The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

CHAPTER I

THE CARAS

The irrigated valleys of Chile lie open to the ocean or are easily accessible over the low coast range. The sea-board of Peru is likewise defenceless, and though the Andean passes are high they are dry and practicable and offer a way of approach to the table-land behind. The want of rain from Valparaiso to Paita is explained by the Antarctic current whose waters cool the breezes so that the warmer land condenses no moisture. But at the northern boundary of Peru the coast bends abruptly to the east; the cold current follows its original north-east direction and lets the warm tropical waters wash the land. From the Gulf of Guayaquil to Panama the coast and mountainsides are covered with luxuriant vegetation and the ascent of the passes becomes well-nigh impracticable. Therefore the Andean plateau in Ecuador is accessible from the Pacific only on the south and the Colombian plateaux are virtually cut off from communication with the western ocean.

Tradition relates that about the seventh century of the Christian era a nation of Indians, bearing the name of Caras, invaded the sea-board of central Ecuador. They were warlike, aggressive, conquerors by instinct, and their civilisation was superior to that of the barbarous tribes upon whom they descended. They came by way of the sea, most probably from the south, bringing a complicated religion to which they were fanatically devoted, and a military and tribal organisation which gave them an overwhelming advantage. In all probability the Caras were akin to those highly civilised nations who lived in the valleys of the northern Peruvian coast. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the Caras were not long content with dominance along the coast, and succeeded in forcing their way up the slopes of the Cordillera through a zone uninhabitable on account of the perpetual rain, and only penetrable along defiles where the soaked clay of the steep mountainsides affords no footing and the tangle of vegetation leaves no path.

At six thousand feet above sea-level the roads became better, the vegetation ceased to be tropical, and when they emerged through the passes to the comparatively level plains about Quito, some eight thousand feet above the sea, they found themselves in a country where the cereals and fruits of the temperate zone flourish and no forests interrupt communication. Two lines of great mountains stretched north and south and between them lay a plateau less than forty miles in width, and though much of it was bleak and arid, at least half lay below the elevation where the successful cultivation of the cereals and the potato becomes possible. At regular intervals transverse ranges of mountains, called "nudos," or knots, cut the plateau into separate divisions, each measurably protected from attack by its neighbours. Andean Ecuador has been aptly compared to a great ladder four hundred miles long, with the "nudos" forming its gigantic rungs. Beginning at the northern boundary of modern Ecuador, Quito lies in the second of the eight sub-plateaux, which is one of the largest and most fertile. Into it descended the Caras and began to conquer and absorb the aborigines. These inter-Andean valleys were inhabited by numerous tribes speaking distinct languages, who had developed considerable skill in agriculture. The compact and efficient military organisation of the Caras gave them a great advantage over more loosely organised peoples, but for three hundred years they were occupied in extending their power over the valley of Quito and thence over Latacunga and Ibarra, which adjoin it north and south.

From the year 1300 the Cara traditions gather more clearness and precision. By a law handed down from immemorial times each Shiri was succeeded by his son, or if he had no son by the son of a sister, daughters and other female descendants being absolutely excluded. The eleventh Shiri, whose reign corresponded with the last years of the thirteenth century, had no male heir, and he asked the general council of the nation for permission to name as successor the husband he might choose for his daughter. Each one of the different chiefs, hoping to be selected, voted for the proposition, but the Shiri diplomatically went outside of his own dominions and proposed to the monarch who ruled in Riobamba that his eldest son, Duchisela, marry the Princess Toa. The proposition was accepted and the Quito kingdom doubled its territory and power.

Duchisela reigned seventy years, and upon his death was succeeded by his son Autachi, the thirteenth Shiri. This monarch raised the Cara power to its highest pitch, extending his dominions south over the plateaux of Alausi, Cañar, Cuenca, Jubones, Zaruma, and Loja, and thence far beyond the present Ecuadorian boundary over the Peruvian provinces of Huanacabamba, Piura, and Paita. This vast increase of territory was due more to treaties of confederation and alliance than to conquest. None of the new provinces were ever thoroughly incorporated into the Cara confederacy, and their allegiance to the Shiri in far-away Quito sat lightly upon them. By the end of the fourteenth century the Cara influence was dominant along the Andean plateau from the first degree of north latitude to the sixth south, and extended to the arid coast plain of northern Peru. The humid and forested coast region north of Guayaquil remained in the hands of barbarous tribes, nor were the Caras ever able to extend their power down the wooded eastern slopes of the Andes into the Amazon plain.

