American Hero-Myths Part 16

[Footnote 2: "Ellos solo Viracocha tenian por hacedor de todas las cosas, y que el solo los podia socorrer, y que de todos los demas los tenian por sus intercesores, y que ansi los decian ellos en sus oraciones antiguas, antes que fuesen cristianos, y que ansi lo dicen y declaran por cosa muy cierta y verdadera." _Information de las Idolatras de los Incas e Indios_, in the _Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos Ineditos del Archivo de Indias_, vol. xxi, p. 198. Other witnesses said: "Los dichos Ingas y sus antepasados tenian por criador al solo Viracocha, y que solo los podia socorrer," id. p. 184.

"Adoraban a Viracocha por hacedor de todas las cosas, como a el sol y a Hachaccuna los adoraban porque los tenia por hijos de Viracocha y por cosa muy allegada suya," p. 133.]

It is singular that historians have continued to repeat that the Qquichuas adored the Sun as their princ.i.p.al divinity, in the face of such evidence to the contrary. If this Inquiry and its important statements had not been accessible to them, at any rate they could readily have learned the same lesson from the well known History of Father Joseph de Acosta. That author says, and repeats with great positiveness, that the Sun was in Peru a secondary divinity, and that the supreme deity, the Creator and ruler of the world, was Viracocha.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Sientan y confiessan un supremo senor, y hazedor de todo, al qual los del Piru llamavan Viracocha. * * Despues del Viracocha, o supremo Dios, fui, y es en los infieles, el que mas comunmente veneran y adoran el sol." Acosta, _De la Historia Moral de las Indias_, Lib, v. cap. iii, iv, (Barcelona, 1591).]

Another misapprehension is that these natives worshiped directly their ancestors. Thus, Mr. Markham writes: "The Incas worshiped their ancestors, the _Pacarina_, or forefather of the _Ayllu_, or lineage, being idolized as the soul or essence of his descendants."[1] But in the _Inquiry_ above quoted it is explained that the belief, in fact, was that the soul of the Inca went at death to the presence of the deity Viracocha, and its emblem, the actual body, carefully preserved, was paid divine honors in order that the soul might intercede with Viracocha for the fulfillment of the prayers.[2]

[Footnote 1: Clements R. Markham, _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, 1871, p. 291. _Pacarina_ is the present participle of _pacarini_, to dawn, to begin, to be born.]

[Footnote 2: _Informacion_, etc., p. 209.]

We are compelled, therefore, by the best evidence now attainable, to adopt the conclusion that the Inca religion, in its purity, deserved the name of monotheism. The statements of the natives and the terms of their religious language unite in confirming this opinion.

It is not right to depreciate the force of these facts simply because we have made up our minds that a people in the intellectual stage of the Peruvians could not have mounted to such a pure air of religion. A prejudgment of this kind is unworthy of a scientific mind. The evidence is complete that the terms I have quoted did belong to the religious language of ancient Peru. They express the conception of divinity which the thinkers of that people had formed. And whether it is thought to be in keeping or not with the rest of their development, it is our bounden duty to accept it, and explain it as best we can. Other instances might be quoted, from the religious history of the old world, where a nation's insight into the attributes of deity was singularly in advance of their general state of cultivation. The best thinkers of the Semitic race, for example, from Moses to Spinoza, have been in this respect far ahead of their often more generally enlightened Aryan contemporaries.

The more interesting, in view of this lofty ideal of divinity they had attained, become the Peruvian myths of the incarnation of Viracocha, his life and doings as a man among men.

These myths present themselves in different, but to the reader who has accompanied me thus far, now familiar forms. Once more we meet the story of the four brothers, the first of men. They appeared on the earth after it had been rescued from the primeval waters, and the face of the land was divided between them. Manco Capac took the North, Colla the South, Pinahua the West, and the East, the region whence come the sun and the light, was given to Tokay or Tocapa, to Viracocha, under his name of the Finisher, he who completes and perfects.[1]

[Footnote 1: Garcila.s.so de la Vega, _Comentarios Reales_, Lib. i, cap.

xviii.]

