origin of the royal house of the Incas. Starting from the shores of the
Lake Titicaca and the city of Cuzco, and progressively extending its
combined religious and political dominion over the numerous countries
situated west of the Cordilleras, it had welded them into one vast
empire, centralized and organized in a way that, in spite of its
defects, extorts our admiration. You had occasion to notice the
extraordinary degree to which the consummate practical sagacity which
distinguished the sacerdotal and imperial family of the Sun for
successive centuries, was combined with purely mythological principles
of faith; and we were compelled to ask whether so much diplomacy was
really consistent with unreserved belief. Finally we saw that, according
to the historians, more than one of the Incas had in fact expressed and
justified a doubt as to the living and conscious personality of that
Sun-god whose descendants they were supposed to be. The position of
affairs when the Spaniards disembarked on the shores of Peru is already
known to you. The Inca Huayna Capac, conqueror of Quito, had broken with
the constitutional maxims of his dynasty, in the first place by marrying
a stranger, the daughter of a deposed king; and in the second place by
leaving the kingdom of Quito to the son, Atahualpa, whom she bore him;
while he allowed Huascar, the heir-apparent to the empire, to succeed
him in Peru proper, thus severing into two parts the kingdom of the Sun,
in defiance of the principle hitherto recognized, which forbad the
division of that kingdom under any circumstances.
The war which speedily arose between Atahualpa and his half-brother
Huascar was the great cause that made it possible for Pizarro and his
miniature army to get a footing in the Peruvian territory. The military
forces of both sections of the empire were engaged with each other far
away from the place of landing, and the inhabitants, wholly unaccustomed
to take any initiative, made no resistance to the strange invaders,
whose appearance, arms and horses, struck terror into their hearts, and
in whom (like the Mexicans in the case of Cortes and his followers) they
thought they saw supernatural beings. Pizarro, who knew how things
stood, had but one idea, viz., to imitate Cortes in laying hold of the
sovereign's person. Atahualpa returned victorious. He had defeated
Huascar, slaughtered many members of the Inca family, and thrown his
conquered brother into prison, so as to govern Peru in his name, for he
was not sure that he himself would be recognized and obeyed as a
legitimate descendant of the Sun. Pizarro found means of making his
arrival known to him, and at the same time offered him his alliance
against his enemies.[68] Atahualpa was delighted with these overtures,
and invited his pretended allies to a conference near Caxamarca, where
the Spaniards had installed themselves. The Inca advanced, parading all
the pomp and splendour of his solar divinity. Four hundred richly-clad
attendants preceded his palanquin, which sparkled at a thousand points
with gold and precious stones, and was borne on the shoulders of
officers drawn from amongst the highest nobles, while troops of male and
female dancers followed the child of the Sun and plied their art. Then
ensued one of those unique scenes of history upon which, as indignation
contends with amazement for the mastery in our minds, we must pause for
a moment to gaze.
Pizarro's almoner, Father Valverde, drew near to the Inca, a crucifix in
one hand and a missal in the other, and by means of an interpreter
delivered a regular discourse to him, in which he announced that Pope
Alexander VI. had given all the lands of America to the King of Spain,
which he had a right to do as the successor of St. Peter, who was
himself the Vicar of the Son of God. Then he expounded the chief
articles of Christian orthodoxy, and summoned the Inca there and then
to abjure the religion of his ancestors, receive baptism, and submit to
the sovereignty of the King of Spain. On these conditions he might
continue to reign. Otherwise he must look for every kind of disaster.
Atahualpa was literally stupefied. Much of the discourse, no doubt, he
failed to follow, but what he did understand filled him with
indignation. He answered that he reigned over his peoples by hereditary
right, and could not see how a foreign priest could dispose of lands
that were not his. He should remain faithful to the religion of his
fathers, "especially," he added, as he pointed to the crucifix grasped
by the monk, "since my god, the Sun, is at any rate alive; whereas the
one you propose for my acceptance, as far as I gather, is dead."
