History Of The Conquest Of Peru

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The characteristic features of their religious systems had as little
resemblance to each other. The whole Aztec pantheon partook more or
less of the sanguinary spirit of the terrible war-god who presided over it,
and their frivolous ceremonial almost always terminated with human
sacrifice and cannibal orgies. But the rites of the Peruvians were of a
more innocent cast, as they tended to a more spiritual worship. For the
worship of the Creator is most nearly approached by that of the heavenly
bodies, which, as they revolve in their bright orbits, seem to be the most
glorious symbols of his beneficence and power.

In the minuter mechanical arts, both showed considerable skill; but in the
construction of important public works, of roads, aqueducts, canals, and
in agriculture in all its details, the Peruvians were much superior.
Strange that they should have fallen so far below their rivals in their
efforts after a higher intellectual culture, in astronomical science, more
especially, and in the art of communicating thought by visible symbols.
When we consider the greater refinement of the Incas, their inferiority to
the Aztecs in these particulars can be explained only by the fact, that the
latter in all probability were indebted for their science to the race who
preceded them in the land,--that shadowy race whose origin and whose
end are alike veiled from the eye of the inquirer, but who possibly may
have sought a refuge from their ferocious invaders in those regions of
Central America the architectural remains of which now supply us with
the most pleasing monuments of Indian civilization. It is with this more
polished race, to whom the Peruvians seem to have borne some
resemblance in their mental and moral organization, that they should be
compared. Had the empire of the Incas been permitted to extend itself
with the rapid strides with which it was advancing at the period of the
Spanish conquest, the two races might have come into conflict, or,
perhaps, into alliance with one another.

The Mexicans and Peruvians, so different in the character of their
peculiar civilization, were, it seems probable, ignorant of each other's
existence; and it may appear singular, that, during the simultaneous
continuance of their empires, some of the seeds of science and of art,
which pass so imperceptibly from one people to another, should not have
found their way across the interval which separated the two nations.
They furnish an interesting example of the opposite directions which the
human mind may take in its struggle to emerge from darkness into the
light of civilization,

A closer resemblance--as I have more than once taken occasion to
notice--may be found between the Peruvian institutions and some of the
despotic governments of Eastern Asia; those governments where
despotism appears in its more mitigated form, and the whole people,
under the patriarchal sway of its sovereign, seem to be gathered together
like the members of one vast family. Such were the Chinese, for
example, whom the Peruvians resembled in their implicit obedience to
authority, their mild yet somewhat stubborn temper, their solicitude for
forms, their reverence for ancient usage, their skill in the minuter
manufactures, their imitative rather than inventive cast of mind, and their
invincible patience, which serves instead of a more adventurous spirit for
the execution of difficult undertakings.34

A still closer analogy may be found with the natives of Hindostan in their
division into castes, their worship of the heavenly bodies and the
elements of nature, and their acquaintance with the scientific principles
of husbandry. To the ancient Egyptians, also, they bore considerable
resemblance in the same particulars, as well as in those ideas of a future
existence which led them to attach so much importance to the permanent
preservation of the body.

But we shall look in vain in the history of the East for a parallel to the
absolute control exercised by the Incas over their subjects. In the East,
this was rounded on physical power,--on the external resources of the
government. The authority of the Inca might be compared with that of
the Pope in the day of his might, when Christendom trembled at the
thunders of the Vatican, and the successor of St. Peter set his foot on the
necks of princes. But the authority of the Pope was founded on opinion.
His temporal power was nothing. The empire of the Incas rested on
both. It was a theocracy more potent in its operation than that of the
Jews; for, though the sanction of the law might be as great among the
latter, the law was expounded by a human lawgiver, the servant and
representative of Divinity. But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the
law. He was not merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope,
its vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself. The violation of his ordinance
was sacrilege. Never was there a scheme of government enforced by
such terrible sanctions, or which bore so oppressively on the subjects of
it. For it reached not only to the visible acts, but to the private conduct,
the words, the very thoughts, of its vassals.

