The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations Part 10

Caste division was never lost sight of-indeed one Inca went so far as to order that all the people of the Below "should flatten the heads of their children, so that they should be long and sloping from the front." Thus they should ever be distinguishable from the n.o.bility and "yield them obedience." Although it is not expressly stated, it may be inferred from actual specimens of skulls which have been found that, in some localities, in order to differentiate the two cla.s.ses still more, members of the n.o.bility strove to mould the heads of their children in a high peak, so that they too should perpetually bear the mark of their rank. Whether such a procedure would exert a correspondingly elevating or abasing influence upon the intellectual development of the two cla.s.ses is a problem for anthropologists.

A very simple explanation of the reason why artificial deformation of the skull was ever adopted, is obtainable when the all-powerful dominion of a certain set of ideas is recognized. Many other customs, still in practice amongst American tribes, are likewise explained by the arbitrary division of population into cla.s.ses and categories. The Peruvian custom of bestowing one name upon a child when it was one year old and another when it attained maturity is the direct outcome of the cla.s.sification of individuals by age. The ceremonial observances which accompanied the bestowal of these names were accompanied by a change of costume which const.i.tuted the official enrolment or advancement into another cla.s.s. The existence of further systematic cla.s.s-distinctions is proven by the description of the picturesque ceremony performed in the month of August at Cuzco and called "the driving out of sickness." In the centre of the great square around the urn of gold which typified the "central fountain"

(precisely the idea expressed by the name of Mexico), four hundred warriors a.s.sembled. One hundred, representing one of the four ayllus, faced towards each cardinal point and subsequently ran at full speed in its direction, crying "Go forth all evils!"

We have now traced the idea of the Above and Below, Centre and Four Quarters in Ancient Peru. It remains to be noted that the capital itself, which was to be the image of the whole empire, was primarily divided into two halves and four quarters, and subdivided into 43=12 wards the names of which doubtlessly corresponded with that of their inhabitants. When the sacred centre of the capital is added to these it is clear that the City of Cuzco was subdivided into as many parts as there were directions in s.p.a.ce, _i. e._ 13. It exemplified, therefore, an a.s.sociation of 210=20 categories of people cla.s.sified according to ages, with thirteen directions in s.p.a.ce, and a general subdivision of all cla.s.ses into four parts. The Inca with the four Capacs and the Coya with the four Camayocs formed two groups of five each, which could well have been represented by a large central figure surrounded by four smaller ones of equal size. By coloring these with red, yellow, black and white, their a.s.signment to the cardinal point could have been expressed. The central figure could be painted in four colors, for only the Inca and his lineage could wear many-colored garments, these being indicative that they represented the centre or union of the four quarters.

Two important features of the system remain to be discussed: We have studied the minute and methodical cla.s.sification of the entire population into distinct groups without touching upon the practical reasons why this was done. We have a.n.a.lyzed the great machinery of the Inca dominion as it lies broken and motionless. But endow the giant wheel with motion, introduce systematical rotation into its every part, regulate the occupations of the people by a fixed series of work-days and holidays.

Send them forth to their work and collect the products of their labor at set intervals, _inst.i.tute a calendar_, and you will have set the machinery of state in motion and realized how the cla.s.sification of individuals according to rank, ages, and occupations was absolutely necessary in order to obtain a successful and harmonious result. It has already been shown that the inst.i.tution of the calendar and establishment of twelve festival periods of thirty days each, in a year, succeeded the division of the people into groups and their a.s.signment to fixed places of abode.

"They commenced to count the year in the middle of May, a few days more or less, on the first day of the Moon ... in this month they held the festivals of the Sun" (Molina ed. Hakluyt, p. 16). I direct particular attention to the fact that it was the new May moon which controlled the beginning of the religious calendar, although the Incas observed the equinoxes and solstices and the cult of the Sun was under their special care. The twelve divisions of the year accord with the twelve wards of Cuzco surrounding the central enclosure which was always the place where the festivals were held and the people congregated.

