11. A Brief Survey of Inca Civilization

As we have already seen, many branches of industrial art at tained a high degree of technological perfection. But did the In dians have a real aesthetic sense? There can be no doubt on this score. The pottery, textiles, carved and chiseled articles found in such abundance in the tombs give evidence of it. The gold fillings in the teeth of the people on the coast of Ecuador, the methods em ployed in Peru to darken hair and stimulate its growth,1 the use of cosmetics, the marvelous sites selected by the Inca, whether to live in, like the valley of Yucay, or to rest in during his journeys, like the platforms set up along the highways, or to build citadels in, like Machu Picchu, all bear witness to a constant search for beauty. It is even probable that It was for the purpose of beautifying their children that the Indians deformed the skulls of newborn infants by pressing them between planks placed on each side of the head, as was the custom among the people of the Callao, or between the face and the 186 A Brief Survey of Inca Civilization 187 nape of the neck, as was done by the inhabitants of the coast; among the former the face was made narrower, and among the latter it was broadened. "The Indians were not content," remarks Father Cobo sadly, "with the head God had given them." 2 Attempts have been made to explain these deformations by motives of another sort, espe cially by the desire to differentiate between the tribes by the shape of their heads. This would certainly have been pressing the passion for classification to its extremel 3 It is also contended that the purpose of the distortions was to develop certain of the individual's intellectual faculties by altering the physical structure in which they were con tained. This is an idea common to many primitive peoples, and it is not impossible in certain instances that it may have been at work here too, for Santa Cruz Pachacuti relates that the Inca Loque Yupanqui ordered that the heads of newborn infants should be pressed in such a way as to render them submissive.4 But in general the molding of the heads probably sprang from a desire to make the children conform to a certain ideal of beauty. This practice, which was followed by other South American peoples-for example, the Paltas of Ecuador, who flattened the skull, and the Quimbayas of Colombia, who made the head square-was forbidden by the Spaniards. 5 To this day the Indians have kept their feeling for form and color. ~They like beautiful clothes and things that are well made; they are painters and carvers. 6 As for the art of design, it often followed geometrical forms. In textiles especially, the animals and plants 'were often stylized, as if symmetry and order had so obsessed the Peruvian mind that it was led to carryover into the representation of Nature the ideas that had guided the organization of Inca society. 7 A rchitecture served primarily practical ends. Hence, all the pub lic buildings that were intended for the same purpose were con ceived on the same plan. Tambos) palaces, and temples seemed, as Rouma somewhat facetiously remarks, to have come off an as sembly line. s Only too rarely did sculptors use their ingenuity to break the monotony of the fa~ades and sheltering walls. 9 Certainly the art that the Peruvians developed most highly was ceramics) whose elements, for the lllOSt part, they borrowed from foreign tribes whom the Incas had subdued. A study of it would 188 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru require a volume in itself. The earthenware vessels were of all shapes, all colors, and all types of decoration, from tiny goblets to the slender aryballus with narrow neck and wide, rounded base, from the bichrome pottery of Chimu to the polychrome work of Nazca, from the white vases of Recuay to the jugs of Chancay adorned with black designs, from the ingeniously constructed zoomorphic vessels, which, when tilted so that the liquid they contain flows from one chamber to the other and forces air out of

the orifice, reproduce the whistling sounds made by the animals they represent, to the large jars that pictured men in every kind of posture. Glaze was unknown, but the surfaces were given a patina by the use of a wooden paddle. The designs on Peruvian pottery would provide excellent motifs for modern decorative art. 10 It is by the work on the vases that Peruvian painting can be judged. Battles, dances, processions were generally reproduced in a rudimentary fashion, without any idea of perspective and with out any relief, but with a lively feeling for color. The designs on the articles made of gourds were engraved by a real pyrographic process involving the use of a red-hot wire. The craftsmen of the coast were particularly skilled in the art of ceramics. Their imaginations were stimulated by the shapes and colors they found in their environment, whereas the sierra offered to the inhabitants of the plateau nothing but simple outlines and uniform tones. ll The goldsmiths and silversmiths had also attained a high degree of perfection. These craftsmen knew how to make very fine threads of gold and of silver, which were used in the embellishment of textiles. They were acquainted with repousse work in metal and with damascening by the superposition of metals; and they plated copper with either gold or silver, and silver with gold, although we do not know exactly how they did it.12 A great many small toilet articles and costume accessories have been found in tombs and bear witness to the skill of those who made them: paring knives with handles (tumi), needles, large pins, brooches, earrings of wood, metal, or terra cotta, necklaces of precious stones, coral, seeds, or the teeth of animals.

