Copacabana means "the place of a precious stone," copa being a precious stone, and cavana a place where anything is seen.[154] A rock called Titicaca gave its name to the island and lake: titi being Aymara for a cat, and caca a rock, for on this rock a cat is said to have sat with fire shooting from its eyes.[155] In Quichua titi means lead. On this rock, which is at the west end of the island of Titicaca,[156] there was an altar where the Aymaras adored the Sun, and near it there were three idols joined in one, called Apu Ynti (the Chief Sun), Churip Ynti (the Son's Sun), and Yntip Huauqui (Brother of the Sun). The Inca Tupac Yupanqui (A.D. 1439-75) founded a palace and a village about half a league from the rock, and established a convent of virgins there.[157]
The island of Coata, a league to the eastward of Titicaca, was dedicated to the Moon, the name being derived from Coyata, the accusative of Coya, a queen; the Moon ranking as wife to the Sun. The ruins of the Accla huasi, or convent of virgins, on Coata island, are 120 feet long, the interior being divided into numerous cells, with rows of niches in the walls. They are now overshadowed by queñua-trees, whose dark foliage adds to the sombre melancholy of these silent memorials of the past. On both the islands there were, in the time of the Incas, large establishments of Virgins of the Sun, who were divided into three grades, according to their beauty. The most lovely were called Guayruro; the next Yurac Aclla, or white maidens; and the plain ones Paco Aclla, or beast maidens. Each grade was governed by a Mamacona or nurse, and an Apu-panaca or governor lived near the convent, who guarded it, and supplied its inmates with provisions. The occupations of the virgins were weaving, embroidery, and brewing sacrificial chicha, to be poured out on the altar of the deity.[158]
After the conquest, the Spanish Viceroys handed over the province of Chucuito, and the islands in the lake, to the Dominican friars, who succeeded in introducing far grosser and more degrading superstitions amongst the Indians than they had ever practised on the islands of Titicaca and Coata; and in establishing, on the adjacent peninsula of Copacabana, a shrine, the pretended sanctity of which attracted devotees and rich presents from all parts of Spanish America.
Its origin appears to have been as follows:—A member of the family of the Incas, named Francisco Titu Yupanqui, not having money enough to buy an image of the Virgin for his church, painted a very bad picture, and the cura, Antonio de Almeida, either to please the Indian, or because there were few images or pictures in the country, allowed it to be placed near the altar. But the next cura, Antonio de Montoro, seeing that it caused more laughter than devotion, ordered it to be put in a corner of the sacristy. The poor artist then went to Potosi to learn to paint, and, after much labour, he succeeded in completing a picture which, the moment it was placed in the church at Copacabana, began to work miracles. It was set up in 1583, and the Inca painter died in 1608. The first thing the picture did was to banish all devils out of the province, and to cure many Indians of their diseases; and its fame became so great that in 1588 the Count of Villar, viceroy of Peru, solemnly delivered it to the care of the Augustine friars by a royal edict. Between 1589 and 1652 it is said to have performed 186 miracles. One Alonzo de Escote, for favours received, saved up money for the purpose of giving the Virgin a lamp, and at length he presented the richest then to be found in the Spanish colonies, twenty feet long, with sockets for as many candles as there are days in the year, all of solid silver. Even as late as 1845, when Dr. Weddell saw the church, it was very richly gilt.
"Other images," says Father Calancha, "in Europe and Asia perform miracles in their own towns or provinces, but this picture of Copacabana performs them all over the new world, and in parts of Europe!"[159]
Thus the Spanish conquerors supplied the Aymara Indians of the shores of lake Titicaca with an object of devotion in the shape of this old picture; which was to replace their former simple worship of the Sun and Moon on the sacred islands of the lake. It will be interesting to examine briefly the way the Spaniards treated the people they subjected, in other respects, and to glance at the kind of government which they substituted for the mild rule of the Incas.
The forefathers of the present Aymara Indians established a civilization of which we have no record save the silent evidence of those cyclopean ruins which have just been described. Subsequently, for nearly four centuries, from the middle of the twelfth to the sixteenth, they formed a part of the empire of the Incas, and their land was then called Collasuyu. During this period the Incas followed their constant policy of superseding the language of the conquered land by their own more polished Quichua; and they so far succeeded that the Aymara, which once extended and was spoken all over the Collao, as far as the pass of Ayaviri, on the road to Cuzco, has been entirely superseded in all parts north of Puno by the Quichua, and is now only spoken between Puno and La Paz, and farther south. Nevertheless the people enjoyed a long period of tranquillity and prosperity during the happy rule of the Incas, and the population continued to increase. With the introduction of Spanish rule a blight fell upon them: and we shall now see how the beneficent laws of the sovereigns of Castile were administered by their unworthy servants.