Groaning under the iron rule of the Spaniards, the Peruvians would not believe that the last of the Incas had perished an outcast and a wanderer in the forests of the Cordilleras. For centuries they clung to the persuasion that he had but retired to another mighty kingdom beyond the mountains, and in due time would return and sweep the haughty Castilian back into the ocean. In 1781, a mestizo, Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, of the province of Tinta, took advantage of this strong delusion, and binding around his forehead the scarlet fillet of the Incas, proclaimed himself the long lost Inca Tupac Amaru, and a true child of the sun. Thousands of Indians flocked to his standard, and at their head he took the field, vowing the extermination of every soul of the hated race. Seized at last by the Spaniards, and condemned to a public execution, so profound was the reverence with which he had inspired his followers, so full their faith in his claims, that, undeterred by the threats of the soldiery, they prostrated themselves on their faces before this last of the children of the sun, as he passed on to a felon's death.[191-2] These fancied reminiscences, these unfounded hopes, so vague, so child-like, let no one dismiss them as the babblings of ignorance. Contemplated in their broadest meaning as characteristics of the race of man, they have an interest higher than any history, beyond that of any poetry. They point to the recognized discrepancy between what man is, and what he feels he should be, must be; they are the indignant protests of the race against acquiescence in the world's evil as the world's law; they are the incoherent utterances of those yearnings for nobler conditions of existence, which no savagery, no ignorance, nothing but a false and lying enlightenment can wholly extinguish. FOOTNOTES: [162-1] The _meda_ worship is the ordinary religious ritual of the Algonkins. It consists chiefly in exhibitions of legerdemain, and in conjuring and exorcising demons. A _jossakeed_ is an inspired prophet who derives his power directly from the higher spirits, and not as the _medawin_, by instruction and practice. [164-1] For these particulars see the _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1667, p. 12, 1670, p. 93; Charlevoix, _Journal Historique_, p. 344; Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, v. pp. 420 sqq., and Alex. Henry, _Travs. in Canada and the Ind. Territories_, pp. 212 sqq. These are decidedly the best references of the many that could be furnished. Peter Jones' _History of the Ojibway Indians_, p. 35, may also be consulted. [165-1] _Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 518.