I have as yet found no account of the lesser divisions of time in Peru, but note that the period of thirty days consisted of six periods of five days each, a subdivision which would obviously accord with native habits of thought if a.s.sociated with the six terrestrial directions in s.p.a.ce and if a reunion of people and collection of produce from four quarters took place on every fifth day in the capital. In my special work on the Calendar systems of ancient America I shall be able to discuss more fully their intimate indissoluble relation to the regulation of labor and control of the food supply absolutely requisite for the great capital.

The idea of rotation was carried out in a ceremony described by Molina.

When the December moon was full, after having ploughed their fields during twelve days, "all persons returned to Cuzco ... the people went to a house called moro-uco, near the houses of the Sun and took out a very long cable which was kept there, woven in four colors, black, white, red and yellow, at the end of which was a stout ball of red wool. Everyone took hold of it, the men on one side, the women on the other, performing the sacred dance called yaquayra. When they came to the square ... they went round and round until they were in the shape of a spiral sh.e.l.l. Then they dropped the cable on the ground and left it coiled up like a snake. The people returned to their places and those who had charge of the cable took it back to its house." An extremely important instance of the application of the spiral is preserved in an ill.u.s.tration in the Account of the Antiquities of Peru by the native chronicler Salcamayhua (ed. Hakluyt, p.

109). He relates that the Inca Huayna-Capac, when he reached the town of Tumipampa, "ordered water to be brought from a river by boring through a mountain, and making the channel enter the city by curves in this way:"

[Ill.u.s.tration.]

Figure 46.

The ill.u.s.tration, reproduced here (fig. 46), exhibits an extremely ingenious mode of irrigation which divided the country surrounding the town into nine zones of land lying between currents of water. These are cut through by an exit ca.n.a.l which, at the same time, presumably supplied a direct water-way for traffic to and from the town. The a.s.sociation of the spiral form with irrigation would not, perhaps, seem as important and significant did we not know that the ancient Peruvians, as proven by Wiener, habitually laid out the irrigation ca.n.a.ls in their maize-fields so as to form regular designs, some of which resembled those ill.u.s.trated on fig. 40, nos. 2, 4, 6, 7, which have been shown to signify the union of the Above and Below, or Heaven and Earth. In the Peruvian irrigation ca.n.a.ls the water supplied the light lines and the earth the dark, and when the small ca.n.a.ls were full and were observed in certain lights, they must have resembled light blue or white patterns running through the dark earth. That their inventors and makers actually a.s.sociated them with profound meaning and laid them from superst.i.tious as well as practical motives is obvious; for, in Peru, as in Mexico, we find the periodical union of the Heaven and Earth, of rain and earth celebrated with ceremonial drinking of chicha, specially brewed for this period which seems to have been the regularly appointed time for juvenile match-making, by order of the Inca.

"When the Inca gave women as wives they were received because it was the command of the Inca ... because of this it was considered that she was taken until death and she was received on this understanding and never deserted" (Molina). "When the Inca Rocca married his sister, six thousand people were married on the next day" (Montesinos). In the festival called Ccapac Raymi, maidens who had attained womanhood offered bowls of fermented chicha to the youths who had just been admitted to the ranks of the warriors.

"During this festival the Priests of the Sun and of the Creator brought a quant.i.ty of fuel, tied together in handfuls, and dressed as a man and a woman ... they were offered to the Creator, the Sun and the Inca and were burnt in their clothes together with a sheep" (Molina).

Towards the end of the same month (November), feasts were celebrated for the flocks of the huacas, that they might multiply; for which sacrifices were made throughout the kingdom. Ultimately "public solemn sacrifices were made to the Creator, the Sun, the Thunder and the Moon for all nations, that they might prosper and multiply" (Molina). A few weeks later, an exemption from ceremonial bondage, for three months, commenced.

Throughout January, February and March no religious festival took place at Cuzco-the farmers attended to their land and the people were left at liberty to pursue their various avocations uninterruptedly (Molina ed.