Cara expansion was suddenly checked by the Incas. In the latter part of the fourteenth century these fierce and indomitable Islamites of the western continent under the lead of Tupac Yupanqui conquered the coast nations from Lima to Paita, and the ruder tribes who lived in the mountains from Cerro de Pasco north to the Ecuadorian border. Tupac did not respect the southern confederates of the Caras, and the Shiri appears to have made little resistance when his allies were rapidly reduced. The Inca system was the far better adapted for conquest. The emperor could equip and lead to invasion armies numbering tens of thousands, well disciplined, blindly obeying their generals, marching over carefully prepared roads, and supplied by an admirable commissariat. The Caras had contented themselves with treaties of alliance; they were only the chief tribe in a confederacy, and warlike as were the members they could not combine to offer any effective resistance to the first onslaught of the great military empire.

A fairly homogeneous civilisation had grown up in the Ecuadorian Cordillera during the four hundred years of Cara influence. Bringing with them from their unknown original home a capacity for military and political organisation far superior to that of most American aborigines, the Caras were like a ferment introduced into the heterogeneous and inert tribes of the plateau, which gradually transformed the latter into a vigorous people so well fitted to their surroundings that they survived the Inca conquest, even turning the tables and becoming the dominant element in the empire, and then outlived the decimating tyranny of the Spaniards, so that ninety-five per cent. of the present population is composed of their descendants. That this civilisation was in the main self-developed can hardly be doubted. There is no evidence of any intimate contact with the Incas; with the peoples of Yucatan and Mexico the Caras had no connection, and the conjectures as to communication with the peoples of eastern Asia have no historical or archæological basis. Their civilising and consolidating mission was aided by exceptionally favourable surroundings. The climate was healthy, agreeable, and conducive to bodily and intellectual vigour; the soil reasonably fertile and well adapted to the production of eminently nourishing food crops, while requiring hard labour in its cultivation. The potato, the quinoa grain, and maize played no insignificant rôle in the history of the Caras; they might never have risen above the level of Caribs if they had lived in a region where savoury and poorly nourishing esculents grow wild. Not less important was the physical configuration of Ecuador. Dry and open valleys, some of them large enough to sustain two hundred thousand people, and easily penetrable in every part, while surrounded by high mountains and bleak "paramos," shut off from the outer world by the forest-covered declivities of the Cordilleras, were admirably adapted to favour the growth of compact little states, whose inhabitants would retain their individual initiative and local pride even after incorporation in a larger political system.

Hualcopo, the fourteenth Shiri, ascended the throne of Quito in 1430. Tupac Yupanqui had completed the reduction of the coast tribes of northern Peru and the mountain tribes as far north as the present Ecuador border had ceased to resist him. From the coast valleys of Piura and Paita, he marched up the easy pass which leads over the Cordillera into the fertile plateaux of southern Ecuador, and after a few victories all the tribes as far north as the nudo of Azuay submitted, and transferred their allegiance from Quito to Cuzco. Loja, Zaruma, Jubones, the great valley of Cuenca, and Cañar were taken away, and Hualcopo was deprived of all but his hereditary dominions—the old kingdoms of Riobamba and Quito. The Shiri possessed no army capable of undertaking an offensive campaign against the Incas, but, although terrified at Tupac's rapid advance, the ancient possessions of the Shiri remained faithful. Tupac spent two years in the province of Cañar, erecting fortifications and recruiting his army by new arrivals from the south and enlistment among the recently conquered tribes. Meanwhile Hualcopo was fortifying himself in the valley of Alausi, which lies north of Azuay, and in the passes that lead over the Tiocajas nudo into Riobamba. About the year 1455 the Inca army advanced in force. Defeated in several minor actions, the Shiri abandoned Alausi and concentrated his forces in the passes of Tiocajas. After three months of skirmishes and sieges in which the forts fell one by one, the Caras were compelled to accept a pitched battle. The conflict was well sustained, but with the death of the principal Cara general, victory declared for the Incas and the Caras fled from the field leaving sixteen thousand dead.