The Indians, and many of the creoles, believe, when they have too much or too little rain for their crops, and take her through the streets praying, God will listen, and send water, as required, for their fields. When they are visited by disease, as at present, and the influenza is fatal to their children, the Belen lady is implored.
The Convent of San Domingo is built over the ruins of the Temple of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, which were worshipped together by the old Peruvians—a worship objected to in moral laws. We are told that the sun of the temple was made of a mass of silver and gold; so were the moon and the stars. When the Spaniards captured Cuzco the treasure of this temple was squandered at the gambling tables.
Before the days of the Incas, the Indians of these regions are thought to have lived in holes in the ground, in crevices, or under overhanging masses of rocks, and in caves, like wild bears, biscachas, or eagles. They ate grass and roots of the earth like beasts; roamed among each other as animals of the desert. Like the Chunchos, they reverenced brave animals, large birds, and serpents. There were many tribes, with different languages, and different worships of birds or beasts. In war they flayed their prisoners, ate their flesh, drank their blood, made drum-heads of their skins, and sticks of their bones. They went about in flocks, robbing each other like wolves, the weaker giving way to the strong. It has been said they fattened the children of their enemy like lambs or calves, and ate them.
A man and a woman of some different race suddenly appeared among them; they knew not from whence they came; the opinion was that they were from out of the great Lake Titicaca. The man and his sister told the Indians they had been sent by their father, the sun, to draw them from their savage life, and to instruct them how they might live, like men, and not like beasts; to show them how to cultivate the land and raise food; to teach them to make clothing and to wear it. The Indians were pleased, and ran off telling their neighbors, who gathered together about the man, while his sister and wife taught the women how to spin the wool of animals and to make clothing.
The language taught them was called Quichua; they were also instructed to worship the sun, moon, and stars; to build towns on the western end of the valley; to rise at the break of day, that they might behold their Deity as he appeared in the east. They called the man Manco Capac and Inca; they loved and worshipped him as a descendant of the sun. The woman they called Coya Mama.
Manco Capac reigned many years, during which time he and his wife taught the Indians from the Apurimac river on the west to the Porcotambo river on the east; south from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca, and north to where the Apurimac empties into the Santa Ana.
The moon was worshipped as the sister and wife of the sun, and believed to be the mother of Manco Capac; the evening star, Venus, was considered the attendant of the sun. They respected the cluster of "seven stars," because they were called maids to the mother moon.
They had certain forms of worship and prayers which were made through lightning, thunder, and the rainbow.
Manco Capac was kind and gentle in disposition, and the Indians loved and obeyed him. He laid the foundation of great changes in the manners of the aborigines, founded a church and a nation.
I was permitted to make sketches of some curious things, the works of the ancient Peruvians, from collections preserved in private families, who value their little museums very highly; they seldom give away a specimen, but are anxious to receive anything in addition.