History Of The Conquest Of Peru

W >> William Hickling Prescott >> History Of The Conquest Of Peru

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51

The like course was pursued with reference to the other requisitions of
the government. All the mines in the kingdom belonged to the Inca.
They were wrought exclusively for his benefit, by persons familiar with
this service, and selected from the districts where the mines were
situated.23 Every Peruvian of the lower class was a husbandman, and,
with the exception of those already specified, was expected to provide
for his own support by the cultivation of his land. A small portion of the
community, however, was instructed in mechanical arts; some of them of
the more elegant kind, subservient to the purposes of luxury and
ornament. The demand for these was chiefly limited to the sovereign
and his Court; but the labor of a larger number of hands was exacted for
the execution of the great public works which covered the land. The
nature and amount of the services required were all determined at Cuzco
by commissioners well instructed in the resources of the country, and in
the character of the inhabitants of different provinces.24

This information was obtained by an admirable regulation, which has
scarcely a counterpart in the annals of a semi-civilized people. A
register was kept of all the births and deaths throughout the country, and
exact returns of the actual population were made to government every
year, by means of the quipus, a curious invention, which will be
explained hereafter.25 At certain intervals, also, a general survey of the
country was made, exhibiting a complete view of the character of the
soil, its fertility, the nature of its products, both agricultural and mineral,-
-in short, of all that constituted the physical resources of the empire.26
Furnished with these statistical details, it was easy for the government,
after determining the amount of requisitions, to distribute the work
among the respective provinces best qualified to execute it. The task of
apportioning the labor was assigned to the local authorities, and great
care was taken that it should be done in such a manner, that, while the
most competent hands were selected, it should not fall disproportionately
heavy on any.27

The different provinces of the country furnished persons peculiarly
suited to different employments, which, as we shall see hereafter, usually
descended from father to son. Thus, one district supplied those most
skilled in working the mines, another the most curious workers in metals,
or in wood, and so on.28 The artisan was provided by government with
the materials; and no one was required to give more than a stipulated
portion of his time to the public service. He was then succeeded by
another for the like term; and it should be observed, that all who were
engaged in the employment of the government--and the remark applies
equally to agricultural labor--were maintained, for the time, at the public
expense.29 By this constant rotation of labor, it was intended that no
one should be overburdened, and that each man should have time to
provide for the demands of his own household. It was impossible--in the
judgment of a high Spanish authority--to improve on the system of
distribution, so carefully was it accommodated to the condition and
comfort of the artisan.30 The security of the working classes seems to
have been ever kept in view in the regulations of the government; and
these were so discreetly arranged, that the most wearing and
unwholesome labors, as those of the mines, occasioned no detriment to
the health of the laborer; a striking contrast to his subsequent condition
under the Spanish rule.31

A part of the agricultural produce and manufactures was transported to
Cuzco, to minister to the immediate demands of the Inca and his Court.
But far the greater part was stored in magazines scattered over the
different provinces. These spacious buildings, constructed of stone,
were divided between the Sun and the Inca, though the greater share
seems to have been appropriated by the monarch. By a wise regulation,
any deficiency in the contributions of the Inca might be supplied from
the granaries of the Sun.32 But such a necessity could rarely have
happened; and the providence of the government usually left a large
surplus in the royal depositories, which was removed to a third class of
magazines, whose design was to supply the people in seasons of scarcity,
and, occasionally, to furnish relief to individuals, whom sickness or
misfortune had reduced to poverty; thus, in a manner, justifying the
assertion of a Castilian document, that a large portion of the revenues of
the Inca found its way back again, through one channel or another, into
the hands of the people.33 These magazines were found by the
Spaniards, on their arrival, stored with all the various products and
manufactures of the country,--with maize, coca, quinua, woolen and
cotton stuffs of the finest quality, with vases and utensils of gold, silver,
and copper, in short, with every article of luxury or use within the
compass of Peruvian skill.34 The magazines of grain, in particular,
would frequently have sufficed for the consumption of the adjoining
district for several years.35 An inventory of the various products of the
country, and the quarters whence they were obtained, was every year
taken by the royal officers, and recorded by the quipucamayus on their
registers, with surprising regularity and precision. These registers were
transmitted to the capital, and submitted to the Inca, who could thus at a
glance, as it were, embrace the whole results of the national industry, and
see how far they corresponded with the requisitions of government.36

Such are some of the most remarkable features of the Peruvian
institutions relating to property, as delineated by writers who, however
contradictory in the details, have a general conformity of outline. These
institutions are certainly so remarkable, that it is hardly credible they
should ever have been enforced throughout a great empire, and for a long
period of years. Yet we have the most unequivocal testimony to the fact
from the Spaniards, who landed in Peru in time to witness their
operation; some of whom, men of high judicial station and character,
were commissioned by the government to make investigations into the
state of the country under its ancient rulers.