The outlines of this legend are identical with another, where Viracocha appears under the name of Ayar Cachi. This was, in its broad outlines, the most general myth, that which has been handed down by the most numerous authorities, and which they tell us was taken directly from the ancient songs of the Indians, as repeated by those who could recall the days of the Incas Huascar and Atahualpa.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Parece por los cantares de los Indios; * * * afirmaron los Orejones que quedaron de los tiempos de Guascar i de Atahualpa; * * *

cuentan los Indios del Cuzco mas viejos, etc.," repeats the historian Herrera, _Historia de las Indias Occidentals_, Dec. v, Lib. iii, cap. vii, viii.]

It ran in this wise: In the beginning of things there appeared on the earth four brothers, whose names were, of the oldest, Ayar Cachi, which means he who gives Being, or who Causes;[1] of the youngest, Ayar Manco, and of the others, Ayar Aucca (the enemy), and Ayar Uchu. Their father was the Sun, and the place of their birth, or rather of their appearance on earth, was Paccari-tampu, which means _The House of the Morning_ or the _Mansion of the Dawn_.[2] In after days a certain cave near Cuzco was so called, and pointed out as the scene of this momentous event, but we may well believe that a n.o.bler site than any the earth affords could be correctly designated.

[Footnote 1: "_Cachini_; dar el ser y hazer que sea; _cachi chiuachic_, el autor y causa de algo." Holguin, _Vocabvlario de la Lengva Qquichua, sub voce, cachipuni_. The names differ little in Herrera (who, however, omits Uchu), Montesinos, Balboa, Oliva, La Vega and Pachacuti; I have followed the orthography of the two latter, as both were native Qquichuas.]

[Footnote 2: Holguin (_ubi supra_,) gives _paccarin_, the morning, _paccarini_, to dawn; _tampu_, _venta o meson_.]

These brothers were clothed in long and flowing robes, with short upper garments without sleeves or collar, and this raiment was worked with marvelous skill, and glittered and shone like light. They were powerful and proud, and determined to rule the whole earth, and for this purpose divided it into four parts, the North, the South, the East, and the West.

Hence they were called by the people, _Tahuantin Suyu Kapac_, Lords of all four Quarters of the Earth.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Tahuantin_, all four, from _tahua_, four; _suyu_, division, section; _kapac_, king.]

The most powerful of these was Ayar Cachi. He possessed a sling of gold, and in it a stone with which he could demolish lofty mountains and hurl aloft to the clouds themselves. He gathered together the natives of the country at Pacari tampu, and acc.u.mulated at the House of the Dawn a great treasure of yellow gold. Like the glittering h.o.a.rd which we read of in the lay of the Nibelung, the treasure brought with it the destruction of its owner, for his brothers, envious of the wondrous pile, persuaded Ayar Cachi to enter the cave where he kept his h.o.a.rd, in order to bring out a certain vase, and also to pray to their father, the Sun, to aid them to rule their domains. As soon as he had entered, they stopped the mouth of the cave with huge stones; and thus rid of him, they set about collecting the people and making a settlement at a certain place called _Tampu quiru_ (the Teeth of the House).

But they did not know the magical power of their brother. While they were busy with their plans, what was their dismay to see Ayar Cachi, freed from the cave, and with great wings of brilliantly colored feathers, hovering like a bird in the air over their heads. They expected swift retribution for their intended fratricide, but instead of this they heard rea.s.suring words from his lips.

"Have no fear," he said, "I left you in order that the great empire of the Incas might be known to men. Leave, therefore, this settlement of Tampu quiru, and descend into the Valley of Cuzco, where you shall found a famous city, and in it build a sumptuous temple to the Sun. As for me, I shall remain in the form in which you see me, and shall dwell in the mountain peak Guanacaure, ready to help you, and on that mountain you must build me an altar and make to me sacrifices. And the sign that you shall wear, whereby you shall be feared and respected of your subjects, is that you shall have your ears pierced, as are mine," saying which he showed them his ears pierced and carrying large, round plates of gold.