Hakluyt, pp. 51 and 52). I have already shown that the same exemption from ceremonial bondage during ninety to one hundred days of the year was customary in Mexico; and, in my note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System, communicated to the Congress of Americanists at Stockholm in 1894 (p. 16), I explained the reasons which had led me to infer that "the religious festivals were concentrated in the ritual years of 260 days,"

which indeed forms a unit, consisting of a complete set of combinations of the numbers 13 and 20.

In Dr. Franz Boas' admirable monograph on the Social Organization and secret societies of the Kwakiutl Indians (Washington, 1897, p. 418), it is shown that at the present day the clan system is only in force during one division of the year. "At the beginning of the winter ceremonial the social system is completely changed. The period when the cla.s.s system is in force is called ba-xus. The period of the winter ceremonial is designated as 'the secrets,' 'making the heart good,' also 'brought down from Above.' The Indians express this alternating of seasons by saying that in summer the ba-xus is on top, the secrets below, and _vice versa_ in winter. During this time the place of the clans is taken by a number of secret societies: the spirits who had appeared to mythical ancestors give new names to the men to whom they appear, but these names are only in use during the time when the spirits dwell amongst the Indians, _i. e._, in the winter." Therefore from the moment when the spirits are supposed to be present, all the summer names are dropped and the members of the n.o.bility take their winter names. The winter ceremonial societies are arranged in two princ.i.p.al groups; these are subdivided into 210=20 groups according to age and s.e.x.

Dr. Boas distinguishes "three cla.s.ses of tribal names and of clan names, viz., such as are collective forms of the names of the ancestors, names taken from the region inhabited by the tribe or clan and names of honour.... Each clan derives its origin from a mythical ancestor ... the present system of tribes and clans is of recent growth ... their numbers have undergone considerable changes in historical times." A careful study of the material presented by Dr. Boas shows, however, that the ground-plans of the entire social fabric reared by the Kwakiutl Indians closely resembles that on which the stately Maya, Mexican and Peruvian civilizations were reared.

Returning to Peru, it is particularly noteworthy that the above mentioned solemn sacrifices to the Creator, the Sun and Thunder, and Moon and Earth, held in November, were thus offered to them jointly in one consecrated place, whereas, at other seasons, the cult was performed separately and on different days, before the emblems of the Above and Below.

Notwithstanding the moderation and tolerance which seem to have been characteristic of the Inca government, and the apparent equality and accord of the two cults, the heads of which were the Inca and Coya, we find evidences of discord in the historical records. The Inca empire had scarcely been established for more than a few centuries(23) when we discern signs of a serious rebellion under the leadership of the Chuchi-capac, the chief of the Southern province or Colla-suyu, pertaining to the Below. From the taunts he uttered in the presence of the Inca on a festive occasion and which have been recorded verbally by Salcamayhua, it is clear that the chief of the Collas a.s.serted that he (and the people of his province) actually practised sun-cult although "his throne was of silver;" that is to say, notwithstanding the fact that moon-cult pertained to the quarter to which he was a.s.signed, namely, to the Below. He justifies his departure from moon-cult by taunting the Inca that he, in turn, did not adhere strictly to sun-cult but worshipped the impersonal Creator. This struggle between the ancient native sun-cult and star-cult and this religious dissension, the reason for which is apparent, initiated the long period of internal strife and warfare which ultimately made the Spanish Conquest such an easy matter.

During the course of these wars the Peruvian Inca, on one occasion, avenged himself for a supposed insult by having drums made of the skins of some of the enemies' messengers and by sending back others of these "dressed as women," that is to say degraded from their positions as warriors or n.o.blemen to the ranks of the commoners. A similar degradation, inflicted upon the Tlatelolcan rebels by the Mexicans has already been mentioned and can only be fully understood when the cla.s.s-system is recognized.

