quently, 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 The Peruvians, like so many 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." 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. 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. (Euvres, ed. 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 mass of gold worth a million of dollars! Vues des Cordillères, p. 29. verse. 6 Pachacamac signifies "He who sustains or gives life to the uniThe name of the great deity is sometimes expressed by both Pachacamac and Viracocha combined. (See Balboa, Hist. du Pérou, 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 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 circumstance which suggests the idea that the worship of this Great Spirit, though countenanced, perhaps, by their accommodating policy, did not originate with the Peruvian princes."* the Peruvian civilization from some voyager from the Old World. Conq. i Pob. del Piru, MS. 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. Mémoires philosophiques, historiques, physiques (Paris, 1787), trad. Fr., p. 78. * [Not only this inference, but the facts on which it rests, are strenuously disputed by Mr. Markham, on the ground that Pachacamac "is an Ynca word, and is wholly foreign to, and unconnected with, the coast language." It was the name, he says, given by the Incas to the coast-city, when they conquered it, "for some reason that has not been preserved, possibly on account of its size and importance." "The natives worshipped a fish-god there under a name now lost, which became famous as an oracle and attracted pilgrims; and when the Yncas conquered the place they raised a temple to the Sun on the summit of the hill commanding the city." "But they never built any temple to Pachacamac, and there never was one to that deity, except at Cuzco." (Reports of the Discovery of Peru, Introduction, xivxx.) There seems to be here much more of assertion than of argument or proof. The statement that there was a temple to Pachacamac at Cuzco is a novel one, for which no authority is adduced, and it is in direct contradiction to the reiterated assertions of Garcilasso, that the Peruvians worshipped Pachacamac only "inwardly, as an unknown God," to whom they built no temples and offered no sacrifices. For the statement that the Incas "erected a temple of the Sun" at Pachaca The deity whose worship 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 .heir 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 semicivilized nations of the New World. 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? mac (p. xix), we are referred to Cieza de Leon, who says that "they agreed with the native chiefs and with the ministers of this god or devil, that the temple of Pachacamac should continue with the authority and reverence it formerly possessed, and that the loftiest part should be set aside as a temple of the Sun." That the temple had existed long prior to the conquest of the place by the Incas is asserted by all authorities and attested by the great antiquity of its remains. Garci lasso asserts that its builders had borrowed the conception of Pachaca⚫ mac from the Incas,-a less probable supposition than that of Prescott, and equally rejected by Mr. Markham, though the statement of the same author that "the Yuncas placed their idols in this temple, which were figures of fishes," seems to be the chief foundation for his own account of the worship practised by the people of the coast, respecting which he admits that little is known. What is known of it with any certainty comes to us from Garcilasso de la Vega and Cieza de Leon and both these authorities represent the temple and worship of Pachacamac as having existed in the valley of that name previous to the conquest, or rather peaceful subjugation, of the province by the Incas, and their sanction of this religion, in conjunction with that of the Sun, as the result of a compromise.-Ed.] Besides the Sun, the Incas acknowledged various objects of worship in some way or other connected with this principal 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," in whom they recognized the Sun's dread ministers, and to the Rainbow, whom they worshipped as a beautiful emanation of their glorious deity.00 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 Garcilasso, 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. 10 Garcilasso's assertion that these heavenly bodies were objects of reverence as holy things, but not of worship (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 con * ["Mr. Prescott gives his high authority in support of the Spanish historians Ondegardo, Herrera, and Gomara, and against Garcilasso de la Vega, in this matter [the worship of lightning and thunder as deities]. Yet surely, in a question relating to the religion of his ancestors, the testimony of the Ynca . . . is worth more than that of all 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." 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 tradicted, in a manner, by the admission of Garcilasso 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 worship of the Incas to that of the Sun alone is not very reconcilable with what he elsewhere 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, principal deities, were assembled a host of inferior ones, to whom the nation paid religious homage, as personifications of the different objects in nature. "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. the Spanish historians put together, Cieza de Leon alone excepted." (Markham, translation of Garcilasso (1869), vol. i. p. 103, note.) "The sun, moon, and thunder appear to have been the deities next in importance to Pachayachachic; sacrifices were made to them at all the periodical festivities, and several of the prayers given by Molina are addressed to them." Markham, Rites and Laws of the Yncas (1873), Introduction, p. xi.-ED.] |