They promised him obedience in all things, and forthwith built an altar on the mountain Guanacaure, which ever after was esteemed a most holy place.

Here again Ayar Cachi appeared to them, and bestowed on Ayar Manco the scarlet fillet which became the perpetual insignia of the reigning Inca.

The remaining brothers were turned into stone, and Manco, a.s.suming the t.i.tle of _Kapac_, King, and the metaphorical surname of _Pirhua_, the Granary or Treasure house, founded the City of Cuzco, married his four sisters, and became the first of the dynasty of the Incas. He lived to a great age, and during the whole of his life never omitted to pay divine honors to his brothers, and especially to Ayar Cachi.

In another myth of the incarnation the infinite Creator Ticci Viracocha duplicates himself in the twin incarnation of _Ymamana Viracocha_ and _Tocapu Viracocha_, names which we have already seen mean "he who has all things," and "he who perfects all things." The legend was that these brothers started in the distant East and journeyed toward the West. The one went by way of the mountains, the other by the paths of the lowlands, and each on his journey, like Itzamna in Yucatecan story, gave names to the places he pa.s.sed, and also to all trees and herbs of the field, and to all fruits, and taught the people which were good for food, which of virtue as medicines, and which were poisonous and to be shunned. Thus they journeyed westward, imparting knowledge and doing good works, until they reached the western ocean, the great Pacific, whose waves seem to stretch westward into infinity. There, "having accomplished all they had to do in this world, they ascended into Heaven," once more to form part of the Infinite Being; for the venerable authority whom I am following is careful to add, most explicitly, that "these Indians believed for a certainty that neither the Creator nor his sons were born of woman, but that they all were unchangeable and eternal."[1]

[Footnote 1: Christoval de Molina, _Fables and Rites of the Incas_, p. 6.]

Still more human does Viracocha become in the myth where he appears under the surnames _Tunapa_ and _Taripaca_. The latter I have already explained to mean He who Judges, and the former is a synonym of Tocapu, as it is from the verb _ttaniy_ or _ttanini_, and means He who Finishes completes or perfects, although, like several other of his names, the significance of this one has up to the present remained unexplained and lost. The myth has been preserved to us by a native Indian writer, Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti, who wrote it out somewhere about the year 1600.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Relacion de Antiguedades deste Reyno del Piru_, por Don Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, pa.s.sim. Pachacuti relates the story of Tunapa as being distinctly the hero-myth of the Qquichuas. He was also the hero-G.o.d of the Aymaras, and about him, says Father Ludovico Bertonio, "they to this day relate many fables and follies." _Vocabulario de la Lengua Aymara_, s.v. Another name he bore in Aymara was _Ecaco_, which in that language means, as a common noun, an ingenious, shifty man of many plans (_Bertonio, Vocabulario_, s.v.). "Thunnupa," as Bertonio spells it, does not lend itself to any obvious etymology in Aymara, which is further evidence that the name was introduced from the Qquichua. This is by no means a singular example of the ident.i.ty of religious thought and terms between these nations. In comparing the two tongues, M. Alcide D'Orbigny long since observed: "On retrouve meme a peu pres un vingtieme des mots qui ont evidemment la meme origine, surtout ceux qui expriment les idees religieuses." _L'Homme Americain, considere sous ses Rapports Physiologiques et Moraux_, Tome i, p. 322 (Paris, 1839). This author endeavors to prove that the Qquichua religion was mainly borrowed from the Aymaras, and of the two he regards the latter as the senior in civilization. But so far as I have been able to study the mythology of the Aymaras, which is but very superficially, on account of the lack of sources, it does not seem to be ent.i.tled to this credit.]

He tells us that at a very remote period, shortly after the country of Peru had been populated, there came from Lake t.i.ticaca to the tribes an elderly man with flowing beard and abundant white hair, supporting himself on a staff and dressed in wide-spreading robes. He went among the people, calling them his sons and daughters, relieving their infirmities and teaching them the precepts of wisdom.

