Part 7 (1/2)
[Footnote 2: Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms. - Gomara, Hist. de las Ind., cap. 123. - Garcila.s.so, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 2, cap.
2, 7.
One might suppose that the educated Peruvians - if I may so speak - imagined the common people had no souls, so little is said of their opinions as to the condition of these latter in a future life, while they are diffuse on the prospects of the higher orders, which they fondly believed were to keep pace with their condition here.]
It was this belief in the resurrection of the body, which led them to preserve the body with so much solicitude, - by a simple process, however, that, unlike the elaborate embalming of the Egyptians, consisted in exposing it to the action of the cold, exceedingly dry, and highly rarefied atmosphere of the mountains.
*3 As they believed that the occupations in the future world would have great resemblance to those of the present, they buried with the deceased n.o.ble some of his apparel, his utensils, and, frequently, his treasures; and completed the gloomy ceremony by sacrificing his wives and favorite domestics, to bear him company and do him service in the happy regions beyond the clouds. *4 Vast mounds of an irregular, or, more frequently, oblong shape, penetrated by galleries running at right angles to each other, were raised over the dead, whose dried bodies or mummies have been found in considerable numbers, sometimes erect, but more often in the sitting posture, common to the Indian tribes of both continents. Treasures of great value have also been occasionally drawn from these monumental deposits, and have stimulated speculators to repeated excavations with the hope of similar good-fortune. It was a lottery like that of searching after mines, but where the chances have proved still more against the adventurers. *5
[Footnote 3: Such, indeed, seems to be the opinion of Garcila.s.so, though some writers speak of resinous and other applications for embalming the body. The appearance of the royal mummies found at Cuzco, as reported both by Ondegardo and Garcila.s.so, makes it probable that no foreign substance was employed for their preservation.]
[Footnote 4: Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms
The Licentiate says, that this usage continued even after the Conquest; and that he had saved the life of more than one favorite domestic, who had fled to him for protection, as they were about to be sacrificed to the Manes of their deceased lords.
Ibid., ubi supra.]
[Footnote 5: Yet these sepulchral mines have sometimes proved worth the digging. Sarmiento speaks of gold to the value of 100,000 castellanos, as occasionally buried with the Indian lords; (Relacion, Ms., cap. 57;) and Las Casas - not the best authority in numerical estimates - says that treasures worth more than half a million of ducats had been found, within twenty years after the Conquest, in the tombs near Truxillo. (Oeuvres, ed.
par Llorente, (Paris, 1822,) tom. II. p. 192.) Baron Humboldt visited the sepulchre of a Peruvian prince in the same quarter of the country, whence a Spaniard in 1576 drew forth a ma.s.s of gold worth a million of dollars! Vues des Cordilleres, p. 29.]
The Peruvians, like so may other of the Indian races, acknowledged a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, whom they adored under the different names of Pachacamac and Viracocha. *6 No temple was raised to this invisible Being, save one only in the valley which took its name from the deity himself, not far from the Spanish city of Lima.
Even this temple had existed there before the country came under the sway of the Incas, and was the great resort of Indian pilgrims from remote parts of the land; a circ.u.mstance which suggests the idea, that the wors.h.i.+p of this Great Spirit, though countenanced, perhaps, by their accommodating policy, did not originate with the Peruvian princes. *7
[Footnote 6: Pachacamac signifies ”He who sustains or gives life to the universe.” The name of the great deity is sometimes expressed by both Pachacamac and Viracocha combined. (See Balboa, Hist. du Perou, chap. 6. - Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 21.) An old Spaniard finds in the popular meaning of Viracocha, ”foam of the sea,” an argument for deriving the Peruvian civilization from some voyager from the Old World. Conq. i Pob. de. Piru, Ms.]
[Footnote 7: Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq. Ms. - Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 27.
Ulloa notices the extensive ruins of brick, which mark the probable site of the temple of Pachacamac, attesting by their present appearance its ancient magnificence and strength.
Memoires Philosophiques, Historiques, Physiques, (Paris, 1787,) trad. Fr., p. 78.]
The deity whose wors.h.i.+p they especially inculcated, and which they never failed to establish wherever their banners were known to penetrate, was the Sun. It was he, who, in a particular manner, presided over the destinies of man; gave light and warmth to the nations, and life to the vegetable world; whom they reverenced as the father of their royal dynasty, the founder of their empire; and whose temples rose in every city and almost every village throughout the land, while his altars smoked with burnt offerings, - a form of sacrifice peculiar to the Peruvians among the semi-civilized nations of the New World. *8
[Footnote 8: At least, so says Dr. McCulloh; and no better authority can be required on American antiquities. (Researches, p. 392.) Might he not have added barbarous nations. also?]