From this and a.n.a.logous instances it is evident that, admirable as the scheme of government seems to have been as a means of laying the foundations of civilization, and of teaching primitive people agriculture, stability, law and order, yet the very features which rendered it so efficient at first became, eventually, the cause of its gradual disintegration, as soon as a certain degree of culture prosperity was attained by the community. One mode of avoiding the evils of over-population and of ridding the capital of its restless, and enterprising or troublesome members, was the system of Mitimaes or colonists. This merits particular attention, because it formed an integral part of the marvellous and widespread scheme of organization we have been studying, and therefore helps to an understanding of the customary means by which civilization was spread in past ages throughout the American continent.

As the population of Cuzco increased and greater food supplies were found necessary, the Incas extended their dominions by a series of conquests.

"As soon as they had made themselves lords of a province they left Mitimaes or settlers there, who caused the natives to live in communities"

and established a small centre of local government on the pattern of Cuzco. Mitimaes or colonists were also sent, from different provinces, to live on the frontiers, bordering on hostile countries, so as to aid in defending them against the enemies. The establishment of colonies in distant districts was therefore a tried and familiar custom of those who possessed the wonderful governmental plan we have been studying.

I have shown that the greater the prosperity of a civilized community organized on this plan, the more imperative the necessity of founding new colonies would sometimes become. The urgent need of greater food supplies would lead to the sending out of expeditions for the purpose of surveying the surrounding country and ascertaining the quality of its produce. In his MS. Noticia, Padre Oliva speaks of an exploring party which was sent out by the ancestor of the Incas with the injunction to return in a year.

After a few years had pa.s.sed and none of the party returned, a second expedition was sent out in search of the first and this led to the final establishment of the Inca dominion in a promising region. Sahagun recounts how a Maya colony was established at Panuco; Montezuma himself related to Cortes that he and his lineage were descendants of colonists from distant parts; traditions of culture-heroes who established civilization amongst them abound amongst Central American tribes; finally, Peru is shown to have been civilized by rulers who carried out, systematically, a ready-made plan in a comparatively short time. Whence did all these culture-heroes emanate, carrying the identical method and system into widely separated districts and establishing centres of civilization in the richest and most fertile parts of the American Continent?

Doc.u.mentary evidence certainly justifies the inference that the civilization of Peru itself was due to just such a deliberately executed plan of colonization, which gradually extended southwards and ultimately took root and flourished in the most favorably situated locality.

Leonce Angrand, who cites Acosta, Montesinos, Garcia, Boturini, Valera, Garcilaso de la Vega, Gomara, Balboa, Paz Soldan, d'Orbigny, Zarate, Cieza de Leon, Torquemada, Herrera, Velasco, Rivero and Tschudi, Gibbon, Stevenson, Castelnau, Desjardins, Villavicencio, Roman and others, unites their testimony in the following sentence: "It is therefore solely towards the North, in the elevated mountainous region, that researches should be directed [in order to ascertain the origin of the Peruvian civilization].

As soon as this is done innumerable proofs appear of the residence, in extremely ancient times, of people who can scarcely belong to other races than those who founded Cuzco and Tiahuanaco. It is therefore, from the North that these hardy pioneers of humanity came, from distant civilizations, and it is certainly by going northwards that one must look for traces of one or the other current of civilization. The inexhaustible force of expansion of the Inca Empire extended to the North as well as in other directions."

Angrand also mentions a line "of prehistoric ruins which extend northwards from Peru and display the essentially characteristic outlines of the Mexican Teocallis or temples."(24)

Garcilaso de la Vega, citing Padre Blas Valera, goes so far as to state that the race, which introduced human sacrifices and ritualistic cannibalism into Peru, "had come from the region of Mexico, peopled the regions of Panama and the Isthmus of Darien and all those great mountains which extend between Peru and the new kingdom of Granada" (the present Nicaragua).(25)

According to Padre Anello Oliva, whose ma.n.u.script notes on Peru are preserved in the British Museum Library, the immediate ancestors of the Incas were colonists who came from unknown parts either by land or by sea, and settled at Caracas (Atlantic coast), whence they gradually spread southwards. As his authority for this statement, he cites original ma.n.u.scripts which had been placed in his hands by a Spanish missionary of high standing. Among these was a relation by a Quipucamayoc or "accountant by means of quippus," named Catari, who had been a chronicler of the Incas. His forefathers had occupied the same post and had handed down the above record as having been related to them by their predecessors.