The impositions on the Peruvian people seem to have been sufficiently
heavy. On them rested the whole burden of maintaining, not only their
own order, but every other order in the state. The members of the royal
house, the great nobles, even the public functionaries, and the numerous
body of the priesthood, were all exempt from taxation.37 The whole
duty of defraying the expenses of the government belonged to the
people. Yet this was not materially different from the condition of things
formerly existing in most parts of Europe, where the various privileged
classes claimed exemption--not always with success, indeed--from
bearing part of the public burdens. The great hardship in the case of the
Peruvian was, that he could not better his condition. His labors were for
others, rather than for himself. However industrious, he could not add a
rood to his own possessions, nor advance himself one hair's breadth in
the social scale. The great and universal motive to honest industry, that
of bettering one's lot, was lost upon him. The great law of human
progress was not for him. As he was born, so he was to die. Even his
time he could not properly call his own. Without money, with little
property of any kind, he paid his taxes in labor.38 No wonder that the
government should have dealt with sloth as a crime. It was a crime
against the state, and to be wasteful of time was, in a manner, to rob the
exchequer. The Peruvian, laboring all his life for others, might be
compared to the convict in a treadmill, going the same dull round of
incessant toil, with the consciousness, that, however profitable the results
to the state, they were nothing to him.

But this is the dark side of the picture. If no man could become rich in
Peru, no man could become poor. No spendthrift could waste his
substance in riotous luxury. No adventurous schemer could impoverish
his family by the spirit of speculation. The law was constantly directed
to enforce a steady industry and a sober management of his affairs. No
mendicant was tolerated in Peru. When a man was reduced by poverty
or misfortune, (it could hardly be by fault,) the arm of the law was
stretched out to minister relief; not the stinted relief of private charity,
nor that which is doled out, drop by drop, as it were, from the frozen
reservoirs of "the parish," but in generous measure, bringing no
humiliation to the object of it, and placing him on a level with the rest of
his countrymen.39

No man could be rich, no man could be poor, in Peru; but all might
enjoy, and did enjoy, a competence. Ambition, avarice, the love of
change, the morbid spirit of discontent, those passions which most
agitate the minds of men, found no place in the bosom of the Peruvian.
The very condition of his being seemed to be at war with change. He
moved on in the same unbroken circle in which his fathers had moved
before him, and in which his children were to follow. It was the object
of the Incas to infuse into their subjects a spirit of passive obedience and
tranquillity,--a perfect acquiescence in the established order of things. In
this they fully succeeded. The Spaniards who first visited the country are
emphatic in their testimony, that no government could have been better
suited to the genius of the people; and no people could have appeared
more contented with their lot, or more devoted to their government.40

Those who may distrust the accounts of Peruvian industry will find their
doubts removed on a visit to the country. The traveller still meets,
especially in the central regions of the table-land, with memorials of the
past, remains of temples, palaces, fortresses, terraced mountains, great
military roads, aqueducts, and other public works, which, whatever
degree of science they may display in their execution, astonish him by
their number, the massive character of the materials, and the grandeur of
the design. Among them, perhaps the most remarkable are the great
roads, the broken remains of which are still in sufficient preservation to
attest their former magnificence. There were many of these roads,
traversing different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were
the two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and, again diverging from
the capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili.

One of these roads passed over the grand plateau, and the other along the
lowlands on the borders of the ocean. The former was much the more
difficult achievement, from the character of the country. It was
conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut for
leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges
that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stairways
hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with
solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and
mountainous region, and which might appall the most courageous
engineer of modern times, were encountered and successfully overcome.
The length of the road, of which scattered fragments only remain, is
variously estimated, from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and
stone pillars, in the manner of European milestones, were erected at
stated intervals of somewhat more than a league, all along the route. Its
breadth scarcely exceeded twenty feet.41 It was built of heavy flags of
freestone, and in some parts, at least, covered with a bituminous cement,
which time has made harder than the stone itself. In some places, where
the ravines had been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents,
wearing on it for ages, have gradually eaten a way through the base, and
left the superincumbent mass--such is the cohesion of the materials--still
spanning the valley like an arch ! 42

