Holding these opinions for certain, they buried with dead men their most beloved wives and most trusted servants, together with all their arms, treasures, plumes, and other personal ornaments. Many of the companions of a dead chief, for whom there was no room in the tomb, would make holes in the fields belonging to him, or in the places where he used generally to hold festivals, and there be buried, thinking that his soul would pass by these places and take them in his company to do him service. And some of the women, in order that their faithful service might be held in more esteem, finding that there was delay in completing the tomb, would hang themselves up by their own hair, and so kill themselves.
We believe that all these things are done, because the accounts of the Indians concerning them are confirmed by the contents of the tombs, and because, in many parts, the Indians believe in and retain their accursed customs. I recollect, when I was in the government of Carthagena, more than twelve or thirteen years ago, the licentiate Juan de Vadillo being then governor and judge, that a boy came from a village called Pirina, and fled to the place where Vadillo then was, because they wanted to bury him alive with the chief of the village, who died at that time.
Alaya, who was lord of the greater part of the valley of Xauxa, died about two years ago, and they say that a great number of women and servants were buried alive with him. If I am not deceived, they told this to the president Gasca, and though he gave the other chiefs to understand that they had committed a great sin, his discourse was without fruit.
All over Peru they call the devil Supay.[326] I have heard that he has been seen by them many times. They even affirm that in the valley of Lile he entered the bodies stuffed with cinders that are there, saying many things to the people.
Friar Domingo, who is (as I have already said) a notable searcher into these secrets, relates that when a certain person was sent to call Don Paullu,[327] the son of Huayna Ccapac, whom the people received as Ynca, he heard a servant say that, near the fortress of Cuzco, there were loud voices crying with a great noise, “Why, Ynca, dost thou not observe the customs that thou art bound to observe. Eat and drink, for soon thou must cease to eat and drink.” These voices were heard by him who was sent to Don Paullu, during five or six nights. Such are the wiles of the devil, and the nooses with which he arms himself, to catch the souls of those who esteem sorcerers so highly.
All the chiefs and Indians of the coast valleys have peculiar head-dresses, by which one tribe is known from another....[328] In our time they are abandoning their old rites, and the devil has neither influence, nor temple, nor public oracle among them, for they are finding out his deceitfulness; so that they are not now so bad as they were before they heard the word of the holy gospel. But this will not avail if the grace of God does not lessen their eating, drinking, and lasciviousness, in which they are engaged day and night without tiring.
CHAPTER LXIII.
How they buried their dead, and how they mourned for them, at the performance of their obsequies.
IN the previous chapter I recounted all there is to be said concerning the belief of these Indians in the immortality of the soul, and what the enemy of the human race makes them think concerning it. It now seems good to me that in this place I should give some account of their mode of burying their dead.
In this there are great differences, for in some parts they make holes, in others they place their dead on heights, in others on level ground, and each nation seeks some new way of making tombs. Certain it is that, though I have made many inquiries, and talked with learned and curious men, I have not been able to ascertain the origin of these Indians, nor of their customs.