This account does not disagree with that of Salcamayhua who states that "all the nations of the empire had come from beyond Potosi, in four or five armies, arrayed for war and settled in the districts as they advanced."

Whatever opinions may be held of the relative reliability of the Spanish chroniclers one thing is certain: that not one ventures the statement that the Inca civilization was gradually evolved by the native race of Peru and that all agree in a.s.signing its introduction to an alien race of rulers who came from the North, and gradually united the scattered indigenous tribes together under a central government. Americanists will doubtless agree with me in stating that, until the past history, antiquities and languages of all tribes inhabiting South and Central America have been exhaustively studied, no absolutely satisfactory conclusion can be formed as to when and how civilization was carried to Peru.

On the other hand, even in the present preliminary stage of investigation, there are certain undeniable facts which, if brought to notice at this early date, may prove of inestimable value in directing future research.

One of these facts will doubtless appear to many as strange and inexplicable but as noteworthy as it appears to me.

In Cristoval de Molina's account of the fables and rites of the Incas(26) already cited, a fable is related concerning the Inca Yupanqui, the Conqueror, who extended the domain of the Peruvian empire and inst.i.tuted the worship of a creator who, unlike the sun, could rest and light up the world from one spot.

"They say that, before he succeeded [to rulership], he went one day to visit his father Uiracocha Inca, who was at Sacsahuana, five leagues from Cuzco. As he came up to a fountain called Susur-puquio, he saw a piece of crystal fall into it, within which he beheld the figure of an Indian in the following shape:

"Out of the back of his head there issued three very brilliant rays like those of the Sun. Serpents were twined around his arms, and on his head there was the llautu or royal fringe worn across the forehead of the Inca.

His ears were bored and he wore the same earpieces as the Inca, besides being dressed like him. The head of a lion came out from between his legs and on his shoulders was another lion whose legs appeared to join over the shoulders of the man. A sort of serpent also twined over the shoulders.

"On seeing this figure the Inca Yupanqui fled, but the figure of the apparition called him by his name from within the fountain saying, 'Come hither, my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt conquer many nations: therefore be careful to pay great reverence to me and remember me in thy sacrifices.' The apparition then vanished, while the piece of crystal remained. The Inca took care of it and they say that he afterwards saw everything he wanted in it. As soon as he was Lord he ordered a statue of the Sun to be made as nearly as possible resembling the figure he had seen in the crystal. He gave orders to the heads of the provinces in all the lands he had conquered, that they should make grand temples, richly endowed, and he commanded all his subjects to adore and reverence the new Deity, as they had heretofore worshipped the Creator....

It is related that all his conquests were made in the name of the Sun, his Father, and of the Creator. This Inca also commanded all the nations they conquered to hold their huacas in great veneration...."

It is a startling but undeniable fact that one of the beautiful bas-reliefs found at Santa Lucia Cozumalhuapa near the western coast of Guatemala, about 1,200 miles to the north of the lat.i.tude of Cuzco, answers in a most striking manner to the description given of Inca Yupanqui's vision.(27)

Amongst the thirteen sculptured slabs discovered at Santa Lucia, there are six entire slabs and the fragment of another which are of almost uniform size and may be ranked among the finest examples of aboriginal art which have as yet been found on the American Continent. They represent seven different renderings of the same theme. On each slab an individual wearing elaborate insignia is represented as standing with one arm raised and his head thrown back in the act of gazing upwards towards a celestial figure which seems to be descending towards him. The arms and heads of these n.o.bly conceived figures are visible, but in each case the faces seem to issue from a highly ornate symbol, which is different in each one, just as the insignia of each individual also varies in detail. At the same time it is obvious that the seven slabs commemorate as it were an identical circ.u.mstance,-the apparition of the same divinity to seven different individuals, six of which are represented with the sign of speech coming forth from their mouths in precisely the same manner. The general resemblance, notwithstanding the distinct individuality of each bas-relief, suggests that they commemorate the visions seen under similar circ.u.mstances by seven distinct personages of the same rank and position.

