Christianized Indians of the Interior.—Their condition and character.—Hardships imposed on them.—Desire of revenge. Tangur, in the curacy of Caina, and department of Junin, is one of those villages so common on the elevated slopes which overlook temperate valleys in the interior of Peru. In this small village, as we are informed by a gentleman who for several years visited it in the character of curate, there are two distinct municipalities, each possessing its separate church and magistrates. These separate people, who speak the same Quichua language, do not associate together, nor do they even hold their religious festivals on the same day. The origin of this separation of interests, tradition informs us, is as far back as the time of the Incas, when some convicts, ordered from Quito, settled at this place, and formed a distinct family; which has here subsisted since that remote period, without ever mingling its blood with that of its neighbours, or entering into communion or alliance with any other people. This is the more remarkable, as it is the ordinary practice in other remote villages of the interior for the whole body of men to co-operate in any great work, such as constructing bridges for their common good, or building houses for the convenience of individuals; on which occasions one party conducts stones and turf, another builds the walls, a third conveys timber from the distant woods,[23] and a fourth cuts and lays on the thatch &c. The unanimity in this case, and the want of it in that of Tangur, are equally characteristic of that love which the Indian entertains for the usages of his predecessors in all things. In nothing does he approve of innovation; in his condition he has not yet known any durable or real amelioration, and in nothing does he desire change. In his local prejudices, habits, and daily pursuits, he only thinks, feels, and acts just as others did before him. If the general revolution has been in any degree useful to the poor uninformed Indian of Peru, who has already sunk from the short-lived excitement of patriotic enthusiasm into the dejection of a military despotism,—if it has really improved his prospects, it has been by rousing him, for a while at least, from his wonted apathy to the general concerns and conveniences of life; opening to his view a wider range of imitation and desire, and thus breaking in upon the hereditary routine of his customs and habits, to which, till now, he has adhered with the unvarying constancy of mere instinct.