Inca Rule and Native Chiefs.—Spanish Colonial Period.—The Fight for Independence.—Republican Chile.
Neither in her deep woodlands nor upon her open plains does Chile possess monuments of ancient civilisation. The foundations of her flourishing cities date back no farther than 400 years at the most; the arts and crafts of daily life are based upon imported concepts, owning no native origin. As a settled, built, cultivated country, Chile is for the main part genuinely new.
The old races of the south, whether nomad hunters of the interior or fisherfolk of the coast and Magellanic waterways, built no towns, constructed and carved nothing that serves today as a memorial; bones hidden in caves, chipped spear and arrow heads, harpoons and fish-hooks, remain as the only evidence of the life of past generations, the only witnesses by which the condition of their present descendants can be measured. Farther north, where Inca culture penetrated, are such ruins of dwellings as those of Calama, with their burial sites. Traces of the Inca highways are yet to be found as far south as the Atacama desert and Copiapó. But in contrast with the archæological wealth of Bolivia and Peru, of Central America and Mexico, Chile has not a single pre-Spanish temple nor the rudest monolith to show. The north and central valley of Chile as far as the present Talca were under Inca control for about one hundred years before the Spanish conquest, Peruvian records yielding the only historical accounts of events in Chile prior to Almagro’s expedition.
A friendly connection between the Peruvian empire and the settled tribes of the Chilean north seems to have been of old standing, a tradition confirmed by the evidence of burial grounds. Upon the authority of the historian Montesinos, the Inca Yahuar Huaccac gave a daughter and a niece in marriage to two chiefs of Chile; these two princesses came later, with their children, to visit Peru, their uncle Viracocha being then Inca. A revolt took place during their absence, and the family was only reinstated by the might of the Inca, and under his tutelage. It was, however, the Inca Pachacuti who began the definite explorations and conquests that, continued by his son Tupac Yupanqui and his grandson Huayna Ccapac, increased the Inca dominion to a great empire extending from the Ancasmayu River, north of Quito, to the banks of the Maule in Chile.
Tupac Yupanqui (1439–75) conquered the Antis,[[2]] people of the Collao, and from Charcas decided to go farther south. He entered Chile, defeated the powerful Sinchi (chieftain) Michimalongo and later Tangalongo, the latter ruling country down to the Maule. Here the same fierce tribes who afterwards resisted the finest Spanish troops opposed him, and after setting up frontier columns, or walls, as a mark of conquest on the river banks, the Inca returned to Cuzco via Coquimbo. From this time Chile was officially organised. Quechua-speaking colonists (mitimaes) were sent here as throughout all the rest of the thousand leagues of Inca territory, registering the population and imposing tributes of country produce. Curacas were instituted as tribal leaders in lieu of the Sinchis, who were in old Chile obeyed only in wartime. Extension of this definite organisation was energetically carried on by the great Inca, Huayna Ccapac, and it was during this period that the Peruvians constructed the great roads that so astonished, and aided, the Spaniards. The effective transport system and the success of the Inca rulers in pacifying districts by the simple method of transporting the original population where disaffection was suspected, replacing them with settlers from a distance, the whole meticulous paternalism of the Inca system, regulating every part of the social frame from the cradle to the grave so thoroughly that initiative was stifled, rendered easy the task of the invading European. He did no more than step into Inca shoes, and the Inca’s subjects received the change of masters almost with apathy.
[2]. From which name the word Andes, in whose lower folds the Antis dwelt, was probably derived.
That careful observer Cieza de Leon, in Peru from 1532–50, leaves a precise account of the Inca roads that ran south from Cuzco both along the sierras and also throughout the coastal border. The highways were made, he says, fifteen feet wide in the valleys, with a strong wall on either side, the whole space being paved with cement and shaded with trees. “These trees, in many places, spread their branches, laden with fruit, over the road and many birds fluttered among the leaves.” Resthouses containing provisions for the Inca officials and troops were built at regular intervals, and it was strictly forbidden that Peruvians should interfere with the property of natives in nearby fields or houses.
In deserts where the sand drifted high, and paving was useless, huge posts were driven in to mark the way. Zarate, who gives the width of the roads as 40 feet, says that “broad embankments were made on either side,” and all early travellers in Inca territory agree that these lost highways were extremely well made. He adds that the posts in the desert were connected with stout cords, but that even in his day the Spaniards had destroyed many of the posts, using them for making fires. The road of the coast, like that of the sierra, was 1500 miles long; and of Chilean traces any traveller through the Atacama copper regions may see a survival at the station of “Camino del Inca,” where the modern railway cuts across the ancient road.
Along the Sierra highway came, in 1535, the first Spaniard to set foot in Chile, Diego de Almagro. He was not the first European to explore Chilean territory, for the Portuguese Fernão de Magalhães had discovered the Strait bearing his name in 1520; but he was the pioneer explorer by land. The name Chile is a native word which was probably the appellation of a (pre-Spanish) local chief; it was the name by which the Incas designated that part of the country under their control, and it persisted in spite of Valdivia’s later attempt to call it “Nueva Estramadura,” just as “Mejico” and “Cuba” survived and “Nueva España” and “Española” faded out. It has been frequently but mistakenly said that the word Chile actually does mean “chilly” in the Quechua tongue; as a matter of fact the Quechua word meaning “cold” is chiri. In early Spanish times the name Chile applied only to part of the central valley with “Copayapu” in the extreme north, “Coquimpu” just below it, and the central region partly ascribed to “Canconicagua.” But the name Chile was simple and was so quickly adopted that Almagro’s adherents were soon politically grouped as “los de Chile”—the men of Chile, and when the country was definitely colonised the name was extended to denote all the settled country south of Peru, that is, between Copiapó and Chiloé Island.
The original spur to conquest of Chile was rivalry between the Pizarro brothers and their fellow conquistador, the old Adelantado Diego de Almagro. The Pizarros wanted to retain rich Cuzco, and Almagro was an inconvenient claimant; the magnificent city of the Incas, today a grievous sight with its shabby modern buildings superimposed upon the stately stone walls of the Incas, was already a smashed and looted ruin; but it had yielded so much treasure that it was probably impossible for the conquistadores to give up search for other golden cities. Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and the Chibcha Kingdom, had followed in rapid succession, and it is not surprising that when Indians spoke of the riches of the south, Almagro, over seventy years old, should be ready to march into Chile. Almagro had a commission from Charles V to conquer and rule over 200 leagues of land south of Francisco Pizarro’s territory (New Castille); it was to be called Nueva Toledo. At about the same time, 1534, a grant was given to the ill-fated Alcazaba of 300 leagues of land, commencing at the southern boundary of Almagro’s territory, under the name of Nueva Leon.