A Brief Survey of Inca Civilization 189 Finally, the art of embalming was practiced by the Peruvians, as is proved by the mummies that have been discovered. is Is it correct to say that the art of the sierra is essentially conven tional, that, to quote Wiener's phrase, it "does not speak to the soul"? 14 Perhaps, if what we are referring to is the complicated and tormented soul of the contemporary civilized man. But the simplicity and monotony of the subjects and scenes in Peruvian art could not have displeased a people whose life was itself simple and monotonous. It is no exaggeration to say that the Indians were able to produce 'works of great beauty. There are on the coast vases that are veritable masterpieces, full of realism and variety.15 What cannot but jar our sensibilities, however, is the evident passion of the Quechuas for artificial nature. The garden at Cuzco, with its trees and birds, its llamas and their herdsmen, all in gold, dazzles us less than it amazes us; and such an accumulation of metal, however well designed and executed, would seem to us today to be in execrable taste. Yet, as the Abbe Genty wisely said in reply to the criticism of the Abbe Raynal, "To appraise the value of the works of a half-savage people [let us rather say, a people whose civilization is different from our own], we must fol low the slow and successive steps in the progress of the human spirit and not judge their industry in the light of the discoveries of our arts and the ingenious methods that long practice and the communication of ideas have enabled us to devise." 16 And if it is objected that the art of the Quechuas is in fact primarily the fruit of contributions from the north and the northwest-from Quito or Chimu-we reply that the sovereigns of Cuzco should be heart ily congratulated for not having destroyed any center of culture, but for having, on the contrary, known how to learn from the vanquished.

The art of music merits a place apart because of its popular character. 17 The list of musical instruments given by Cobo has been confirmed by archaeological discoveries. is The instruments in most ,videspread use were whistles, ocarinas, rattles, and, above all, the vertical flute, or quena) which was made from bone or reed, pierced with three or seven holes, and "generally very highly finished and 190 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru accurately pitched." 19 Another very popular instrument was the Panpipe, or syrinx, consisting of from five to twelve juxtaposed tubes of reed, clay, stone, wood, metal, or quill of different lengths. 20 There were no stringed instruments. 21 In the army a trumpet was used, made of terra cotta or wood, rarely of metal, and a drum of llama skin, struck 'with a single stick. There was also the tinya J which was a sort of large tambourine with a double diaphragm. The Huancas had the deplorable habit of making drums from the skins of enemies vanquished in battle. They thought that on hearing the sound of these instruments the sur viving adversaries would flee in terror. The Incas applied this barbarous treatment only to rebels.

The Indian melodies today are generally composed on a penta tonic scale, with a frequent use of the minor mode, which gives them accents of sadness that are in perfect harmony with the char acter of the musicians. If the artistic progress of the Peruvians seems to have been considerable, their scientific knowledge appears to have remained very superficial and strictly practical. The decimal system was employed in keeping accounts. Geometry was limited to some notions relating to the measurement of land, the laying out of roads, or the cutting of stone. Geography was confined to the mak ing of relief maps in clay. Garcilaso and Ondegardo tell of having seen a map of this kind. 22 A cacique of Tomebamba supplied Benalcazar with a plan of the route to follow in marching to an encounter with the Indian general Rumiiiahui;23 and we have already stated that the Inca Pachacutec made use of such plans, whether to distribute lands or to rebuild Cuzco or to order the movements of mitimaes from one territory to another. 24 In astronomy the Peruvians were greatly inferior to the Aztecs.

