We have thus far been describing the ruins that occur in the territory occupied by the coast tribes, a people in many ways different from the great body of Peruvian people in the interior. According to traditions, the conquest of the coast tribes took place about one hundred and fifty years before the Spanish conquest. The details of this conquest are given with great precision. We doubt whether any great reliance can be placed upon them. We might remark that while Garcillasso traces the progress of the conquest from the south north, Salcamayhua reverses this order, and makes the victorious Incas march from the north to the south. One or the other made a mistake in traditions.
The Inca conquest of the coast tribes was a very thorough one. The names and traditions of the tribes were blotted out. The word Yunca, by which they are known, is from the Inca language. The same is true of the names of the coast valleys, and yet, from what we have already learned of them, we feel sure that they were very far from the degraded savages Garcillasso would have us believe they were. The inhabitants of each valley formed a distinct community under its own chief. De Leon says: “The chief of each valley had a great house, with adobe pillars and door-ways, hung with matting, built on extensive terraces.” This might have been the official house of the tribe.
They were an industrious people, and the evidence is abundant that they had made considerable advance in cultivation of the ground. They “set apart every square foot of ground that could be reached by water for cultivation, and built their dwellings on the hillsides overlooking their fields and gardens. Their system of irrigation was as perfect as any that modern science has since adopted.41 It is an altogether mistaken idea to suppose the Incas were the authors.
We are not without evidence that they were possessed of considerable artistic skill. This preceding collection of pottery ware is not the work of savages. Mr. Markham further tells us that they made “silver and gold ornaments, mantles, embroidered with gold and silver bezants, robes of feathers, cotton cloth of fine texture, etc.” We have already referred to the tasteful decorations of the walls of Grand Chimu. “Figures of colored birds and animals are said to have been painted on the walls of temples and palaces.” At Pachacamac the remains of this color are still seen on a portion of the walls. This cut represents the head of a silver cylinder found in one of the coast valleys. The ornamentation is produced by hammering up from below.
We must now leave the coast regions and investigate some ruins in the interior. We have already spoken of the Lake Titicaca region. Not far from the southern border of that lake we notice a place marked Tiahuanuco. Here occur a very interesting group of ruins. They consist of “rows of erect stones, some of them rough, or but rudely shaped by art, others accurately cut and fitted in walls of admirable workmanship; long sections of foundations, with piers and portions of stairways; blocks of stone, with mouldings, cornices, and niches cut with geometrical precision, vast masses of sandstone, trachyte, and basalt, but partially hewn, and great monolithic doorways, bearing symbolical ornaments in relief, besides innumerable smaller rectangular and symmetrically shaped stones rise on every hand, or lie scattered in confusion over the plain.”42 In fact, all explorers are loud in their praise of the beautifully cut stones found in the ruins.