It added not a little to the efficacy of the government, that, below the
sovereign, there was an order of hereditary nobles of the same divine
original with himself, who, placed far below himself, were still
immeasurably above the rest of the community, not merely by descent,
but, as it would seem, by their intellectual nature. These were the
exclusive depositaries of power, and, as their long hereditary training
made them familiar with their vocation, and secured them implicit
deference from the multitude, they became the prompt and well-practised
agents for carrying out the executive measures of the administration. All
that occurred throughout the wide extent of his empire---such was the
perfect system of communication--passed in review, as it were, before
the eyes of the monarch, and a thousand hands, armed with irresistible
authority, stood ready in every quarter to do his bidding. Was it not, as
we have said, the most oppressive, though the mildest, of despotisms?

It was the mildest, from the very circumstance, that the transcendent rank
of the sovereign, and the humble, nay, superstitious, devotion to his will
make it superfluous to assert this will be acts of violence or rigor. The
great mass of the people may have appeared to his eyes as but little
removed above the condition of the brute, formed to minister to his
pleasures. But, from their very helplessness, he regarded them with
feelings of commiseration, like those which a kind master might feel for
the poor animals committed to his charge, or--to do justice to the
beneficent character attributed to many of the Incas--that a parent might
feel for his young and impotent offspring. The laws were carefully
directed to their preservation and personal comfort. The people were not
allowed to be employed on works pernicious to their health, nor to pine--
a sad contrast to their subsequent destiny--under the imposition of tasks
too heavy for their powers. They were never made the victims of public
or private extortion; and a benevolent forecast watched carefully over
their necessities, and provided for their relief in seasons of infirmity, and
for their sustenance in health. The government of the Incas, however
arbitrary in form, was in its spirit truly patriarchal.

Yet in this there was nothing cheering to the dignity of human nature.
What the people had was conceded as a boon, not as a right. When a
nation was brought under the sceptre of the Incas, it resigned every
personal right, even the rights dearest to humanity. Under this
extraordinary polity, a people advanced in many of the social
refinements, well skilled in manufactures and agriculture, were
unacquainted, as we have seen, with money. They had nothing that
deserved to be called property. They could follow no craft, could
engage in no labor, no amusement, but such as was specially provided by
law. They could not change their residence or their dress without a
license from the government. They could not even exercise the freedom
which is conceded to the most abject in other countries, that of selecting
their own wives. The imperative spirit of despotism would not allow
them to be happy or miserable in any way but that established by law.
The power of free agency--the inestimable and inborn right of every
human being--was annihilated in Peru.

The astonishing mechanism of the Peruvian polity could have resulted
only from the combined authority of opinion and positive power in the
ruler to an extent unprecedented in the history of man. Yet that it should
have so successfully gone into operation, and so long endured, in
opposition to the taste, the prejudices, and the very principles of our
nature, is a strong proof of a generally wise and temperate administration
of the government.

The policy habitually pursued by the Incas for the prevention of evils
that might have disturbed the order of things is well exemplified in their
provisions against poverty and idleness. In these they rightly discerned
the two great causes of disaffection in a populous community. The
industry of the people was secured not only by their compulsory
occupations at home, but by their employment on those great public
works which covered every part of the country, and which still bear
testimony in their decay to their primitive grandeur. Yet it may well
astonish us to find, that the natural difficulty of these undertakings,
sufficiently great in itself, considering the imperfection of their tools and
machinery, was inconceivably enhanced by the politic contrivance of
government. The royal edifices of Quito, we are assured by the Spanish
conquerors, were constructed of huge masses of stone, many of which
were carried all the way along the mountain roads from Cuzco, a
distance of several hundred leagues.35 The great square of the capital
was filled to a considerable depth with mould brought with incredible
labor up the steep slopes of the Cordilleras from the distant shores of the
Pacific Ocean.36 Labor was regarded not only as a means, but as an
end, by the Peruvian law.

