_Canas_, in the Sierra of the province so-called, east of Cuzco.
_Canchis_, in the lowlands of the province of Canas.
_Carancas_, south of Lake Titicaca.
_Charcas_, between Lakes Aullaga and Paria.
_Collas_, or _Collaguas_, north of Lake Titicaca.
_Lupacas_, west of Lake Titicaca, extending to Rio Desaguadero.
_Pacasas_, occupied the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca.
_Quillaguas_, on part of the southern shore of Lake Titicaca.
_3. The Puquinas._
The Puquinas are also known under the names Urus or Uros, Hunos and
Ochozomas. They formerly lived on the islands and shores of Lake
Titicaca, in the neighborhood of Pucarini, and in several villages of
the diocese of Lima. Oliva avers that some of them were found on the
coast near Lambayeque.[313] If this is correct, they had doubtless been
transported there by either the Incas or the Spanish authorities. They
are uniformly spoken of as low in culture, shy of strangers and dull
in intelligence. Acosta pretends that they were so brutish that they
did not claim to be men.[314] Garcilasso de la Vega calls them rude
and stupid.[315] Alcedo, writing in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, states that those on the islands had, against their will, been
removed to the mainland, where they dwelt in gloomy caves and in holes in
the ground covered with reeds, and depended on fishing for a subsistence.
They are alleged to have been jealous about their language, and unwilling
for any stranger to learn it. Their religious exercises were conducted
in Kechua, with which they were all more or less acquainted. The only
specimen of their tongue in modern treatises is the Lord’s Prayer,
printed by Hervas and copied by Adelung.[316] On it Hervas based the
opinion that the Puquina was an independent stock. The editors of the
“Mithridates” seemed to incline to the belief that it was related to the
Aymara, and this opinion was fully adopted by Clement L. Markham, who
pronounced it “a very rude dialect of the Lupaca,”[317] in which he was
followed by the learned Von Tschudi.[318]
None of these authorities had other material than the _Pater Noster_
referred to. Hervas credits it to a work of the missionary Geronimo de
Ore, which it is evident that neither he nor any of the other writers
named had ever seen, as they all speak of the specimen as the only
printed example of the tongue. This work is the _Rituale seu Manuale
Peruanum_, published at Naples in 1607. It contains about thirty pages in
the Puquina tongue, with translations into Aymara, Kechua, Spanish and
Latin, and thus forms a mine of material for the student. Though rare, a
copy of it is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and is thus readily
accessible. I have published a number of extracts from its Puquina
renderings in the _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_
for 1890. They are sufficient to show that while this language borrowed
many terms, especially those referring to religion and culture, from the
neighboring Kechua and Aymara dialects, these were but additions to a
primitive stock fundamentally different from either of them.
The dissimilarity of the three tongues is well seen in their numerals,
which are as follows:
KECHUA. AYMARA. PUQUINA.
One, _huc_, _mayni_, _pesc_.
Two, _iscay_, _pani_, _so_.
Three, _quimsa_, _quimsa_, _capa_.
Four, _tahua_, _pusi_, _sper_.
Five, _pichka_, _pisca_, _tacpa_.
Six, _soccta_, _chocta_, _chichun_.
Seven, _canchis_, _pa-callco_, _stu_.
Eight, _pusacc_, _quimsa-callco_, _quina_.
Nine, _iscon_, _llalla-tunca_, _checa_.
Ten, _chunca_, _tunca_, _scata_.
In these lists the Aymara numerals, _one_, _two_ and _four_ are
independent; _three_, _five_, _six_ and _ten_ are taken from the
Kechua; and the remaining three are compound, _pa-callco_, being 2+5;
_quimsa-callco_, 3+5; and _llalla-tunca_ meaning “less than ten.”
_Callco_ is derived from the word for “foot,” the counting being with the
toes. On the other hand, there is not a single numeral in the Puquina
which can be derived from either Kechua or Aymara; and what is more
remarkable, there is apparently not one which is compounded.
It remains puzzling to me why the Puquina, which seems to have been
spoken only by a few wretched villagers about Lake Titicaca, should have
been classed by writers in the sixteenth century as one of the _lenguas
generales_ of Peru. Not only does Ore refer to it by this term, but in
one of the official _Relaciones Geograficas_ written in 1582, it is
mentioned as “one of the three general languages of this kingdom.”[319]
This would seem to indicate that at that period it had a wider extension
than we can now trace.
_4. The Yuncas._
The Yuncas occupied the hot valleys near the sea between south latitude
5° and 10°, their capital being in the vicinity of the present city
of Truxillo. Their tongue belongs to an entirely different stock from
the Kechua, and was not influenced by it. It still survives in a few
sequestered valleys. The extreme difficulty of its phonetics aided to
prevent its extension.[320]
There is little doubt but that the Yuncas immigrated to their locality at
some not very distant period before the conquest. According to their own
traditions their ancestors journeyed down the coast in their canoes from
a home to the north, until they reached the port of Truxillo.[321] Here
they settled and in later years constructed the enormous palace known
as the _Gran Chimu_, whose massive brick walls, spacious terraces, vast
galleries and fronts decorated with bas-reliefs and rich frescoes, are
still the wonder and admiration of travelers.[322]
Near by, in the valley of Chicama and vicinity, they constructed
capacious reservoirs and canals for irrigation which watered their
well-tilled fields, and were so solidly constructed that some of
them have been utilized by enterprising planters in this generation.
Doubtless some of these were the work of the Incas after their conquest
of this valley by the Inca Pachacutec, as is related by Garcilasso de
la Vega,[323] but the fact that the Chimus were even before that date
famed for their expertness in the working of metals and the fashioning of
jewels and vases in silver and gold,[324] proves that they did not owe
their culture to the instruction of the Quichuas.
The term _yunca-cuna_ is a generic one in the Kechua language, and means
simply “dwellers in the warm country,” the _tierra caliente_, near the
sea coast. It was more particularly applied to the Chimus near Truxillo,
but included a number of other tribes, all of whom, it is said, spoke
related dialects. Of the list which I append we are sure of the Mochicas
or Chinchas, as the Yunca portion of Geronimo de Ore’s work is in this
dialect;[325] of the Estenes, Bastian has printed quite a full vocabulary
which is nearly identical with the Yunca of Carrera;[326] Mr. Spruce
obtained in 1863 a vocabulary of forty words from the Sechuras, proving
them to belong to this stock;[327] but the dialects of the Colanes and
Catacoas are said by the same authority to be now extinct. According to
the information obtained by the Abbé Hervas, the “Colorados of Angamarca”
also spoke a Yunca dialect,[328] but I have been unable to identify this
particular tribe of “painted” Indians.
The location of the stock at the conquest may be said to have been from
south lat. 4° to 10°; and to have included the three departments of
modern Peru called Ancachs, Libertad, and Piura.