Their months were adjusted to the phases of the moon. They prob ably calculated the solstices and equinoxes by observing the s,had ows cast by a series of stone columns. 25 Quito, lying directly under the equator, was looked upon as a holy city because the columns there threw no shadow at noon on the days of the equinox. "The Sun takes pleasure," the Indians said, "in seating himself in this A Brief Survey of Inca Civilization 191 place." 26 Eclipses, on the other hand, remained an object of terror, and, like a great many primitive peoples, the Indians used to make as much noise as possible to wake the heavenly body that for a little while had gone to sleep. Of the psychical sciences among the Peruvians practically noth ing is known. As with all the great peoples of antiquity, such learning was kept secret, if, indeed, it is to be assumed that it existed at all in Peru. We are acquainted with it only in its grossest forms, in the work of soothsayers, conjurers, and sorcerers. 27 The Indians made use of love charms, magic cures, and black magic. 28 Uncertainty also prevails regarding their knowledge of medicine and surgery. The Indians used massage, practiced bloodletting with a flint, treated illness with medicinal plants, and made use of tobacco as a medicine in the form of snuff. If we are to believe Morua, the remedies most frequently employed were within the reach of everyone, for they consisted in "temperance and diet." 29 Penitence was also considered efficacious as a remedy, for illness was held to be a punishment for sin and was regarded as an entity that it was proper to drive out by every possible means. This is the explanation of the Situa~ that extraordinary yearly festival de scribed by Garcilaso. 30 The people would assemble, after a prepara tory fast, along the four great thoroughfares of Cuzco. They would throw off their clothes and rub their limbs and faces in order to get the seeds of evil out of their bodies and on to the road; and four orejones would go through the crowd at a run, brandishing lances to drive away the diseases and continuing the chase far out into the surrounding country. When darkness fell, the Indians would go through the streets carrying torches to drive their ailments in flight before them and then throw the torches into the river so that its current would carryall their ills far away.

There were also medical specialists who were sent to the Inca as a form of tribute by the Collahuaya, a tribe settled to the east of Lake Titicaca. Even today the inhabitants of this region still travel through South America selling simples and treating the sick with the remedies described by the ancient chroniclers. 31 The amautas must also have fulfilled the function of healers, but they were perhaps more theoreticians than practitioners. 32 Morua and Santa 192 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru Clara declare that several doctors lived in the royal palace and that the Inca always kept one near him. 33 Had these specialists any surgical knowledge? Skulls ·which ap pear to have been trepanned and which carry more or less devel oped scars that bear witness to the patient's survival have been discovered in the tombs. It is highly possible that the operation of trepanning was successfully attempted in a country where the use of clubs must have made head wounds frequent. It is also possible that the operation may have been undertaken, as it was by the ancient Egyptians, for the purpose of bringing the priests into direct contact with the divinity or of driving out the evil spirit shut up in the sick man's skull. Of the four hundred trepanned skulls discovered by Dr. Tello, two hundred and fifty showed scars.34 Moreover, amputated legs with artificial feet made of wood have been discovered in the valley of Chicama.3.5 In brief, the Peruvians seem to have had only a mediocre ac quaintance with science. Let us not forget, however, that some of this knowledge may have been lost, since it was possessed only by the elite, a class that has entirely disappeared. But there is one sure and strange fact that places the Indians in a position of manifest inferiority in comparison with other ancient peoples: they were incapable of making use of the idea of the circle. They formed an image of it, since their representations of the sun and the moon and their vases were circular, but they applied it only in an ex tremely limited domain, having no conception of the wheel, the lathe, or the arch.

Literature among the Peruvians must have reached a high stage of development, if we may judge from the all too few frag ments that have come down to us. The people loved vocal music, and even today the Indian sings his lament as he travels along the trails of the sierra. There was no festival without its official poets (haravicu) to celebrate the virtues of ancestors, the glory of the sovereign, or the beauty of imaginary loves. Garcilaso records one of these poems which he borrowed from BIas Valera and which is formed of unrhymed tetrameters. 36 The most curious piece of literature we possess is a drama, 0 lA Brief Survey of Inca Civilization 193 lantay}7 probably written by a literate Indian of the seventeenth century. The ancient form was undoubtedly altered profoundly in order to adapt it to the taste of the time: octosyllabic verse, the use of rhyme,88 and division into scenes; but the substance cer tainly goes back to the preColumbian era. 39 As Markham observes, the charactersof the people in the play are entirely in harmony with Inca tradition and are not lacking in nobility.40 The action proceeds in lively fashion, and the events are well linked together.

