It is certain that ancestor-worship was an important feature of Yunca religion, for Arriaga, speaking of the Chincha peoples, says that for festivals they gathered in ayllus (tribes or clans), each with mummies of its kinsfolk to which were offered vases, clothes, plumes, and the like. They had household gods (called Conopa or Huasi-camayoc), as distinguished from the communal deities, which were of several classes; more than three thousand of these Conopas it is said, were destroyed by the Spaniards. Garcilasso informs us that each coastal province worshipped a special kind of fish, "telling a pleasant tale to the effect that the First of all the Fish dwells in the sky"—a statement which is certainly in tone with a totemic interpretation.
In addition to the special idols of each province, says Garcilasso,[132] all the peoples of the littoral from Truxillo to Tarapaca adored the ocean in the form of a fish, out of gratitude for the food that it yielded, naming it Mama Cocha ("Mother Sea"); and it is indeed plausible that the Food-Giver of the Sea was a great deity in this region, although some of the Truxillo vases seem to indicate that the ocean was also regarded as the abode of dread and inimical monsters, since they portray the conflicts of men or heroes with crustacean and piscine monsters of the deep. Antonio de la Calancha, who was prior of the Augustines at Truxillo in 1619, gives a brief account of the Chimu pantheon.[133] The Ocean (Ni) and the earth (Vis) were worshipped, prayers being offered to the one for fish and to the other for good harvests. The great deity, however, was the Moon (Si), to which sacrifices of children were sometimes made; and this heavenly body, regarded as ruler of the elements and bringer of tempests, was held to be more powerful than the Sun. Possibly the crescent- or knife-shaped symbol which appears on the head-gear of vase representations of chieftains, in Truxillo ware, is a token of this cult, which finds a parallel among the Araucanians of the far south, among whom, too, the Moon, not the Sun, is the lofty deity.
The language of the subjects of the Grand Chimu was Mochica, which was unrelated to any other in Peru; but though they regarded the Quichua-speaking Chincha as hereditary enemies, the religious conceptions of the two groups were not very different. In Arriaga's account,[134] the Chincha worshipped the Earth (Mama Pacha) as well as Mama Cocha (the Sea); and they also venerated the "Mamas," or Mothers, of maize and cacao. There were likewise tutelary deities for their several villages—just as each family had its Penates—and Garcilasso states that the god Chincha Camac was adored as the creator and guardian of all the Chincha. The worship of stones in fields and stones in irrigating channels is also mentioned (both for Chimu and for Chincha), and these may well have been in the nature of herms in valleys where fields were narrowly limited; while in addition there were innumerable huacas—sacred places, fetishes, oracles, idols, and, in short, anything marvellous, for Garcilasso, in explaining the meaning of the word, says that it was applied to everything exciting wonder, from the great gods and the peaks of the Andes to the birth of twins and the occurrence of hare-lip. It is in this connexion that he speaks of "sepulchres made in the fields or at the corners of their houses, where the devil spoke to them familiarly," a description suggestive of ancestral shrines; and it is quite possible that the word huaca is most properly applied in that sense in which it has survived, to tombs.
In Chincha territory were located the two great shrines of Rimac and Pachacamac, whose oracles even the Incas courted. Rimac, says Garcilasso, signifies "He who Speaks"; he adds that the valley was called Rimac from "an idol there, in the shape of a man, which spoke and gave answers to questions, like the oracle of the Delphic Apollo"; and Lima, which is in the valley of Rimac, receives its appellation from a corruption of this name. A greater shrine, however, and an older oracle was Pachacamac. According to Garcilasso, the word means "Maker and Sustainer of the Universe" (pacha, "earth," camac, "maker"); and he is of opinion that the worship of this divinity originated with the Incas, who, nevertheless, regarded the god as invisible and hence built him no temples and offered him no sacrifices, but "adored him inwardly with the greatest veneration." Markham (not very convincingly) identifies Pachacamac with the great fish-deity of the coast, considering him as a supplanter of the older and purer deity, Viracocha.
One of the most interesting of coastal myths, quoted by Uhle, tells how Pachacamac, having created a man and a woman, failed to provide them with food; but when the man died, the woman was aided by the Sun, who gave her a son and taught the pair to live upon wild fruits. Angered at this interference, Pachacamac killed the youth, from whose buried body sprang maize and other cultivated plants; the Sun gave the woman another son, Wichama, whereupon Pachacamac slew the mother; while Wichama, in revenge, pursued Pachacamac, driving him into the sea, and thereafter burning up the lands in passion, transformed men into stones. This legend has been interpreted as a symbol of the seasons, but it is evident that its elements belong to wide-spread American cycles, for the mother and son suggest the Chibcha goddess, Bachue, while the formation of cultivated plants from the body of the slain youth is a familiar element in myths of the tropical forests and, indeed, in both Americas. From the story it is clear that Pachacamac is a creator god, antagonistic (if not superior) to the Sun, who seems to supplant him in power; but surely it is anomalous that the Earth-Maker should find his end by being driven into the sea unless, indeed, Pachacamac, spouse of Mother Sea, be the embodied Father Heaven, descending in fog and damp and driven seaward by the dispelling Sun. Such an interpretation would make Pachacamac simply a local form of Viracocha; and this, certainly, is suggested in the descriptions, by Garcilasso and others, of the reverence paid to this divinity.
From Francisco de Avila's account[135] of the myths of the Huarochiri, in the valley of the Rimac, we may infer that Viracocha was known to the Chincha tribes, at one period probably as a supreme god. An idol called Coniraya (meaning according to Markham, "Pertaining to Heat") they addressed as "Coniraya Viracocha," saying, "Thou art Lord of all; thine are the crops, and thine are all the people"; and in every toil and difficulty they invoked this deity for aid.
PLATE XXXIII.
Embroidered figure from a Nasca robe in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Nasca fabrics represent the highest achievement in textile art of aboriginal America. Figures of the type here shown are repeated with minor variations, each, no doubt, of symbolic significance, in a chequered or "all-over" design. The deity represented may be totemic, but obviously belongs to the same group as those shown in such pottery paintings as are represented in Plates [XXXII] and [XXXIV].
One of the decorative designs that occurs and recurs on the vases of both the Chimu and Chincha regions—in the characteristic style of each—is the plumed serpent. What is apparently a modification of this is the man-headed serpent, or the warrior with a serpent's or dragon's tail, a further modification representing the man or deity as holding the serpent in one hand, while frequently, in the other hand, is a symbolic staff or weapon that in certain forms is startlingly like the classical thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. Another step shows only the serpent's head held in the one hand, while the staff, or thunderbolt, is made prominent; and, finally, in the style known as that of Tiahuanaco, from its resemblance to the ancient art of the highlands, a squat deity, holding a winged or snake-headed wand in each hand gives the counterfeit presentment of the central figure on the Tiahuanaco arch and the monolith of Chavin. In Central and North America the plumed serpent is a sky-symbol, associated with rainbow, lightning, rain, and weather; and it is not too much to follow the guesses hitherto ventured that this cycle of images, appearing in various forms in the different periods of Yunca art, is intimately associated with the ancient and nearly universal Jovis Pater of America—Father Sky. As in the old world, the eagle, so in South America the condor and the falcon are the especial ministers of this deity; as also are the most powerful of the beasts of prey known in the region—the puma, or mountain lion; and, again, a fish, which we may suppose to typify lordship over the waters, as the condor and lion symbolize dominion over air and earth. Thus, as it were, through their grotesque masks and gorgeous fantasies, the pots and jars of the Yunca peoples mutely attest the universal reverence of mankind for the great powers of Nature.