History of the conquest of Peru / by Willilam H. Prescott.

  • Prescott, William Hickling, 1796-1859.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the conquest of Peru / by Willilam H. Prescott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/692 (page 6)
    imagination, and however popular, the legend of Manco Capac, it requires but little reflection to show its improbability, even when divested of supernatural accompaniments. On the shores of Lake Titicaca extensive ruins exist at the present day, which the Peruvians themselves acknowledge to be of older date than the pretended advent of the Incas, and to have furnished them with the models of their architecture.1 The date of their appearance, indeed, is manifestly irreconcilable with their subsequent history. No account assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes before the Conquest. But this number is altogether too small to have spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations of the monarchy, on any probable computation, beyond two centuries and a half,—an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico. The fiction of Manco Capac and his sister-wife was devised, no doubt, at a later period, to gratify the vanity of the Peruvian monarchs, and to give additional sanction to their authority by deriving it from a celestial origin. We may reasonably conclude that there existed in the country a race advanced in civilisation before the time of the Incas; and in conformity with nearly every tradition, we may derive this race from the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca;2 a 1 “ Otras cosas ay mas que dezir deste Tiaguanaco, que passo por no detenerme : concluyedo que yo para mi tengo esta antigualla por la mas antigua de todo el Peru. Y assi se tiene que antes ^ los Ingas reynassen con muchos tiempos estavan hechos algunos edificios destos : porque yo he oydo afirmar a Indios, que los Ingas hizieron los edificios grandes del Cuzco por la forma que vieron tener la muralla o pared que se vee en este pueblo.” (Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. cv.) See also Garcilasso, (Com. Real., parte i. lib. iii. cap. i.) who gives an account of these remains, on the authority of a Spanish ecclesiastic, which might compare, for the marvellous, with any of the legends of his order. Other ruins of similar traditional antiquity are noticed by Herrera, (Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano, [Madrid, 1730,] dec. vi. lib. vi. cap. ix.) M'Cuiloch, in some sensible reflections on the origin of the Peruvian civilisation, adduces, on the authority of Garcilasso de la Vega, the famous temple of Pachacamac, not far from Lima, as an example of architecture more ancient than that of the Incas. (Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of America, [Baltimore, 1829,] p. 405.) This, if true, would do much to confirm the views in our text. But M'Culloch is led into an error by his blind guide, Rycaut, the translator of Garcilasso, for the latter does not speak of the temple as existing before the time of the Incas, but before the time when the country was conquered by the Incas.— Com. Real., parte i. lib. vi. cap. xxx. 2 Among other authorities for this tradition, see Sarmiento, Relacion,