With their manifold provisions against poverty the reader has already
been made acquainted. They were so perfect, that, in their wide extent of
territory,--much of it smitten with the curse of barrenness,--no man,
however humble, suffered from the want of food and clothing. Famine,
so common a scourge in every other American nation, so common at that
period in every country of civilized Europe, was an evil unknown in the
dominions of the Incas.

The most enlightened of the Spaniards who first visited Peru, struck with
the general appearance of plenty and prosperity, and with the astonishing
order with which every thing throughout the country was regulated, are
loud in their expressions of admiration. No better government, in their
opinion, could have been devised for the people. Contented with their
condition, and free from vice, to borrow the language of an eminent
authority of that early day, the mild and docile character of the Peruvians
would have well fitted them to receive the teachings of Christianity, had
the love of conversion, instead of gold, animated the breasts of the
Conquerors.37 And a philosopher of a later time, warmed by the
contemplation of the picture--which his own fancy had colored---of
public prosperity and private happiness under the rule of the Incas,
pronounces "the moral man in Peru far superior to the European." 38

Yet such results are scarcely reconcilable with the theory of the
government I have attempted to analyze. Where there is no free agency,
there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be
little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously prescribed by law,
the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct. if that
government is the best, which is felt the least, which encroaches on the
natural liberty of the subject only so far as is essential to civil
subordination, then of all governments devised by man the Peruvian has
the least real. claim to our admiration.

It is not easy to comprehend the genius and the full import of institutions
so opposite to those of our own free republic, where every man, however
humble his condition, may aspire to the highest honors of the state,--may
select his own career, and carve out his fortune in his own way; where
the light of knowledge, instead of being concentrated on a chosen few, is
shed abroad like the light of day, and suffered to fall equally on the poor
and the rich; where the collision of man with man wakens a generous
emulation that calls out latent talent and tasks the energies to the utmost;
where consciousness of independence gives a feeling of self-reliance
unknown to the timid subjects of a despotism; where, in short, the
government is made for man,--not as in Peru, where man seemed to be
made only for the government. The New World is the theatre in which
these two political systems, so opposite in their character, have been
carried into operation. The empire of the Incas has passed away and left
no trace. The other great experiment is still going on,--the experiment
which is to solve the problem, so long contested in the Old World, of the
capacity of man for self-government. Alas for humanity, if it should fail!

The testimony of the Spanish conquerors is not uniform m respect to the
favorable influence exerted by the Peruvian institutions on the character
of the people. Drinking and dancing are said to have been the pleassures
to which they were immoderately addicted. Like the slaves and serfs in
other lands, whose position excluded them from more serious and
ennobling occupations, they found a substitute in frivolous or sensual
indulgence. Lazy, luxurious, and licentious, are the epithets bestowed on
them by one of those who saw them at the Conquest, but whose pen was
not too friendly to the Indian.39 Yet the spirit of independence could
hardly be strong in a people who had no interest in the soil, no personal
rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the Spanish
invader--after every allowance for their comparative inferiority--argues a
deplorable destitution of that patriotic feeling which holds life as little in
comparison with freedom.

But we must not judge too hardly of the unfortunate native, because he
quailed before the civilization of the European. We must not be
insensible to the really great results that were achieved by the
government of the Incas. We must not forget, that, under their rule, the
meanest of the people enjoyed a far greater degree of personal comfort,
at least, a greater exemption from physical suffering, than was possessed
by similar classes in other nations on the American continent,--greater,
probably, than was possessed by these classes in most of the countries of
feudal Europe. Under their sceptre, the higher orders of the state had
made advances in many of the arts that belong to a cultivated
community. The foundations of a regular government were laid, which,
in an age of rapine, secured to its subjects the inestimable blessings of
tranquillity and safety. By the well-sustained policy of the Incas, the
rude tribes of the forest were gradually drawn from their fastnesses, and
gathered within the folds of civilization; and of these materials was
constructed a flourishing and populous empire, such as was to be found
in no other quarter of the American continent. The defects of this
government were those of overrefinement in legislation,--the last defects
to have been looked for, certainly, in the American aborigines.