A curious detail of construction is that when a strophe is not com pleted by one person, his interlocutor does not finish it. Finally, the lover is never left alone with the lady of his dreams, a point that would be enough in itself to mark the profound difference between Ollantay and the classic drama of Europe. 41 The plot of the drama has to do with the love of the valiant gen eral Ollantay for the daughter of the Inca, who answers to the graceful name of Cusi Cuyllur ("Star of Joy"), and her love for him. Although he is not of royal blood, he ventures to ask the monarch for the hand of the princess. The sovereign indignantly refuses and has his daughter locked up. Ollantay, in anger and despair, flees from Cuzco, rouses the mountain provinces of the east to insurrection, and establishes his center of resistance in the great fortress of Ollantaytambo. The Indian chieftain Rumifiahui ("Eye of Stone"), attacks the rebel, but is defeated. He then has recourse to a ruse. Pretending to have been tortured by order of the Inca in punishment for his. defeat, covered with wounds and crying out for vengeance, he makes his appearance before Ollantay, who wel comes him without distrust. Then, on a day agreed upon, when the insurgents are celebrating a festival, Rumifiahui opens the gates of the fortress to the army of the Inca. But the latter, in a great burst of generosity, pardons Ollantay, gives him his daughter in marriage, and entrusts him with a high command. Several of the characters are well drawn, notably Ollantay himself and his servant, the facetious Piqui Chaqui, who is the clown of the play.

These Peruvian plays were composed by the amautas and played by people of importance. In the year 1781, following an Indian revolt, the Spaniards prohibited all performances of Quechua drama. 42 194 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru A glance at the manners and customs of the period will best give us an understanding of social conditions in preColumbian Peru. It has sometimes been said that the status of women can be taken as the measure of a people's civilization, but it must be rec ognized that in this case it would be very difficult to make any judgment. Women, to be sure, did not perform the hardest and most laborious tasks. Their work was confined to helping the farmer to cultivate his fields and the soldier to carry his baggage. They were protected by law. No man might abuse a woman or repudiate her at will. Doubtless, also, many Indian women received a certain amount of education in the virgins' houses and were treated with respect by men. At banquets wives squatted back to back with their husbands, served them, and ate at the same time as they did 43_a privilege not yet granted in the France of the Middle Ages. The queen took part in all the festivals, the Inca Huayna Capac consulted his mother on the affairs of the empire, and it was a woman who went to implore that monarch for pardon for the Chachapoya rebels and was successful in her plea. 44 On the other hand, however, women were in many respects looked upon as commodities. The majority of them, destined to serve the needs of the nation, constituted the minimum necessary to assure the survival of the race. The rest were held in reserve and distributed by the Inca, like clothing and arms, as his imperial policy might demand. It was no more permitted to harm them than it was to waste provisions. Woman, in short, figured ~s, a high-grade article of consumers' goods at the disposal of the state. It may be said that she was not mistreated, but she was enslaved. 45 Yet man too was treated with very little consideration. He was uprooted from his home and was assigned a job without being asked what he thought about it. We must not consider the position of women, then, from our modern point of view, but must rather ask ourselves whether their status improved after the Incas came to power, for there is no doubt but that the men of the South American tribes adjacent to the Quechuas often mistreated their women and made them perform the most difficult and laborious work, which was not the case in Peru. Among the Araucans, for example, the women were veritable slaves;46 and the Indians of A Brief Survey of Inca Civilization 195 the tribes of the Madre de Dios still treat their women like beasts of burden. 47 Men and women alike, all the Indians of the Inca empire lived severely regimented lives. From earliest infancy the child was sub jected to a harsh discipline. He was bathed in cold water and given the breast only three times a day-"so that he would not form habits of gluttony." 48 The mother never held the baby in her arms. She left him in his wooden cradle so as to accustom him to hardship, and when she suckled him she leaned over him without picking him up. At first the baby received a provisional name.