Often, however, he met the fate of so many other wise teachers, and was rejected and scornfully entreated by those whom he was striving to instruct. Swift retribution sometimes fell upon such stiff-necked listeners. Thus he once entered the town of Yamquesupa, the princ.i.p.al place in the province of the South, and began teaching the inhabitants; but they heeded him not, and seized him, and with insult and blows drove him from the town, so that he had to sleep in the open fields. Thereupon he cursed their town, and straightway it sank into the earth with all its inhabitants, and the depression was filled with water, and all were drowned. To this day it is known as the lake of Yamquesupa, and all the people about there well know that what is now a sheet of water was once the site of a flourishing city.

At another time he visited Tiahuanaco, where may yet be seen the colossal ruins of some ancient city, and ma.s.sive figures in stone of men and women.

In his time this was a populous mart, its people rich and proud, given to revelry, to drunkenness and dances. Little they cared for the words of the preacher, and they treated him with disdain. Then he turned upon them his anger, and in an instant the dancers were changed into stone, just as they stood, and there they remain to this day, as any one can see, perpetual warnings not to scorn the words of the wise.

On another occasion he was seized by the people who dwelt by the great lake of Carapaco, and tied hands and feet with stout cords, it being their intention to put him to a cruel death the next day. But very early in the morning, just at the time of the dawn, a beautiful youth entered and said, "Fear not, I have come to call you in the name of the lady who is awaiting you, that you may go with her to the place of joys." With that he touched the fetters on Tunapa's limbs, and the ropes snapped asunder, and they went forth untouched by the guards, who stood around. They descended to the lake sh.o.r.e, and just as the dawn appeared, Tunapa spread his mantle on the waves, and he and his companion stepping upon it, as upon a raft, were wafted rapidly away into the rays of the morning light.

The cautious Pachacuti does not let us into the secret of this mysterious a.s.signation, either because he did not know or because he would not disclose the mysteries of his ancestral faith. But I am not so discreet, and I vehemently suspect that the lady who was awaiting the virtuous Tunapa, was Chasca, the Dawn Maiden, she of the beautiful hair which distills the dew, and that the place of joys whither she invited him was the Mansion of the Sky, into which, daily, the Light-G.o.d, at the hour of the morning twilight, is ushered by the chaste maiden Aurora.

As the anger of Tunapa was dreadful, so his favors were more than regal.

At the close of a day he once reached the town of the chief Apotampo, otherwise Pacari tampu, which means the House or Lodgings of the Dawn, where the festivities of a wedding were in progress. The guests, intent upon the pleasures of the hour, listened with small patience to the words of the old man, but the chief himself heard them with profound attention and delight. Therefore, as Tunapa was leaving he presented to the chief, as a reward for his hospitality and respect, the staff which had a.s.sisted his feeble limbs in many a journey. It was of no great seemliness, but upon it were inscribed characters of magic power, and the chief wisely cherished it among his treasures. It was well he did, for on the day of the birth of his next child the staff turned into fine gold, and that child was none other than the far-famed Manco Capac, destined to become the ancestor of the ill.u.s.trious line of the Incas, Sons of the Sun, and famous in all countries that it shines upon; and as for the golden staff, it became, through all after time until the Spanish conquest, the sceptre of the Incas and the sign of their sovereignty, the famous and sacred _tupa yauri_, the royal wand.[1]

[Footnote 1: "_Tupa yauri_; El cetro real, vara insignia real del Inca."

Holguin, _Vocabvlario de la Lengva Qquichua o del Inca_, s.v.]