Finally, he desired to know whence his interlocutor had derived all the
strange things that he had told him. "Hence!" cried Valverde, holding
out his missal. The Inca, who had never seen a book in all his life,
took this object, so new to him, in his hands, opened it, put it to his
ear, and finding that it said nothing, flung it contemptuously on the
ground.
Pizarro saw the moment for striking the blow he contemplated. Crying out
at the sacrilege, he gave his soldiers the signal of attack. Their
horses and fire-arms caused an instant panic. In vain did some of his
officers attempt to defend the Inca. Pizarro broke through to him,
seized him by the arm and dragged him to his quarters. All his escort
fled in terror.
Atahualpa, then, was in the immediate power of Pizarro, who (still
imitating Cortes) surrounded his prisoner with every comfort and
attention, though confining him strictly to one chamber, and warning him
that any attempt at escape or resistance would be the signal for his
death. Atahualpa soon perceived that thirst for gold was the great
motive that had impelled the Spaniards to their audacious enterprize. He
hoped to disarm them by offering as ransom gold enough to fill the
chamber in which he was confined up to the height of a man. He gave the
necessary orders for collecting the precious metal in the requisite
amount, and to secure the good reception of the emissaries whom Pizarro
despatched everywhere to receive it. One of these detachments even
entered into relations with the captive Inca, Huascar, and the latter
hastened to offer the Spaniards yet more gold than Atahualpa was giving
them if they would take his part. Atahualpa heard of this, was alarmed,
regarded his conquered brother's attempts in the light of high-treason,
gave orders for his death--and was obeyed.[69]
He was not aware how precarious was his own tenure of life. Pizarro saw
more and more clearly that, in order to become the real master of Peru,
he must get rid of the reigning Inca, and put some child in his place,
who would be a passive instrument in his hands. He was fairly alarmed by
the religious obedience, timid but absolute, that the "child of the
Sun," even in his captivity, received from all classes of his subjects.
He fancied that from the recesses of his prison, and even while paying
off his enormous ransom,[70] Atahualpa had sent secret orders to the
most distant populations to arm themselves and come to his rescue. The
interpreter through whom he communicated with his captive was out of
temper with his master, for his head had been so turned by ambition,
that he had demanded the hand of a _coya_, that is to say, one of the
Inca's women, and had been haughtily refused. In revenge, he made
malicious reports to Pizarro. But it was an accidental circumstance that
brought the latter's ill-will towards his captive to a point. The Inca
greatly admired the art of writing when he discovered all the uses the
Spaniards made of it. One day it occurred to him to get one of the
soldiers on guard over him to write the word _Dio_ upon his nail, and he
was delighted and astonished to find that every one to whom he showed it
read it in the same way. So they told him that every one a little above
the common herd could read and write in Europe. His evil star would
have it that he showed his thumb one day to Pizarro, who could make
nothing of it. Pizarro, then, could not read! Atahualpa concluded that
he was merely one of the common herd, and found an opportunity of
telling him so. Pizarro, stung to the quick, hesitated no longer. A mock
judgment condemned Atahualpa to the extreme penalty for the crimes of
idolatry, polygamy, usurpation, fratricide and rebellion. In vain he
appealed to the King of Spain. He was led to the stake, and Father
Valverde made him purchase by a baptism _in extremis_ the privilege of
being strangled instead of burned alive.