Over some of the boldest streams it was necessary to construct
suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibres of the
maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree
of tenacity and strength. These osiers were woven into cables of the
thickness of a man's body. The huge ropes, then stretched across the
water, were conducted through rings or holes cut in immense buttresses
of stone raised on the opposite banks of the river, and there secured to
heavy pieces of timber. Several of these enormous cables, bound
together, formed a bridge, which, covered with planks, well secured and
defended by a railing of the same osier materials on the sides, afforded a
safe passage for the traveller. The length of this aerial bridge, sometimes
exceeding two hundred feet, caused it, confined, as it was, only at the
extremities, to dip with an alarming inclination towards the centre, while
the motion given to it by the passenger occasioned an oscillation still
more frightful, as his eye wandered over the dark abyss of waters that
foamed and tumbled many a fathom beneath. Yet these light and fragile
fabrics were crossed without fear by the Peruvians, and are still retained
by the Spaniards over those streams which, from the depth or
impetuosity of the current, would seem impracticable for the usual
modes of conveyance. The wider and more tranquil waters were crossed
on balsas--a kind of raft still much used by the natives--to which sails
were attached, furnishing the only instance of this higher kind of
navigation among the American Indians.43

The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country between
the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different manner, as
demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low,
and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a high embankment
of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and
trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the
sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and refreshing him by their
shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. In the strips of
sandy waste, which occasionally intervened, where the light and volatile
soil was incapable of sustaining a road, huge piles, many of them to be
seen at this day, were driven into the ground to indicate the route to the
traveller.44

All along these highways, caravansaries, or tambos, as they were called,
were erected, at the distance of ten or twelve miles from each other, for
the accommodation, more particularly, of the Inca and his suite, and
those who journeyed on the public business. There were few other
travellers in Peru. Some of these buildings were on an extensive scale,
consisting of a fortress, barracks, and other military works, surrounded
by a parapet of stone, and covering a large tract of ground. These were
evidently destined for the accommodation of the imperial armies, when
on their march across the country. The care of the great roads was
committed to the districts through which they passed, and a large number
of hands was constantly employed under the Incas to keep them in repair.
This was the more easily done in a country where the mode of travelling
was altogether on foot; though the roads are said to have been so nicely
constructed, that a carriage might have rolled over them as securely as on
any of the great roads of Europe.45 Still, in a region where the elements
of fire and water are both actively at work in the business of destruction,
they must, without constant supervision, have gradually gone to decay.
Such has been their fate under the Spanish conquerors, who took no care
to enforce the admirable system for their preservation adopted by the
Incas. Yet the broken portions that still survive, here and there, like the
fragments of the great Roman roads scattered over Europe, bear
evidence to their primitive grandeur, and have drawn forth the eulogium
from a discriminating traveller, usually not too profuse in his panegyric,
that "the roads of the Incas were among the most useful and stupendous
works ever executed by man." 46

The system of communication through their dominions was still further
improved by the Peruvian sovereigns, by the introduction of posts, in the
same manner as was done by the Aztecs. The Peruvian posts, however,
established on all the great routes that conducted to the capital, were on a
much more extended plan than those in Mexico. All along these routes,
small buildings were erected, at the distance of less than five miles
asunder,47 in each of which a number of runners, or chasquis, as they
were called, were stationed to carry forward the despatches of
government.48 These despatches were either verbal, or conveyed by
means of quipus, and sometimes accompanied by a thread of the crimson
fringe worn round the temples of the Inca, which was regarded with the
same implicit deference as the signet ring of an Oriental despot.49

The chasquis were dressed in a peculiar livery, intimating their
profession. They were all trained to the employment, and selected for
their speed and fidelity. As the distance each courier had to perform was
small, and as he had ample time to refresh himself at the stations, they
tart over the ground with great swiftness, and messages were carried
through the whole extent of the long routes, at the rate of a hundred and
fifty miles a day. The office of the chasquis was not limited to carrying
despatches. They frequently brought various articles for the use of the
Court; and in this way, fish from the distant ocean, fruits, game, and
different commodities from the hot regions on the coast, were taken to
the capital in good condition, and served fresh at the royal table.50 It is
remarkable that this important institution should have been known to
both the Mexicans and the Peruvians without any correspondence with
one another; and that it should have been found among two barbarian
nations of the New World, long before it was introduced among the
civilized nations of Europe.51

By these wise contrivances of the Incas, the most distant parts of the
long-extended empire of Peru were brought into intimate relations with
each other. And while the capitals of Christendom, but a few hundred
miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had rolled between them,
the great capitals Cuzco and Quito were placed by the high roads of the
Incas in immediate correspondence. Intelligence from the numerous
provinces was transmitted on the wings of the wind to the Peruvian
metropolis, the great focus to which all the lines of communication
converged. Not an insurrectionary movement could occur, not an
invasion, on the remotest frontier, before the tidings were conveyed to
the capital, and the imperial armies were on their march across the
magnificent roads of the country to suppress it. So admirable was the
machinery contrived by the American despots for maintaining
tranquillity throughout their dominions! It may remind us of the similar
institutions of ancient Rome, when, under the Caesars, she was mistress
of half the world.

A principal design of the great roads was to serve the purposes of
military communication. It formed an important item of their military
policy, which is quite as well worth studying as their municipal.