It became, indeed, to Manco Capac a mentor and guide. His father and mother having died, he started out with his brothers and sisters, seven brothers and seven sisters of them, to seek new lands, taking this staff in his hand. Like the seven brothers who, in Mexican legend, left Aztlan, the White Land, to found nations and cities, so the brothers of Manco Capac, leaving Pacari tampu, the Lodgings of the Dawn, became the _sinchi_, or heads of various n.o.ble houses and chiefs of tribes in the empire of the Incas. As for Manco, it is well known that with his golden wand he journeyed on, overcoming demons and destroying his enemies, until he reached the mountain over against the spot where the city of Cuzco now stands. Here the sacred wand sunk of its own motion into the earth, and Manco Capac, recognizing the divine monition, named the mountain _Huanacauri_, the Place of Repose. In the valley at the base he founded the great city which he called _Cuzco_, the Navel. Its inhabitants ever afterwards cla.s.sed Huanacauri as one of their princ.i.p.al deities.[1]

[Footnote 1: Don Gavino Pacheco Zegarra derives Huanacauri from _huanaya_, to rest oneself, and _cayri_, here; "c'est ici qu'il faut se reposer."

_Ollantai_, Introd., p. xxv. It was distinctly the _huzca_, or sacred fetish of the Incas, and they were figuratively said to have descended from it. Its worship was very prominent in ancient Peru. See the _Information de las Idolatras de los Incas y Indios_, 1671, previously quoted.]

When Manco Capac's work was done, he did not die, like other mortals, but rose to heaven, and became the planet Jupiter, under the name _Pirua_.

From this, according to some writers, the country of Peru derived its name.[2]

[Footnote 2: The identification of Manco Capac with the planet Jupiter is mentioned in the _Relacion Anonima_, on the authority of Melchior Hernandez.]

It may fairly be supposed that this founder of the Inca dynasty was an actual historical personage. But it is evident that much that is told about him is imagery drawn from the legend of the Light-G.o.d.

And what became of Tunapa? We left him sailing on his outspread mantle, into the light of the morning, over Lake Carapace. But the legend does not stop there. Whereever he went that day, he returned to his toil, and pursued his way down the river Chacamarca till he reached the sea. There his fate becomes obscure; but, adds Pachacuti, "I understand that he pa.s.sed by the strait (of Panama) into the other sea (back toward the East). This is what is averred by the most ancient sages of the Inca line, (_por aquellos ingas antiquissimos_)." We may well believe he did; for the light of day, which is quenched in the western ocean, pa.s.ses back again, by the straits or in some other way, and appears again the next morning, not in the West, where we watched its dying rays, but in the East, where again it is born to pursue its daily and ever recurring journey.

According to another, and also very early account, Viracocha was preceded by a host of attendants, who were his messengers and soldiers. When he reached the sea, he and these his followers marched out upon the waves as if it had been dry land, and disappeared in the West.[1]

[Footnote 1: Garcia, _Origen de los Indios_, Lib. v, Cap. vii.]

These followers were, like himself, white and bearded. Just as, in Mexico, the natives attributed the erection of buildings, the history of which had been lost, to the white Toltecs, the subjects of Quetzalcoatl (see above, chapter iii, --2), so in Peru various ancient ruins, whose builders had been lost to memory, were pointed out to the Spaniards as the work of a white and bearded race who held the country in possession long before the Incas had founded their dynasty.[1] The explanation in both cases is the same. In both the early works of art of unknown origin were supposed to be the productions of the personified light rays, which are the source of skill, because they supply the means indispensable to the acquisition of knowledge.

[Footnote 2: Speaking of certain "grandes y muy antiquissimos edificios"

on the river Vinaque, Cieza de Leon says: "Preguntando a los Indios comarcanos quien hizo aquella antigualla, responden que otras gentes barbadas y blancas como nosotros: los cuales, muchos tiempos antes que los Ingas reinasen, dicen que vinieron a estas partes y hicieron alli su morada." _La Cronica del Peru_, cap. lx.x.xvi.]

The versions of these myths which have been preserved to us by Juan de Betanzos, and the doc.u.ments on which the historian Herrera founded his narrative, are in the main identical with that which I have quoted from the narrative of Pachacuti. I shall, however, give that of Herrera, as it has some interesting features.