Involuntarily one thinks of the period of enforced fast and vigil which marks the attainment of manhood and is still obligatory amongst North American tribes, amongst whom it only ends when they have entered into communion with their totemic ancestor. I am inclined to view these commemorative tablets as commemorating an a.n.a.logous rite and perpetuating the visions of successive members of one ruling family, or clan. The divinity, invariably a.s.sociated with serpent symbols, seems to be Quetzalcoatl, the divine twin or serpent, exhibiting in some cases the emblem of the Sun, but evidently revealing itself to each personage under a slightly different form.

[Ill.u.s.tration.]

Figure 47.

The accompanying drawing (fig. 47) of one of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs, reproduced from Dr. Habel's work, will suffice to establish its resemblance to Padre Oliva's description of the apparition seen by the youthful Inca Yupanqui. After a careful comparison of the text to the sculptured bas-relief, it must be admitted that a more graphic and impressive ill.u.s.tration of the episode can scarcely be imagined. Its lower portion displays a youthful figure, looking upwards and exhibiting a necklace, the circular ear-pieces and royal fringe or llautu of the Incas.

From his shoulders hangs the skin of a puma or lion with its head downwards. Molina relates that lion-skins with the heads were specially prepared for the ceremonial when youths were admitted into the ranks of knighthood, the last rite of which was the piercing of their ears and the enlargement of the orifice made.(28)

The youth wears a singular head-dress, or diadem, consisting of what appears to be an eye with conventionally drawn upper lid, surmounted by three pointed rays, behind which some long wavy feathers are visible.(29)

The celestial apparition to which the youthful figure is looking up, likewise exhibits the same necklace, pieces, and royal fringe of the Incas. Indistinctly though some of the details are given, it seems as though intertwined serpents encircled its head and possibly its neck. The head of the vision is surmounted by an enlarged rendering of the conventionally drawn eyelid and three pointed rays which form the diadem of the youthful knight. The face of the vision occupies, however, the place of the eye on the diadem. In this connection it is interesting to note that in the Nahuatl language, which, as (_op. et loc. cit._) proven by Buschmann, was spoken in Guatemala where the bas-relief was found, the word ixtli designates face, whilst ixtololotli signifies eye. Situated between the right elbow of the celestial figure and the diadem of the youth, there is a diminutive reproduction of the eye, eyelid and three rays, with the addition that what appear like two (or three?) drops of water or two eyes descend from it towards a square symbol which resembles the Mexican sign for tlalli=earth, whilst the eye symbol is closely a.n.a.logous to a well-known Mexican sign which has been interpreted as a star, and has, but not as yet satisfactorily, been identified with the planet Venus. Without pausing to study this sign as it appears in ancient Mexico I point out that the position and mode of representation of the upper figure in the bas-relief sufficiently show that it is an image of a celestial being or vision in the act of receiving the supplication of a youth who is wearing divine insignia. There being a possibility that some of these accessories may be somewhat indistinct in the original bas-relief now preserved at the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Berlin, I do not venture to draw special attention to the possibility of further points of resemblance between the Peruvian tradition and this Guatemalan sculpture.

At the same time I shall not omit allusion to the wavy figure winding upwards from the waist of the supplicant, which recurs in four out of the seven slabs. It may yet prove to answer to the description of "a sort of serpent," which is recorded as twining over the shoulders of the vision who was "dressed like the Inca." The lion's head which appears in the drawing to cover the left hand of the supplicant and the fact that his left foot only, in some cases, wears a sandal, are important and interesting features to which I shall revert further on.