Notwithstanding the pacific professions of the Incas, and the pacific
tendency, indeed, of their domestic institutions, they were constantly at
war. It was by war that their paltry territory had been gradually enlarged
to a powerful empire. When this was achieved, the capital, safe in its
central position, was no longer shaken by these military movements, and
the country enjoyed, in a great degree, the blessings of tranquillity and
order. But, however tranquil at heart, there is not a reign upon record in
which the nation was not engaged in war against the barbarous nations
on the frontier. Religion furnished a plausible pretext for incessant
aggression, and disguised the lust of conquest in the Incas, probably,
from their own eyes, as well as from those of their subjects. Like the
followers of Mahomet, bearing the sword in one hand and the Koran in
the other, the Incas of Peru offered no alternative but the worship of the
Sun or war.

It is true, their fanaticism--or their policy--showed itself in a milder form
than was found in the descendants of the Prophet. Like the great
luminary which they adored, they operated by gentleness more potent
than violence.52 They sought to soften the hearts of the rude tribes
around them, and melt them by acts of condescension and kindness. Far
from provoking hostilities, they allowed time for the salutary example of
their own institutions to work its effect, trusting that their less civilized
neighbors would submit to their sceptre, from a conviction of the
blessings it would secure to them. When this course failed, they
employed other measures, but still of a pacific character; and endeavored
by negotiation, by conciliatory treatment, and by presents to the leading
men, to win them over to their dominion. In short, they practised all the
arts familiar to the most subtle politician of a civilized land to secure the
acquisition of empire. When all these expedients failed, they prepared
for war.

Their levies were drawn from all the different provinces; though from
some, where the character of the people was particularly hardy, more
than from others.53 It seems probable that every Peruvian, who had
reached a certain age, might be called to bear arms. But the rotation of
military service, and the regular drills, which took place twice or thrice
in a month, of the inhabitants of every village, raised the soldiers
generally above the rank of a raw militia. The Peruvian army, at first
inconsiderable, came, with the increase of population, in the latter days
of the empire, to be very large, so that their monarchs could bring into
the field, as contemporaries assure us, a force amounting to two hundred
thousand men. They showed the same skill and respect for order in their
military organization, as in other things. The troops were divided into
bodies corresponding with our battalions and companies, led by officers,
that rose, in regular gradation, from the lowest subaltern to the Inca
noble, who was intrusted with the general command.54

Their arms consisted of the usual weapons employed by nations, whether
civilized or uncivilized, before the invention of powder,--bows and
arrows, lances, darts, a short kind of sword, a battle-axe or partisan, and
slings, with which they were very expert. Their spears and arrows were
tipped with copper, or, more commonly, with bone, and the weapons of
the Inca lords were frequently mounted with gold or silver. Their heads
were protected by casques made either of wood or of the skins of wild
animals, and sometimes richly decorated with metal and with precious
stones, surmounted by the brilliant plumage of the tropical birds. These,
of course, were the ornaments only of the higher orders. The great mass
of the soldiery were dressed in the peculiar costume of their provinces,
and their heads were wreathed with a sort of turban or roll of different-
colored cloths, that produced a gay and animating effect. Their
defensive armor consisted of a shield or buckler, and a close tunic of
quilted cotton, in the same manner as with the Mexicans. Each company
had its particular banner, and the imperial standard, high above all,
displayed the glittering device and the rainbow,--the armorial ensign of
the Incas, intimating their claims as children of the skies.55

By means of the thorough system of communication established in the
country, a short time sufficed to draw the levies together from the most
distant quarters. The army was put under the direction of some
experienced chief, of the blood royal, or, more frequently, headed by the
Inca in person. The march was rapidly performed, and with little fatigue
to the soldier; for, all along the great routes, quarters were provided for
him, at regular distances, where he could find ample accommodations.
The country is still covered with the remains of military works,
constructed of porphyry or granite, which tradition assures us were
designed to lodge the Inca and his army.56

At regular intervals, also, magazines were established, filled with grain,
weapons, and the different munitions of war, with which the army was
supplied on its march. It was the especial care of the government to see
that these magazines, which were furnished from the stores of the Incas,
were always well filled. When the Spaniards invaded the country, they
supported their own armies for a long time on the provisions found in
them.57 The Peruvian soldier was forbidden to commit any trespass on
the property of the inhabitants whose territory lay in the line of march.
Any violation of this order was punished with death.58 The soldier was
clothed and fed by the industry of the people, and the Incas rightly re-
solved that he should not repay this by violence. Far from being a tax on
the labors of the husbandman, or even a burden on his hospitality, the
imperial armies traversed the country, from one extremity to the other,
with as little inconvenience to the inhabitants, as would be created by a
procession of peaceful burghers, or a muster of holiday soldiers for a
review.