Note. I have not thought it necessary to swell this Introduction by an
inquiry into the origin of the Peruvian civilization, like that appended to
the history of the Mexican. The Peruvian history doubtless suggests
analogies with more than one nation in the East, some of which have
been briefly adverted to in the preceding pages; although these analogies
are adduced there not as evidence of a common origin, but as showing
the coincidences which might naturally spring up among different
nations under the same phase of civilization. Such coincidences are
neither so numerous nor so striking as those afforded by the Aztec
history. The correspondence presented by the astronomical science of
the Mexicans is alone of more importance than all the rest, Yet the light
of analogy, afforded by the institutions of the Incas, seems to point, as
far as it goes, towards the same direction; and as the investigation could
present but little substantially to confirm, and still less to confute, the
views taken in the former disquisition, I have not thought it best to
fatigue the reader with it.

Two of the prominent authorities on whom I have relied in this
Introductory portion of the work, are Juan de Sarmiento and the
Licentiate Ondegardo. Of the former I have been able to collect no
information beyond what is afforded by his own writings. In the title
prefixed to his manuscript, he is styled President of the Council of the
Indies, a post of high authority, which infers a weight of character in the
party, and means of information, that entitle his opinions on colonial
topics to great deference.

These means of information were much enlarged by Sarmiento's visit to
the colonies, during the administration of Gasca. Having conceived the
design of compiling a history of the ancient Peruvian institutions, he
visited Cuzco, as he tells us, in 1550, and there drew from the natives
themselves the materials for his narrative. His position gave him access
to the most authentic sources of knowledge, and from the lips of the Inca
nobles, the best instructed of the conquered race, he gathered the
traditions of their national history and institutions. The quipus formed,
as we have seen, an imperfect system of mnemonics, requiring constant
attention, and much inferior to the Mexican hieroglyphics. It was only
by diligent instruction that they were made available to historical
purposes; and this instruction was so far neglected after the Conquest,
that the ancient annals of the country would have perished with the
generation which was the sole depositary of them, had it not been for the
efforts of a few intelligent scholars, like Sarmiento, who saw the
importance, at this critical period, of cultivating an intercourse with the
natives, and drawing from them their hidden stores of information.

To give still further authenticity to his work, Sarmiento travelled over the
country, examined the principal objects of interest with his own eyes,
and thus verified the accounts of the natives as far as possible by
personal observation. The result of these labors was his work entitled,
"Relacion de la sucesion y govierno de las Yngas Senores naturales que
fueron de las Provincias del Peru y otras cosas tocantes a aquel Reyno,
para el Iltmo. Senor Dn Juan Sarmiento, Presidente del Consejo Rl de
Indias."

It is divided into chapters, and embraces about four hundred folio pages
in manuscript. The introductory portion of the work is occupied with the
traditionary tales of the origin and early period of the Incas; teeming, as
usual, in the antiquities of a barbarous people, with legendary fables of
the most wild and monstrous character. Yet these puerile conceptions
afford an inexhaustible mine for the labors of the antiquarian, who
endeavors to unravel the allegorical web which a cunning priesthood had
devised as symbolical of those mysteries of creation that it was beyond
their power to comprehend. But Sarmiento happily confines himself to
the mere statement of traditional fables, without the chimerical ambition
to explain them.

