Huayna Capac's sons were also Indian war-captains, and nothing more,—moreover, war-captains of different tribes, rivals and enemies. Atahualpa moved down from Quito with his savage warriors, and had several fights, and finally captured Huascar and shut him up in the Indian fort at Xauxa.[26]
That was the state of things when Pizarro began his march inland; and lest you should be misled by assertions that the condition of things in Peru was differently stated by the Spanish historians, it is needful to say one thing more. The Spanish chroniclers were not liars nor blunderers,—any more than our own later pioneers who wrote gravely of the Indian King Philip, and the Indian King Powhatan, and the Indian Princess Pocahontas. Ethnology was an unknown science then. None of those old writers comprehended the characteristic Indian organization. They saw an ignorant, naked, superstitious man who commanded his ignorant followers; he was a person in authority, and they called him a king because they did not know what else to call him. The Spaniards did the same thing. All the world in those days had but one little foot-rule wherewith to measure governments or organizations; and ridiculous as some of their measurements seem now, no one then could do better. No; the mistakes of the Spanish chroniclers were as honest and as ignorant as those which Prescott made three centuries later, and by no means so absurd.
Peru, however, was a very wonderful country to have been built up by simple Indians, without even that national organization or spirit which is the first step toward a nation. Its "cities" were substantial, and in their construction had considerable claim to skill; the farms were better than those of our Pueblos, because they had indigenous there the potato and other plant-foods unknown then in our southwest, and were watered by the same system of irrigation common to all the sedentary tribes. They were the only shepherd Indians, and their great flocks of llamas were a very considerable source of wealth; while the camel's-hair cloths of their own weaving were not disdained by the proud ladies of Spain. And above all, their rude ovens for melting metal enabled them to supply a certain dazzling display, which was certainly not to be expected among American Indians: indeed, it would surprise us to enter churches anywhere and find them so bright with golden plates and images and dados as were some of their barbaric temples. We cannot say that they never made human sacrifices; but these hideous rites were rare, and not to be compared with the daily horrors in Mexico. For ordinary sacrifices, the llama was the victim.
It was into the strongholds of this piratical but uncommon Indian tribe that Pizarro was now leading his little band.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Pronounced Sów-sa.