Besides the Sun, the Incas acknowledged various objects of wors.h.i.+p in some way or other connected with this princ.i.p.al deity.
Such was the Moon, his sister-wife; the Stars, revered as part of her heavenly train, - though the fairest of them, Venus, known to the Peruvians by the name of Chasca, or the ”youth with the long and curling locks,” was adored as the page of the Sun, whom he attends so closely in his rising and in his setting. They dedicated temples also to the Thunder and Lightning, *9 in whom they recognized the Sun's dread ministers, and to the Rainbow, whom they wors.h.i.+pped as a beautiful emanation of their glorious deity. *10
[Footnote 9: Thunder, Lightning, and Thunderbolt, could be all expressed by the Peruvians in one word, Illapa. Hence some Spaniards have inferred a knowledge of the Trinity in the natives! ”The Devil stole all he could,” exclaims Herrera, with righteous indignation. (Hist. General, dec. 5, lib. 4, cap. 5.) These, and even rasher conclusions, (see Acosta, lib. 5, cap.
28,) are scouted by Garcila.s.so, as inventions of Indian converts, willing to please the imaginations of their Christian teachers.
(Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 5, 6; lib. 3, cap. 21.) Imposture, on the one hand, and credulity on the other, have furnished a plentiful harvest of absurdities, which has been diligently gathered in by the pious antiquary of a later generation.]
[Footnote 10: Garcila.s.so's a.s.sertion, that these heavenly bodies were objects of reverence as holy things, but not of wors.h.i.+p, (Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 1, 23,) is contradicted by Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms., - Dec. de la Aud. Real., Ms., - Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 5, lib. 4, cap. 4, - Gomara, Hist.
de las Ind., cap. 121, - and, I might add, by almost every writer of authority whom I have consulted. It is contradicted, in a manner, by the admission of Garcila.s.so himself, that these several objects were all personified by the Indians as living beings, and had temples dedicated to them as such, with their effigies delineated in the same manner as was that of the Sun in his dwelling. Indeed, the effort of the historian to reduce the wors.h.i.+p of the Incas to that of the Sun alone is not very reconcilable with what he else where says of the homage paid to Pachacamac, above all, and to Rimac, the great oracle of the common people. The Peruvian mythology was, probably, not unlike that of Hindostan, where, under two, or at most three, princ.i.p.al deities, were a.s.sembled a host of inferior ones, to whom the nation paid religious homage, as personifications of the different objects in nature.]
In addition to these, the subjects of the Incas enrolled among their inferior deities many objects in nature, as the elements, the winds, the earth, the air, great mountains and rivers, which impressed them with ideas of sublimity and power, or were supposed in some way or other to exercise a mysterious influence over the destinies of man. *11 They adopted also a notion, not unlike that professed by some of the schools of ancient philosophy, that every thing on earth had its archetype or idea, its mother, as they emphatically styled it, which they held sacred, as, in some sort, its spiritual essence. *12 But their system, far from being limited even to these multiplied objects of devotion, embraced within its ample folds the numerous deities of the conquered nations, whose images were transported to the capital, where the burdensome charges of their wors.h.i.+p were defrayed by their respective provinces. It was a rare stroke of policy in the Incas, who could thus accommodate their religion to their interests. *13
[Footnote 11: Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms.
These consecrated objects were termed huacas, - a word of most prolific import; since it signified a temple, a tomb, any natural object remarkable for its size or shape, in short, a cloud of meanings, which by their contradictory sense have thrown incalculable confusion over the writings of historians and travellers.]
[Footnote 12: ”La orden por donde fundavan sus huacas que ellos llamavan a las Idolatrias hera porque decian que todas criava el sol i que les dava madre por madre que mostravan a la tierra, porque decian que tenia madre, i tenian le echo su vulto i sus adoratorios, i al fuego decian que tambien tenia madre i al mais i a las otras s.e.m.e.nteras i a las ovejas iganado decian que tenian madre, i a la chocha ques el brevaje que ellos usan decian que el vinagre della hera la madre i lo reverenciavan i llamavan mama agua madre del vinagre, i a cada cosa adoravan destas de su manera.” Conq. i Pob. del Piru, Ms.]
[Footnote 13: Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., Ms.