From this moment the fate of Peru was decided. The head once struck from
the great body, long convulsions ensued, but no serious resistance was
possible. Pizarro set up as Inca a young brother of Huascar's, who was
at first a mere instrument in the hands of his country's bleeders, but
afterwards escaped and raised insurrections which ended in his total
defeat. The Spaniards had been reinforced, and had found allies amongst
the peoples who had been torn from their native soils by the victorious
Incas.[71] Other attempts, still attaching themselves to the name of
some Inca, failed in like manner. And yet the mass of the Peruvians, in
spite of their conversion to Roman Catholicism, remained obstinately
attached to the memory of their Incas. One of their real or pretended
descendants, in the eighteenth century, did not shrink from serving as a
domestic at Madrid and Rome, as the only means of learning the secret of
that European power which had so cruelly crushed his ancestors.[72] But
on his return to Peru (1744 A.D.) his efforts only ended in his
destruction. But this did not prevent a certain Tupac Amarou, who was
descended from the Incas through a female line, from fomenting a
rebellion in 1780, which it cost the Spaniards an effort to
suppress.[73] Later on, after the revolution that broke the bond of
subjection to Spain, this stubborn hostility of the Peruvians changed
its character; but in 1867, Bustamente still tried to make capital out
of the historical attachment of the natives to the Incas by declaring
himself their descendant. The opposition, however, had long lost all
vestige of a religious character. The legend of Manco Capac, which is
still current amongst the people, has been euhemerized. It is now no
more than the story of a just and enlightened prince, the benefactor of
the country. The natives, it seems, are fond of playing a kind of drama,
in which the trial and death of Atahualpa are represented. Superstitious
to the last degree, they accept the practices of Catholicism with a
submission that has in it more of a melancholy and hopeless resignation
than an ardent or trusting faith. The glorious age of the Incas is gone,
and will never return, but it is still regretted.[74]
II.
And now it is high time that we examined that religion which was so
closely associated with the whole national life of Peru.
From all that I have said already, you will easily understand that the
Sun has never been worshipped more directly or with more devotion than
in Peru. It was he whom the Peruvians regarded as sovereign lord of the
world, king of the heaven and the earth. His Peruvian name was _Inti_,
"Light." The villages were usually built so as to look eastward, in
order that the inhabitants might salute the supreme god as soon as he
appeared in the morning. The most usual representation of him was a
golden disk representing a human face surrounded by rays and flames. In
Peru, as everywhere else, a feeling existed that there was a certain
relation between the substance of gold and that of the great luminary.
In the nuggets torn from the mountain sides they thought they saw the
Sun's tears.[75] The great periodic fetes of the year, the imperial and
national festivals in which every one took part, were those held in
honour of the Sun.
Immediately after him came his sister and consort the Moon, Mama Quilla.
Her image was a disk of silver bearing human features, and silver played
the same part in her worship that gold did in that of the Sun. It
appears, however, that they performed fewer sacrifices to her than to
her august consort, which is quite in harmony with the inferior position
assigned to woman in the Peruvian civilization.[76] Like Selene amongst
the Greeks, Mama Quilla, and her incarnation in human form, Mama Ogllo,
were weavers. And that is why the latter was said to have taught the
Peruvian women the art of spinning and weaving. This is a mythological
conception suggested by likening the moonbeams to twisted threads, out
of which on fair clear nights the brilliant verdure in which the earth
is clad is spun.
But before going on to the gods who form the usual retinue of these two
official and imperial deities, I must speak of two great Peruvian gods
whose worship was likewise widely spread, but who nevertheless are not
attached to the solar family, or at least are only so attached by an
after-thought and by dint of harmonizing efforts which the Incas had
their motives of policy for favouring: I mean the two great deities,
_Viracocha_ and _Pachacamac_.
The myth of Viracocha is the first instance we shall cite of traces of a
certain civilization prior to the Incas, or at any rate of a belief
widely spread in some parts of Peru that civilization had not really
been, as the legend of the Incas would have it, the sole work of that
sacerdotal family. The name of Viracocha must be very ancient, for it
became a generic name to signify divine beings. It was given to Manco
Capac himself as a title of honour, and the Spaniards on their arrival
passed as _Viracochas_ in the eyes of the people. This name, according
to Spanish authorities, followed by Prescott,[77] signifies _Foam of the
sea_ or of the _lake_. This would make the deity a male Aphrodite. He
was represented with a long beard, and human victims were sacrificed to
him. At the same time, they said that he had neither flesh nor bone,
that he ran swiftly, and that he lowered mountains and lifted up
valleys. The following legend was told of him.[78]
There were men on the earth before the Sun appeared, and the temples of
Viracocha, for instance, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, are older than
the Sun. One day Viracocha rose out of the lake. He made the sun, the
moon, the stars, and prescribed their course for them. Then he made
stone statues, put life into them, and commanded them to go out of the
caverns in which he had made them and follow him to Cuzco. There he
summoned the inhabitants, and set a man over them called Allca Vica, who
was the common ancestor of the Incas. Then he departed and disappeared
in the water.
