[89] The aboriginal people of Quito, or at least the dominant race which was found there when the first Ynca army invaded the country, is said to have spoken the Quichua language; and it has been mentioned, as a very curious fact, that the same language should have been spoken at Cuzco and Quito, at a time when those places held no intercourse with each other; whilst the inhabitants of the intervening country spoke totally distinct languages. As one explanation of this, it has been suggested that the Caras were a Quichua colony which, at some remote period, had come in balsas from the Peruvian coast, landed at Esmeraldas, and eventually marched up to Quito. But there is no probability that any large body of Quichuas ever reached the coast before they came as conquerors, and the Yuncas did not speak Quichua. In my opinion there is no sufficient evidence that the people of Quito did speak Quichua previous to the Ynca conquest. They were forced to adopt it afterwards by their conquerors, and it completely superseded their own more barbarous tongue: but in Cieza de Leon’s time, though Quichua was the official language, the Puruaes and other tribes of the Quitenian Andes still spoke their own language in private. (See p. 161.) There is a tradition that the giants, who are said to have landed at Point Santa Elena (see chap. lii), forced the Caras to abandon the coast, and retire into the mountainous district round Quito.

[90] See chapters xxxix to xliv.

[91] The traditions of the origin of the first Ynca, given by Garcilasso de la Vega, Herrera, and Montesinos, are entirely unworthy of credit. They are mere foolish stories obtained from the Indians, by credulous inquirers who probably put leading questions, and who mixed everything up with Noah’s flood, and other ideas of their own.

Garcilasso de la Vega gives three stories, one, told him by his mother’s uncle, that two children of the sun mysteriously appeared on the banks of lake Titicaca, marched north to Cuzco, and taught the savage people to sow, reap, and weave: another, that a mighty personage appeared at Tiahuanaco and divided the land amongst four kings, one of whom was Manco Ccapac: and a third, that four men and four women came out of a hole in a rock near Paccari-tampu, of whom the eldest was Manco Ccapac, the first Ynca. G. de la Vega, i, lib. i, cap. xv-xviii.

Herrera also gives three accounts. The first, obtained from the Huancas and Aymaras, that there was a great deluge, during which some people were preserved by hiding in caves on the highest mountains, after which a, mighty civiliser arose in the Collao. The second, that the sun, after a long absence, rose out of lake Titicaca{[a]} in company with a white man of large stature, who gave men rules to live by. He eventually spread his mantle on the sea and disappeared. The third story is the same as Garcilasso’s, about the people coming out of a hole in the rock. Herrera, dec. iii, lib. ix, cap. 1.

Montesinos says that, five hundred years after Noah’s deluge, four brothers led the first inhabitants to Peru, of whom the youngest killed his brothers and left the empire to his son Manco Ccapac. Montesinos then gives a list of one hundred Yncas who succeeded Manco; the inventions of his own imagination, or at best the results of affirmative answers from Indians who only half understood him: for, as Cieza de Leon shrewdly remarks, “these Indians are intelligent, but they answer Yes! to everything that is asked of them.”{[b]}

Cieza de Leon, whose testimony I consider to be worth more than that of all the other chroniclers put together, says that Manco Ccapac was believed to have been the first Ynca, and that the Indians relate great marvels respecting him.{[c]} Indeed, all that Cieza de Leon has recorded concerning the traditions of the people goes to prove that they had no idea of their ancestors having had a foreign origin, but, on the contrary, that they believed them to have sprung from their native rocks or lakes. Thus the Huancas thought that their first parents came forth from the fountain of Huarivilca.{[d]} The Chancas sought the origin of their race in the lake of Soclo-cocha.{[e]} The Aymaras were divided in opinion as to whether their first parents came out of a fountain, a lake, or a rock, but believed that once there was a great deluge. In short, “no sense can be learned from these Indians concerning their origin.”{[f]} All that we know for certain is, that they had dwelt for generation after generation in the valleys and on the mountains where the Spaniards found them in the middle of the sixteenth century. “A very long period has elapsed,” says our author, “since these Indians first peopled the Indies.”{[g]}

The series of Ynca sovereigns according to Garcilasso de la Vega, the last ten of whom are historical personages, is as follows:—

Circa 1021 Manco Ccapac.
“ 1062 Sinchi Rocca.
“ 1091 Lloque Yupanqui.
“ 1126 Mayta Ccapac.
“ 1156 Ccapac Yupanqui.
“ 1197 Ynca Rocca.
“ 1249 Yahuar-huaccac.
“ 1289 Huira-ccocha.
“ 1340 Pachacutec.
“ 1400 Ynca Yupanqui.
“ 1439 Tupac Ynca Yupanqui.
“ 1475 Huayna Ccapac.
“ 1526 Huascar.
“ 1532 Atahualpa.
“ 1533 Ynca Manco.
“ 1553 Sayri Tupac.
“ 1560 Cusi Titu Yupanqui.
“ 1562 Tupac Amaru (beheaded 1571).

For the signification of these names, see note at page [231].