Then, when he was fourteen years old or more, depending on the region, in the presence of relatives and family friends he was given a definitive name. Gatherings of various kinds were frequent among the people. On holidays public banquets would be held in the presence of the local chiefs. Everyone brought his own food and exchanged with his neighbor, somewhat in the manner of a picnic. 49 Then dances and songs would alternate with games of chance, some of which have survived to the present day.50 The dances were serious, slow, and religious. Huayna Capac's celebrated "golden chain" was in tended for use in a dance. The dancers would hold the chain in stead of taking one another by the hand. 51 Popular dances recalled such activities as ploughing, hunting, and fighting. 52 On this subject of festivals and celebrations, the chroniclers are inexhaustible. The great festival of the Sun (Raymi), which prob ably took place toward the month of June, lasted no less than nine days,53 and the high officials from all parts of the empire came to Cuzco to take part in it. It must have been a very beautiful spec tacle, with all the Indians wearing the distinctive headdresses and insignia of their tribes, crowding around the musicians and dancers dressed in puma skins and adorned with feathers, 54 or saluting the monarch with enthusiastic cheers as he passed by in his chair of solid gold, himself all covered with gold and precious stones, a golden crown embellished \vith plumes on his head, and a golden disc on his breast, preceded by retainers carrying the royal weap ons, and surrounded by a multitude of warriors in many-colored garments.

196 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru Even more impressive must have been the first among all the ceremonies of the Raymi} the salute to the Sun. The monarch, the princes, and a great number of the inhabitants of the city, bare footed, assembled before dawn in one of the public squares of Cuzco; and, at the moment when the orb of day appeared beyond the mountains, the multitude would crouch down and kiss the rays of light, while the Inca, lifting a golden vessel, would offer the sacrificial drink to his father the Sun. 5,5 The celebrations of military triumphs also stand out among the most important solemnities: processions, religious ceremonies, dances, and songs followed one another, and the affair usually ended, as Indian gatherings, often still do, in a general state of drunkenness. Here is Montesinos' description of the triumphal entry of the Inca Sinchi Roca into Cuzco after the defeat of the rebellious Andahuaylas: Trumpeters led the line of march, followed by two thousand soldiers in battle formation, the commanders wearing headdresses of multicolored feathers and with plaques of gold on breast and shoulders, their men covered with plaques of silver taken from the enemy. Some of them beat six drums of human shape, made from the skin of the vanquished chieftains. Following the soldiers came prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs, then more soldiers with six more drums like the first, and then the ruler of the Andahuaylas, stretched out naked on a litter and surrounded by drums made from the skins of his relatives. Behind him marched a troop of criers, .some announcing how the Inca treated rebels, others recalling ·the guilty deeds committed by the Andahuaylas.

These were followed by three thousand orejones} richly clad, adorned with plumes, and chanting a hymn of victory. After these came five hundred young girls belonging to the first families of the empire, dancing and singing, their heads crowned with gar lands, branches in their hands, and little bells on their legs. Next came a group of high dignitaries, some of them picking up the stones and wisps of straw left on the roadway, others scattering flowers; and directly behind them came the Inca himself, seated upon a golden throne borne by eight orejones. The man-god was A Brief Survey of Inca Civilization 197 sheltered under two feather parasols, forming a sort of canopy embellished with emeralds and little flakes of very fine gold. In his right hand he held a golden throwing stick and in his left hand a rod of the same metal, which he professed to have received from the Sun. On his forehead he wore the royal ribbon of red wool.

Finally, members of the royal family and of the council and princesses covered with ornaments, all carried in litters, brought the procession to an end. 56 One sees how difficult it is to characterize social conditions in the empire of the Incas. 57 Exceedingly backward in some respects, very far advanced in others, the Peruvians elude every classifica tion. Their technology was at once primitive and highly perfected; they treated men like cattle, but they knew how to reward merit; they made drums from the skins of those who had revolted against them, but they loaded the leaders of their conquered enemies with gifts and allowed them to retain their status; they were ignorant of the wheel, but they presented plays; they did not know how to write, but they kept faultless statistics. How can it be said that the human spirit everywhere follows the same course of development and must inevitably evolve in the same way? The empire of the Incas cannot be compared with any of the great civilizations of the ancient world.