From this region of romance, Sarmiento passes to the institutions of the
Peruvians, describes their ancient polity, their religion, their progress in
the arts, especially agriculture; and presents, in short, an elaborate
picture of the civilization which they reached under the Inca dynasty.
This part of his work, resting, as it does, on the best authority, confirmed
in many instances by his own observation, is of unquestionable value,
and is written with an apparent respect for truth, that engages the
confidence of the reader. The concluding portion of the manuscript is
occupied with the civil history of the country. The reigns of the early
Incas, which lie beyond the sober province of history. he despatches
with commendable brevity. But on the three last reigns, and fortunately
of the greatest princes who occupied the Peruvian throne, he is more
diffuse. This was comparatively firm ground for the chronicler, for the
events were too recent to be obscured by the vulgar legends that gather
like moss round every incident of the older time. His account stops with
the Spanish invasion: for this story, Sarmiento felt, might be safely left to
his contemporaries who acted a part in it, but whose taste and education
had qualified them but indifferently for exploring the antiquities and
social institutions of the natives.

Sarmiento's work is composed in a simple, perspicuous style, without
that ambition of rhetorical display too common with his countrymen. He
writes with honest candor, and while he does ample justice to the merits
and capacity of the conquered races, be notices with indignation the
atrocities of the Spaniards and the demoralizing tendency of the
Conquest. It may be thought, indeed, that he forms too high an estimate
of the attainments of the nation under the Incas. And it is not
improbable, that, astonished by the vestiges it afforded of an original
civilization, he became enamoured of his subject, and thus exhibited it in
colors somewhat too glowing to the eye of the European. But this was
an amiable failing, not too largely shared by the stern Conquerors, who
subverted the institutions of the country, and saw little to admire in it,
save its gold. It must be further admitted, that Sarmiento has no design
to impose on his reader, and that he is careful to distinguish between
what he reports on hearsay, and what on personal experience. The
Father of History himself does not discriminate between these two things
more carefully.

Neither is the Spanish historian to be altogether vindicated from the
superstition which belongs to his time; and we often find him referring to
the immediate interposition of Satan those effects which might quite as
well be charged on the perverseness of man. But this was common to the
age, and to the wisest men in it; and it is too much to demand of a man to
be wiser than his generation. It is sufficient praise of Sarmiento, that, in
an age when superstition was too often allied with fanaticism, he seems
to have had no tincture of bigotry in his nature. His heart opens with
benevolent fulness to the unfortunate native; and his language, while it is
not kindled into the religious glow of the missionary, is warmed by a
generous ray of philanthropy that embraces the conquered, no less than
the conquerors, as his brethren.

Notwithstanding the great value of Sarmiento's work for the information
it affords of Peru under the Incas, it is but little known, has been rarely
consulted by historians, and still remains among the unpublished
manuscripts which lie, like uncoined bullion, in the secret chambers of
the Escurial.

The other authority to whom I have alluded, the Licentiate Polo de
Ondegardo, was a highly respectable jurist, whose name appears
frequently in the affairs of Peru. I find no account of the period when he
first came into the country. But he was there on the arrival of Gasca, and
resided at Lima under the usurpation of Gonzalo Pizarro. When the
artful Cepeda endeavored to secure the signatures of the inhabitants to
the instrument proclaiming the sovereignty of his chief, we find
Ondegardo taking the lead among those of his profession in resisting it.
On Gasca's arrival, he consented to take a commission in his army. At
the close of the rebellion he was made corregidor of La Plata, and
subsequently of Cuzco, in which honorable station he seems to have
remained several years. In the exercise of his magisterial functions, he
was brought into familiar intercourse with the natives, and had ample
opportunity for studying their laws and ancient customs. He conducted
himself with such prudence and moderation, that he seems to have won
the confidence not only of his countrymen but of the Indians; while the
administration was careful to profit by his large experience in devising
measures for the better government of the colony.

The Relaciones, so often cited in this History, were prepared at the
suggestion of the viceroys, the first being addressed to the Marques de
Canete, in 1561, and the second, ten years later, to the Conde de Nieva.
The two cover about as much ground as Sarmiento's manuscript; and the
second memorial, written so long after the first, may be thought to
intimate the advancing age of the author, in the greater carelessness and
diffuseness of the composition.