Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8): Aboriginal America
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8): Aboriginal America
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
Both the Titicaca and the Cacha myths have, in later times, been
connected and more or less amalgamated with the ancestral myth of the
Incas. Thus Garcilasso de la Vega makes Manco Ccapac come direct from
Titicaca; while Molina refers to him as one of the beings created
there, who went down through the earth and came up at Paccari-tampu.
Salcamayhua makes the being Tonapa, of the Cacha myth, arrive at Apu
Tampu, or Paccari-tampu, and leave a sacred sceptre there, called
_tupac yauri_, for Manco Ccapac. These are later interpolations, made
with the object of connecting the family myth of the Incas with more
ancient traditions. The wise men of the Inca system, through the care
of Spanish writers of the time of the conquest, have handed down these
three traditions and the catalogue of kings. The Titicaca myth tells us
of the Deity worshipped by the builders of Tiahuanacu, and the story of
the creation. The Cacha myth has reference to some great reformer of
very ancient times. The Paccari-tampu myth records the origin of the
Inca dynasty. Although they are overlaid with fables and miraculous
occurrences, the main facts touching the original home of Manco Ccapac
and his march to Cuzco are probably historical.
The catalogue of kings given by Montesinos, allowing an average of
twenty years for each, would place the commencement of the Pirua
dynasty in about 470 B.C.; in the days when the Greeks, under Cimon,
were defeating the Persians, and nearly a century after the death of
Sakya Muni in India. This early empire flourished for about 1,200
years, and the disruption took place in 830 A.D., in the days of King
Egbert. The disintegration continued for 500 years, and the rise of the
Incas under Manco was probably coeval with the days of St. Louis and
Henry III of England.[1165] By that time the country had been broken
up into separate tribes for 500 years, and the work of reunion, so
splendidly achieved by the Incas, was most arduous. At the same time,
the ancient civilization of the Piruas was partially inherited by the
various peoples whose ancestors composed their empire; so that the Inca
civilization was a revival rather than a creation.
The various tribes and nations of the Andes, separated from each other
by uninhabited wildernesses and lofty mountain chains, were clearly of
the same origin, speaking dialects of the same language. Since the fall
of the Piruas they had led an independent existence. Some had formed
powerful confederations, others were isolated in their valleys. But it
was only through much hard fighting and by consummate statesmanship
that the one small Inca lineage established, in a period of less than
three centuries, imperial dominion over the rest. It will be well, in
this place, to take a brief survey of the different nations which were
to form the empire of the Incas, and of their territories.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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