Evidently this myth belongs to a different body of tradition from that
of the Incas. When it says that the earth was peopled before the Sun
appeared, it is only a mythical way of asserting that there were men and
even cities in Peru before the establishment of Sun-worship by the
Incas. Now the latter claimed direct descent from the Sun, the supreme
god, and they would not have readily allowed that this supreme deity had
been made by another. One is rather tempted to find in this myth the
echo of the claims put forward with equal resignation and persistency by
a priesthood of Viracocha, that bowed its head before the supremacy
acquired by the solar priesthood, but insisted all the same upon the
fact that it was itself its elder brother.
But to what element can we affiliate the god Viracocha himself?
His aquatic name, _Foam of the sea_ or _lake_, in itself leads us to
suppose that he was closely related to the water. The supposition is
confirmed by the saying that he had neither flesh nor bone, and yet ran
swiftly. We can understand, too, why he lowers mountains and raises
valleys. He rises from the water and disappears in it. He is bearded,
like all aquatic gods, with their fringes of reeds. Finally, his consort
and sister Cocha is the lake itself, and also the goddess of rain. An
old Peruvian hymn that was chanted under the Incas, and has fortunately
been preserved, raises the character we have assigned to Viracocha
above all doubt.[79] The goddess Cocha is represented as carrying an urn
full of water and snow on her head. Her brother Viracocha breaks the
urn, that its contents may spread over the earth. Here is the hymn,
which is composed in nineteen short verses or lines:
1. Fair Princess,
3. Thy urn
2. Thy brother
4. Shatters.
5. At the blow
6. It thunders, lightens
7. Flashes;
8. But thou, Princess,
10. Rainest down
9. Thy waters.
11. At the same time
12. Hailest,
13. Snowest.
14. World-former,
15. World-animator,
16. Viracocha,
17. To this office
18. Thee has destined,
19. Consecrated.
It admits of no doubt, therefore, that Viracocha held a place in the
Peruvian Pantheon closely analogous to that of Tlaloc, the rain-god, in
its Mexican counterpart. The blow with which he breaks his sister's urn
is the thunder-stroke. Inasmuch as rain is a fertilizing agent,
Viracocha represents its generative force. His resemblance to Tlaloc
extends to his demand for human victims, in which he is less ferociously
insatiable, but quite as pronounced, as his Mexican analogue. Since his
legend makes him rise out of the Lake of Titicaca, we must think of him
as the chief god of the religion in honour before that of the Incas rose
to supremacy. When it is said that after accomplishing his task he
disappeared, we are reminded that the river Desaguadero, which carries
off the waters of Lake Titicaca, sinks into the earth and is lost to
sight.
But there was yet another great deity whose pretensions the Incas had
allowed by making room for him in the official religion, although he
really belonged to a totally different group of mythical formations: I
refer to Pachacamac, whose name signifies "animator of the earth," from
_caman_, "to animate," and _pacha_, "earth."[80] The primitive centre of
his worship was in the valley of Lurin, south of Lima, as well as in
that valley of Rimac which has given its name to the city of Lima
itself, for the latter is but a transformation of _Rimac_. It was there
that Pachacamac's colossal temple rose. It was left standing by the
Incas, but is now in ruins.[81] The branch of the Yuncas who resided
there were already possessed of a certain civilization when the Inca
Pachacutec annexed their country, at the close of the fourteenth
century, partly by persuasion and partly by terror. Pachacamac was the
divine civilizer who had taught this people the arts and crafts.[82] It
would even seem that he had supplanted a still more ancient worship of
Viracocha in these same valleys, for it is said that the latter was
worsted in war by him and put to flight, upon which the new god renewed
the world by changing the people he found on the earth into jaguars and
monkeys, and creating a new and higher race. This opposition to
Viracocha, god of the waters, puts us on the traces of Pachacamac's
original significance. He must have been a god of fire, and especially
of the internal fire of the earth, which displays itself in the volcanos
and warms the spirit of man. He was a kind of Peruvian Dionysus. There
was something gloomy and violent about his worship. He demanded human
victims. The valley of Rimac really means the valley of the _Speaker_,
of him who answers when questioned. There was a kind of oracle inspired
by the god of internal fire there. A certain feeling of mystery, as
though in Pachacamac they had to do with a god less visible, less
palpable, more spiritual than the rest, seems to have impressed itself
upon his Peruvian worshippers. Garcilasso, who perhaps exaggerates a
little, here as elsewhere, goes near to making him a god who could only
be adored in the heart, without temple and without sacrifices.[83]
Thus, if the myth of Viracocha, god of the waters, makes the stars and
the earth rise out of the moist element which he has fertilized and
organized, the myth of Pachacamac makes him a kind of demiurge working
within to form the world and enlighten mankind. I need not stay to point
out what close analogies these two conceptions find in several of the
cosmogonies of the Old World.
