PLATE XXIX.
Scene from a vase, Truxillo, showing balsa. The drawing is in the Chimu style. After Joyce, South American Archaeology, page 126.
Juan de Velasco,[121] in the beginning of his history of Quito, places the coming of the giants about the time of the Christian era; and six or seven centuries later, he declares, another incursion of men from the sea appeared on this coast, destined to leave a more permanent trace, for the present city of Caraques not only marks the site of their first power, but bears the name of the Cara. These invaders are said to have come on balsas—the strange boats of this coast, formed of logs bound together, the longest at the centre, into the form of a hull, on which a platform was built, while masts bore cloth sails; and it is stated that the Spaniards encountered such craft capable of carrying forty or fifty men. The Cara were an adventurous people, and after dwelling for a time upon the coast, they advanced into the interior until, about 980 a. d., according to Velasco, they eventually established their power in the neighbourhood of Quito, where the Scyri (as the Cara king was called) became a powerful overlord. From that time until Quito was subdued by the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna Capac in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the Scyris reigned over the northern empire, constantly extending their territories by war; but their power was finally broken when the Inca added the emerald of the Scyris to the red fringe of Cuzco to complete his imperial crown.
The followers of the Scyris, Velasco says, were mere idolaters, having at the head of their pantheon the Sun and the Moon who had guided them on their journeys; and he describes the temples built to these deities on two opposite hills at Quito, that to the Sun having before the door two pillars which served to measure the solar year, while twelve lesser columns indicated the beginning of each month. Elsewhere in their empire were the usual local cults,—worship of animals and elements, with tales of descent from serpentiform water-spirits and with adoration of fish and of food animals—while on the coast the Sea was a great divinity, and the islands of Puna and La Plata were the seats of famous sanctuaries, at the former shrine prisoners being sacrificed to Tumbal, the war-god, by having their hearts torn out. The neighbouring coast was the seat of the veneration of the great emerald (mentioned by Cieza de León and Garcilasso de la Vega) which was famous as a god of healing; and it is altogether probable that the Scyris brought their regard for the emerald from this region in which the gem abounded, though this may well have been merely a local intensification of that belief in the magic of green and blue gems which is broadcast in the two Americas.
Besides the stories of the giants and the Cara, there is a third legend of an ancient descent of seamen upon the equatorial coast. Balboa[122] is the narrator of the tale of the coming of Naymlap and his people to Lambeyeque, a few degrees south of Cape Santa Elena, and the story which he tells is given with a minuteness as to name and description that leaves no doubt of its native origin. At a very remote period there arrived from the north a great fleet of balsas, commanded by a brave and renowned chieftain, Naymlap. His wife was called Ceterni, and a list of court officers is given—Pitazofi, the trumpeter; Ninacolla, warden of the chief's litter and throne; Ninagentue, the cup-bearer; Fongasigde, spreader of shell-dust before the royal feet (a function which leads us to suspect that the royal feet, for magic reasons, were never to touch the earth); Ochocalo, chief of the cuisine; Xam, master of face-paints; and Llapchilulli, charged with the care of vestments and plumes. From this account of the entourage, one readily infers that the chieftain is more than man, himself a divinity; and, indeed, Balboa goes on to say that immediately after the new comers had landed, they built a temple, named Chot, wherein they placed an idol which they had brought and which, carved of green stone in the image of the chief, was called Llampallec, or "figure of Naymlap." After a long reign Naymlap disappeared, leaving the report that, given wings by his power, he had ascended to the skies; and his followers, in their affliction, went everywhere in search of their lord, while their children inhabited the territories which had been acquired. Cium, the successor of Naymlap, at the end of his reign, immured himself in a subterranean chamber, where he perished of hunger in order that he might leave the reputation of being immortal; and after Cium were nine other kings, succeeded by Tempellec, who undertook to move the statue of Naymlap. But when a demon, in the form of a beautiful woman, had seduced him, it began to rain—a thing hitherto unknown on that dry coast—and continued for thirty days, this being followed by a year of famine, whereupon the priests, binding Tempellec hand and foot, cast him into the sea, after which the kingdom was changed into a republic.
This tale bears all the marks of authentic tradition. We may well suppose that Naymlap and his successors were magic kings, reigning during the period of their vigorous years and then sacrificed to make way for a successor who should anew incarnate the sacred life of Llampallec. Such rulers, as corn-spirits and embodiments of the communal soul of their people, have been made familiar by Sir James G. Frazer's monumental Golden Bough; and in this case it would appear that the sacred king was regarded as a marine divinity, probably as the son of Mother Sea. Certainly this would not merely explain the shell-dust spread beneath his feet, but it might also account for the punishment of Tempellec, who had brought the cataclysm of water to the land and so was cast back to his own element; while it is even possible that the worship of the emerald, which all writers mention in connexion with this coast, may have here received its especial impetus from the colour and translucency of the stone, suggesting the green waters of the ocean.