occurring in the dialects of the Paes, Coconucos, and other South Colombian tribes, show that Peruvian influences had spread beyond the political frontiers far to the north, without, however, quite reaching the confines of the Muyscan domain.
Empire of the Inca.
Quichuan Race and Speech.
But for several centuries prior to the discovery the sway of the Peruvian Incas had been established throughout nearly the whole of the Andean lands, and the territory directly ruled by them extended from the Quito district about the equator for some 2500 miles southwards to the Rio Maule in Chili, with an average breadth of 400 miles between the Pacific and the eastern slopes of the Cordilleras. Their dominion thus comprised a considerable part of the present republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chili, and Argentina, with a roughly estimated area of 1,000,000 square miles, and a population of over 10,000,000. Here the ruling race were the Quichua, whose speech, called by themselvesruma-simi, "the language of men," is still current in several well-marked dialects throughout all the provinces of the old empire. In Lima and all the seaports and inland towns Spanish prevails, but in the rural districts Quichuan remains the mother-tongue of over 2,000,000 natives, and has even become thelingua francaof the western regions, just as Tupi-Guarani is thelingoa geral, "general language," of the eastern section of South America. The attempts to find affinities with Aryan (especially Sanskrit), and other linguistic families of theeastern hemisphere, have broken down before the application of sound philological principles to these studies, and Quichuan is now recognised as a stock language of the usual American type, unconnected with any other except that of the Bolivian Aymaras. Even this connection is regarded by some students as verbal rather than structural, an interchange of a considerable number of terms being easily explained by the close contact in which the two peoples have long dwelt.
Inca Origins and History.
As to the origin of the Incas we cannot do better than follow the views of Sir Clements Markham, who has made a careful study of the various early authorities. His account (The Incas of Peru,1910) is based largely on the works of Spanish military writers such as Ciezo de Leon and Pedro Pizarro (cousin of the conqueror), of priests like Molina, Montesinos, and the half-breed Blas Valera, and on those of the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, son of a Spanish knight and an Inca princess. The megalithic ruins of Tiahuanacu, at the southern end of Lake Titicaca, mark the earliest known centre of culture in southern Peru. They are situated on a lofty plateau, over 13,000 feet above the sea, and are the remains of a great city built by highly skilled masons who used enormous stones. The placing of such monoliths, unrivalled except by those of ancient Egypt, indicates a dense and well-organised population. The famous monolithic doorway is elaborately carved, the central figure apparently representing the deity, while on either side are figures, human- or bird-headed, kneeling in adoration (op. cit., pls. at pp. 26, 28). Now it seems probable that the builders of this megalithic city were the ancestors of the Incas, assuming that a substratum of truth underlies the Paccari-tampu myth.
The end of the early civilisation is stated to have been caused by a great invasion from the south, when the king was killed in a battle in the Collao, north of Lake Titicaca. A state of barbarism ensued. A remnant of the royal house took refuge in a district called Tampu-Tocco ("Window Tavern")[921]and there preserved a vestige of their ancient traditions and civilisation. Elsewhere religion deteriorated to nature worship, here the kings declared themselves to be children of the sun.Montesinos' list of kings gives 27 names for this period of Tampu-Tocco, which may cover 650 years.
The myth, which is "certainly the outcome of a real tradition, ... the fabulous version of a distant historical event," tells how Manco Ccapac and the three other Ayars, his brothers, the children of the sun, came forth with their wives from the central opening or window in the hill Tampu-Tocco. They advanced slowly at the head of severalayllus(lineages). Ayar Manco took the lead, and he had with him a falcon-like bird revered as sacred, and a golden staff which he flung ahead; when it reached soil so fertile that the whole length sank in, there the final halt was to be made. This happened in the fertile vale of Cuzco. The date of these events would be about four centuries before the Spanish conquest.
Farther north at about 15° S. lat. the Inca civilisation was preceded, according to Uhle, by the very ancient one of Ica and Nazca, where dwelt a people who made pottery but were ignorant of weaving. The same authority has also discovered about Lima the remains of a tall people, who made rude pottery, nets, and objects of bone[922].
The Aymara.
Manco established himself in the Cuzco valley, his third successor finally subjugating the tribes there. The early position of the Incas, cemented by judicious marriages, seems to have been one of priority in a very loose confederacy. The rise of the Incas was due to the ambition of the lady Siuyacu whose son, Inca Rocca, appears to have been the pioneer of empire; material prosperity began under him, schools were erected and irrigation works begun. Then from a strip of land 250 miles long between the gorge of the Apurimac and the wide fertile valley of Vilcamayu, the empire was extended to form the Ttahua-ntin-suyu, "the four provinces," of which the northern one, Chinchay-suyu, reached to Quito, and the southern, Colla-suyu, into Chili. This southward extension was due to the efforts of Pachacuti who succeeded after hard fighting in annexing the region around Lake Titicaca, and the new territory was named after the Collas, the largest and most powerful tribe thereabouts. In order to pacify the region permanently large numbers of Collas were sent asmitimaes, or colonists, as far as the borders of Quito, while their placeswere filled by loyal colonists from Inca districts. Among these were a number of Aymaras from the Quichuan region of the Pachachaca, a left bank tributary of the Apurimac, who were settled among the remaining Lupacas on the west shore of Lake Titicaca at Juli. Thither came Jesuit fathers in 1572 and learnt the language of the Lupacas from these Aymara colonists, who had been there three generations; the name Aymara was given by the priests not only to the Lupaca language but to those spoken by Collas and other Titicacan tribes. Thus the name Aymara is now generally but quite erroneously applied to the language and people of this region; it was first so used in 1575. It must be pointed out, however, that other authorities regard the Aymara and Quichua as entirely distinct. A. Chervin[923]discusses the physical differences at great length and concludes that they are two separate brachycephalic peoples.
The Peruvians were primarily agriculturists, maize and at higher altitudes the potato being their chief crops. Their aqueducts and irrigation systems moved the admiration of early chroniclers, as did also their roads and suspension bridges[924]. The supreme deity and creator was Uira-cocha, who was worshipped by the more intellectual and had a temple at Cuzco. The popular religion was the worship of the founder of eachayllu, or clan, and all joined in adoration of the sun as ancestor of the sovereign Incas. Sun-worship was attended by a magnificent ritual, the high priest was an official of highest rank, often a brother of the sovereign, and there were over 3000 Virgins of the Sun (aclla) connected with the cult at Cuzco. The peasants put their trust inconopas, or household gods, which controlled their crops and their llamas. The calendar had been calculated with considerable ingenuity, and certain festivals took place annually and were usually accompanied with much chicha-drinking. It is remarkable that so advanced a people kept all their elaborate records by means ofquipus(coloured strings with knots).