As the mythic Manco Capac was the instructor of the nation in agriculture, so also the divine daughter of the Sun introduced the arts of weaving and spinning. Such traditions serve at least to indicate the favourite directions of the national taste and skill, which were displayed in the manufacture of a variety of woollen articles of ingenious patterns and the utmost delicacy of texture. Numerous examples of the woven textures of the Peruvians have been recovered from their ancient graves at Atacama and elsewhere; though it cannot be assumed that in these we have specimens of the rare and costly fabrics which excited the wondering admiration of the early Spaniards. In the arid soil and tropical climate of the great desert of Atacama, articles which prove the most perishable in northern latitudes are found, after the lapse of centuries, in perfect preservation. Of these I had an opportunity of examining a collection recovered by Mr. J. H. Blake from ancient huacas explored by him, and now preserved in his cabinet at Boston. They include specimens of cloth, wrought in dyed woollen thread, and sewed in regular and ornamental designs. Each piece is woven of the exact size which was required for the purpose in view, and some of them furnish proofs of ingenious skill in the art of weaving. The threads consist of two or more strands of dyed llama-wool twisted together; and elaborate patterns are woven into a soft and delicate web. The accompanying figure, though grotesque, is a good specimen of a complicated feat achieved in dyed woollen threads on the ancient Peruvian loom. It was found in a grave at Atacama, along with many other relics described in a subsequent chapter. Mr. Blake remarks, in reference to the discoveries of this class which rewarded his researches:—“In forming an opinion of the degree of skill displayed in the arts of spinning and weaving, by these specimens, it should be borne in mind that the implements in use were of the simplest contrivance. The only ones which have been discovered are simple distaffs; and among the articles obtained from the Atacama graves were several formed of wood and stone, such as are still in use among the Indians of Peru at the present day. Weaving on the loom has not been introduced among them. The warp is secured by stakes driven into the ground, and the filling-in is inserted by the slow process of passing it by hand over and under each thread alternately.” It would be a grave error, however, to assume that we possess in such relics, recovered from the ordinary graves formed in the loose sand of the desert, the highest achievements of Peruvian skill. On the contrary, regarding them, as we must, as fair specimens of the common woollen tissues of the country, they confirm the probability that the costly hangings, and beautifully wrought robes of the Inca and his nobles, fully justified the admiration with which they are referred to by Spanish writers of the sixteenth century.
Marvellous specimens of ceramic art are also noted among the manufactures ascribed to the Peruvians before the conquest, surpassing anything found in the common cemeteries of the race; but the proofs which exist of the ingenuity expended by the ancient potter on utensils in daily use, render probable the accounts of such rare chef-d’œuvres executed by their cunningest workmen for the imperial service. So also we read of animals and plants wrought with wonderful delicacy, in gold and silver; and scattered with profuse magnificence about the apartments of the Peruvian nobles. Such specimens of goldsmiths’ work no longer survive; but still the huacas of the ancient race are ransacked for golden ornaments, which prove considerable metallurgic skill, and leave no room to doubt that gold and silver were moulded and graven into many ingenious forms. Science and art had indeed made wonderful advances among this remarkable people; though with them, as with the Chinese, they were more frequently expended in the gratification of a craving for display, than in realising triumphs of much practical value. Nevertheless, Peruvian civilisation had wrought out for itself many elements of progress adapted to its native soil. Its astronomical science admits, indeed, of no comparison with that of Mexico; and in lieu of the artistic picture-writing of the Mexicans, it employed the quipus, an artificial system of mnemonics not greatly superior to the Red Indian wampum, to which it bears considerable resemblance. In this it contrasts with the matured hieroglyphical inscriptions of Central America and Yucatan, which preserve evidences of progress in advance of the highest civilisation of the Aztecs and the Incas, and indeed of all but the most civilised nations of ancient or modern centuries. But this higher phase of intellectual development must be reserved for consideration in its relations to the psychology of the whole continent.
The remarkable system of national polity doubtless originated in part from the docile nature still manifested by the descendants of the Peruvian people; and, when viewed in this connection, it furnishes some key to the peculiar characteristics of their civilisation. Their government was a sacerdotal sovereignty, with an hereditary aristocracy, and a system of castes more absolute seemingly than that of the Egyptians or Hindus. Something of the partial and unprogressive development of the Chinese mingled in the ancient Peruvians along with numerous other traits of resemblance to that singular people. Unlike the Mexicans, we see in their whole polity, arts, and social life, institutions of indigenous growth. It would be difficult to limit the centuries during which such a people may have handed on from generation to generation the slowly brightening torch. Their own traditions, preserved with the help of quipus and national ballads, are valueless on this point. But their institutions reveal some remarkable evidences of a people preserving many traits of social infancy, alongside of such matured arts and habits as could only grow up together around the undisturbed graves of many generations. Offerings of fruits and flowers took the place of the bloody human sacrifices of Aztec worship; but the suttee rites, which disclose their traces everywhere in the sepulchral usages of primitive nations, were retained in full force. The simple solidity of megalithic art gave an equally primitive character to their architecture, notwithstanding its application to many practical purposes of life; and the precious metals, though existing in unequalled profusion, were retained to the last solely for their contribution to barbaric splendour. The habits of pastoral life, by means of which the foremost nations of the Old World appear to have emerged out of barbarism, were with them modified by the haunts of flocks peculiar to the strange region of mountain and plateau, where also they carried the next step in human progression, that of agriculture, to a degree of perfection probably never surpassed. They had advanced metallurgy through all its stages, up to that which preceded the use of iron; and with the help of their metal tools, displayed a remarkable skill in many mechanical arts. They did no more, because, under their peculiar local circumstances and the repressive influences of the mild despotism of Inca rule, they had achieved all that they required.
