THE ANDEAN SOUTH
I. THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS[123]
"In this land of Peru," wrote Cieza de León,[124] "are three desert ranges where men can in no wise exist. One of these comprises the montaña (forests) of the Andes, full of dense wildernesses where men cannot live, nor ever have lived. The second is the mountainous region, extending the whole length of the Cordillera of the Andes, which is intensely cold, and its summits are covered with eternal snow, so that in no way can people live in this region owing to the snow and the cold, and also because there are no provisions, all things being destroyed by the snow and the wind, which never ceases to blow. The third range comprises the sandy deserts from Tumbez to the other side of Tarapaca, in which there is nothing to be seen but sand-hills and the fierce sun which dries them up, without water, nor herb, nor tree, nor created thing, except birds which, by the gift of their wings, wander wherever they list. This kingdom, being so vast, has great deserts for the reasons I have now given.
"The inhabited region is after this fashion. In parts of the mountains of the Andes are ravines and dales, which open out into deep valleys of such width as often to form great plains between the mountains; and although the snow falls, it all remains on the higher part. As these valleys are closed in, they are not molested by the winds, nor does the snow reach them, and the land is so fruitful that all things which are sown yield abundantly; and there are trees and many birds and animals. The land being so fertile, is well peopled by the natives. They make their villages with rows of stones roofed with straw, and live healthily and in comfort. Thus the mountains of the Andes form these dales and ravines in which there are populous villages, and rivers of excellent water flow near them, some of the rivers send their waters to the South Sea, entering by the sandy deserts which I have mentioned, and the humidity of their water gives rise to very beautiful valleys with great rows of trees. The valleys are two or three leagues broad, and great quantities of algoroba trees [Prosopis horrida] grow in them, which flourish even at great distances from any water. Wherever there are groves of trees the land is free from sand and very fertile and abundant. In ancient times these valleys were very populous, and still there are Indians in them, though not so many as in former days. As it never rains in these sandy deserts and valleys of Peru, they do not roof their houses as they do in the mountains, but build large houses of adobes [sun-dried bricks] with pleasant terraced roofs of matting to shade them from the sun, nor do the Spaniards use any other roofing than these reed mats. To prepare their fields for sowing, they lead channels from the rivers to irrigate the valleys, and the channels are made so well and with so much regularity that all the land is irrigated without any waste. This system of irrigation makes the valleys very green and cheerful, and they are full of fruit-trees both of Spain and of this country. At all times they raise good harvests of maize and wheat, and of everything that they sow. Thus, although I have described Peru as being formed of three desert ridges, yet from them, by the will of God, descend these valleys and rivers, without which no man could live. This is the cause why the natives were so easily conquered, for if they rebelled they would all perish of cold and hunger. Except the land which they inhabit, the whole country is full of snowy mountains, enormous and very terrible."
Cieza de León's description brings vividly before the imagination the physical surroundings which made possible the evolution and the long history of the greatest of native American empires. Divided from one another by towering mountains and inhospitable deserts, the tribes and clans that filtered into this region at some remote period were compelled to develop in relative isolation; while, further, the conditions of existence were such that the inhabitants could not be nomadic huntsmen, nor even fishermen. Along the shores are vestiges of ancient shell-heaps, indicative of utterly primitive fisher-folk, and the sea always remained an important source of food for the coastal peoples; yet even here, as Cieza de León indicates, the growth of population was dependent upon an intensive cultivation of the narrow river-valleys rather than upon the conquest of new territories. Thus, the whole environment of life in Peru, montane and littoral, is framed by the fact of more or less constricted and protected valley centres, immensely productive in response to toil, but yielding no idyllic fruits to unlaborious ease. If the peoples who inhabited these valleys were not agriculturists when they entered them, they were compelled to become such in order that they might live and increase; and while the stupendous thrift of the aborigines, as evidenced by their stone-terraced gardens, their elaborate aqueducts, and their wonderful roads, still excites the astonishment of beholders, it is none the less intelligible as the inevitable consequence of prolonged human habitation. It is certain that the Peruvian peoples were the most accomplished of all Americans in the working of the soil; and it is possible that they were the originators of agriculture in America, for it was from Peru, apparently, that the growing of maize spread throughout wide regions of South America, Peru that developed the potato as a food-crop, and in Peru that the cultivation of cotton and various fruits and vegetables added greatest variety to the native farming. Peru, likewise, was the only American centre in which there was a domestic animal more important than the dog; and the antiquity of the taming of the llama and alpaca—useful not only for food and wool, but also as beasts of burden—is shown by the fact that these animals show marked differentiation from the wild guanaco from which they are derived. The development of domestic species of this animal and, even more, the development of maize from its ancestral grasses (if indeed this were Peruvian)[125] imply many centuries of settled and industrious life, a consideration which adds strongly to the archaeological and legendary indications of a civilization that must be reckoned in millennia.
PLATE XXX.
Machu Picchu, in the valley of the Urubamba, north of Cuzco. These ruins of an ancient Inca city were discovered by Hiram Bingham, of the Yale University and National Geographical Society expedition, in 1911, and are by him identified with the "Tampu-Tocco" of Inca tradition (see pages [216-18], and Plate [XXXVIII]). From photograph, courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition.
The conditions which thus fostered local and intensive cultural evolutions were scarcely less favourable—once the local valleys had reached a certain complexity—to the formation of extensive empires. As Cieza de León remarks, conquest was easy where refuge was difficult; and the Inca conquerors themselves found that the most effective weapon they could employ against the coastal cities was mastery of their aqueducts. The town which lost control of its water, drawn from the hills, could only surrender; and thus, the segregated valleys fell an easy prey to a powerful and aggressive people, gifted with engineering skill, such as the Inca race; while the empire won was not difficult to hold. At the time of the Spanish conquest that empire was truly immense. Tahuantinsuyu ("the Four Quarters") was the native name, and "the Quartered City" (Cuzco), its capital, was regarded as the Navel of the World. The four quarters, or provinces, were oriented from Cuzco: the southerly was Collasuyu, stretching from the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca southward; the eastern province was Antisuyu, extending down the slopes of the Andes into the regions of savagery; to the west lay Cuntisuyu, reaching to the coast and to the lands of the Yunca peoples; while to the north was Chinchasuyu, following the Andean valleys. Shortly before the Conquest the Inca dominion had been imposed upon the realm of the Scyris of Quito, so that the northern boundary lay beyond the equator; while the extreme southerly border had recently been extended over the Calchaqui tribes and down the coast to the edges of Araucania in the neighbourhood of latitude 35º south. The imperial territories were naturally narrowed to the Andean region, for the tropical forests to the east offered no allurements to the mountain-loving race which, indeed, could endure only temporarily the heat of the western coast, so that Inca campaigners in this direction resorted to frequent reliefs lest their men be debilitated. On the other hand, the immense expanse north and south, notwithstanding the perfection of the roads and fortresses built by astute rulers to facilitate communication, caused a natural tension of the parts and a tendency to break at the appearance of even the least weakness at the centre. Such appears to have been the fatal defect underlying the conflict of Huascar, at Cuzco, with Atahualpa, whose initial strength lay in his possession of Quito, and whose career was brought to an untimely end by the advent of Pizarro. Despite the fact that Inca power had been clearly crescent within the generation, it is by no means certain that the political conditions which the Spaniards used to advantage might not, if left to themselves, have disrupted the great empire.