This confusion and rivalry of the Peruvian gods has left its traces in
the crude and obscure legend of the Collas, or mountaineers of Pacari
Tambo, to the south-west of Cuzco. "From the caves of Pacari Tambo (i.e.
'the house of the dawn') issued one day four brothers and four sisters.
The eldest ascended a mountain, and flung stones towards the four
cardinal points, which was his way of taking possession of all the land.
This aroused the displeasure of the other three. The youngest of all was
the cunningest, and he resolved to get rid of his three brothers and
reign alone. He persuaded his eldest brother to enter a cave, and as
soon as he had done so closed the mouth with an enormous stone, and
imprisoned him there for ever." This seems to refer to the
quasi-subterranean cultus of Pachacamac, the internal fire, the first
revelation of whom must have been a volcano hurling stones in every
direction.--"The youngest brother then persuaded the second to ascend a
high mountain with him, to seek their lost brother, and when they stood
on the summit he hurled him down the precipice and changed him into a
stone by a spell." I cannot say to what special deity this part of the
legend alludes, unless it simply refers to an ancient worship of stones
or rocks, many vestiges of which remained under the Incas, though it
ceased to have any official importance in presence of the radiant
worship of the Sun promulgated and favoured by the ruling family.--"Then
the third brother fled in terror." This fleeing god must be Viracocha,
the god of showers, who flees before the Sun.--"Then the youngest
brother built Cuzco, caused himself to be adored as child of the Sun
under the name of Pirrhua Manco, and likewise built other cities on the
same model."[84]
This last trait puts it out of doubt that the legend is really an
attempt to explain how the religion of Manco Capac established at Cuzco
had succeeded in eclipsing all others, owing to the superior skill of
its priesthood. It is a formal confirmation of all that I have told you
of the consummate art with which the Incas gradually extended the circle
of their political and religious dominion. _Pirrhua_ is the contraction
of Viracocha, taken in the generic sense of "divine being." Pirrhua
Manco was an alternative name of Manco Capac.
Of course this legend was not officially received under the Incas. The
latter, being unable or unwilling to abolish the worship of Viracocha
and of Pachacamac, took up a far more conciliatory attitude than that of
the legends I have given. The supreme god, the Sun, was admitted to have
had three sons, Kon or Viracocha, Pachacamac and Manco Capac; but the
latter was declared to have been quite specially designed by the common
father to instruct and govern men. By this arrangement every one was
satisfied,--and especially the Incas.
III.
We may now return to the other deities who were officially incorporated
in the family or retinue of the Sun.
The rainbow, _Cuycha_, was the object of great veneration as the servant
of the Sun and Moon. He had his chapel contiguous with the temple of the
Sun, and his image was made of plates of gold of various shades, which
covered a whole wall of the edifice. When a rainbow appeared in the
clouds, the Peruvian closed his mouth for fear of having all his teeth
spoilt.[85]
The planet Venus, _Chasca_ or the "long-haired star," so called from its
extraordinary radiance, was looked upon as a male being and as the page
of the Sun, sometimes preceding and sometimes following his master. The
Pleiades were next most venerated. Comets foreboded the wrath of the
gods. The other stars were the Moon's maids of honour.[86]