A gentle people found abundant occupation in tilling the soil, without being oppressed by a labour which was lightened by the frequently recurring festivals of a joyous, and, in some respects, elevating national faith. Nor is it difficult to conceive of such a people continuing to pursue the even tenor of their way, with scarcely perceptible progression, through all the subsequent centuries since their discovery to Europe: had not the hand of the conqueror ruthlessly overthrown the structure reared by many generations, and quenched the lamp of native civilisation. The conquerors of the sixteenth century have given expression to the astonishment with which they beheld everywhere evidences of order, contentment, and prosperity; and while the architectural magnificence of Montezuma’s capital has so utterly disappeared as to suggest the doubt if it ever existed: the traveller along the ancient routes of Peruvian industry still sees on every hand ruins, not only of temples, palaces, and strongholds, but of terraced declivities, military roads, causeways, aqueducts, and other public works, that astonish him by the solidity of their construction and the grandeur of their design. But between these two great divisions of the western hemisphere, in the curiously insulated region of Central America, traces of ancient civilisation abound, with evidences of a higher, if not longer enduring development than either. The closing annals both of Mexico and Peru have acquired a vivid interest from the incidents of Spanish conquest; and retain many romantic associations connected with the lustre of their conquerors. But the interest which attaches to Central America and Yucatan derives little value from history. There, under the luxuriant forests of that tropical region, may still be studied the monuments of a lettered people, and the sculptures and symbolic inscriptions of an extinct faith, amid ruins which appear to have been already abandoned to decay before Cortes explored the peninsula in his lust of conquest. Their basso-relievos preserve the physiognomy of a race essentially diverse from the Mexicans; and their sculptured hieroglyphics show a process of inscription very far in advance of the picture-writing of the Aztecs. The magnitude and solidity of the ruins of Peru still attest the practical aim of works wrought there on a grand scale, and for purposes of more obvious utility than those of the Central American peninsula; and the characteristics of some of the Peruvian crania suggest striking analogies with the peculiar physiognomy of the northern basso-relievos, such as are no longer recognisable when we turn to the Mexican race.
Nothing pertaining to the northern continent east of the Rocky Mountains presents any counterpart to Peruvian architecture, sculpture, or the ingenious modelling of the potter’s art; or suggests affinities in language or astronomical science, to Peru or Central America; unless it be the remarkable remains of the Mound-Builders. But with Mexico it is otherwise. In the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic the stock is to be sought, from which on many grounds it appears most reasonable to trace the predominant Mexican race of the era of the Conquest. They were inheritors, not originators of the civilisation of the plateau. But while the traditions of the Aztecs appear to point to a migration from the north, the Toltecs whom they displaced can be assigned on no tangible evidence to a similar origin. Amid many diversities recognisable among the nations of the New World, the forest and prairie tribes, now clustering chiefly in the North-west, are the representatives of one great subdivision, the source of which may be sought in that northern hive stretching westward towards Behring Strait and the Aleutian Islands, with possible indications of an Asiatic origin. But for the more intellectual nations whose ancient monuments lie to the south of the Rio Grande del Norte, the most probable source appears to be the southern plateaus of the Peruvian Cordilleras. In the copper regions of the north the abundant metal supplied all wants too readily to stimulate to further progress; but the southern region rises through every change of climate under the vertical rays of the equator; and its rocky steeps are veined with exhaustless treasures of metallic ores, in such a condition as to lead man on step by step from the infantile perception of the native metal as a ductile stone, to the matured intelligence of the metallurgist, mingling and fusing the contiguous ores into his most convenient and useful alloys. A branch of the same race, moving northward along the isthmus, may account for the abundant architectural remains of the central peninsula, consistently with its ethnographic traces; while beyond this, to the northward, we see in the conflicting elements of Mexican civilisation, the confluence of races from north and south, and the mingling of their diverse arts and customs under the favouring influences which the vale of Anahuac supplied.
| [92] | American Ethnological Society’s Transactions, vol. i. p. 162. |
| [93] | Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, b. iii. ch. ix. |
| [94] | Anahuac, p. 147. |
| [95] | Bullock’s Six Months in Mexico, p. 111. |