singular circumstance that the maize, or Indian corn, so left, was different from
any that now existed in the country.”
Mr. Pentland expresses his decided opinion “ that the extraordinary forms
thus brought to the light of day after their long sojourn, could not be attributed
to pressure, or any external force, similar to that still employed by many American
tribes; and adduced, in confirmation of this view, the opinions of Cuvier, of Gall,
and of many other naturalists and anatomists. On these grounds he was of opinion
that they constituted the population of these elevated regions before the arrival of
the/present Indian population, which in its physical characters, customs, &c.,
offers many analogies with the Asiatic population of the old world.”*
The preceding facts appear to establish two important propositions; first, that
the primitive Peruvians had attained to a considerable degree of civilisation and
refinement, so far at least as architecture and sculpture may be adduced in
evidence, long before the Incas appeared in their country; and secondly, that these
primitive Peruvians were the same people whose elongated and seemingly brutalised
crania now arrest our attention; and it remains to inquire, whether these are the
same people whom the Incas found in possession of Peru, or whether their nation
and power were already extinct at that epoch ?
The modern Peruvian empire had existed upwards of four hundred years at
the time of the. Spanish conquest, so that its origin may he dated somewhere
about the year 1100 of our era. Now it appears that among the first military
enterprises of this new family was the conquest of Collao, which possessed a
productive soil and a warlike population, and embraced within its confines the
Lake Titicaca, from which the Incas pretended to have derived a supernatural
origin. Every effort was therefore made to subdue and to destroy the Collas.
The Inca Yupanque waged against them a war of extermination; and we are told
by Herrera that in some of the towns he left so few persons alive, that inhabitants
were afterwards sent from other parts of Peru to colonise the wasted districts.f
The same historian adds, that in order further to depopulate the country, the
inhabitants were banished from it in large bodies, and dispersed through other
provinces of the empire; and yet such was the dread in which the new dynasty
held these warlike people, that they forbade more than a thousand of them to
* Report of the'Fourth Meeting o f the British Association for the Advancement of Science, p.
624; and Additional Reports, which were republished in Waldie’s Journal of Belles-Lettres, 1834.
t Historia de las Indias, Dec. I ll, Lib. IX, c. 4.
be within the walls of Cuzco at a time, lest they should attempt some revolutionary
enterprise. It therefore appears that no means were left untried to
subdue and exterminate the people of Colla ;* yet how far such a system* persisted
in at intervals for more than two centuries, could have annihilated a whole nation,
I shall not attempt to decide.
When the Spaniards took possession of these provinces, they found them
inhabited by barbarous tribes, and the islands in the lake Titicaca, which had
once been highly cultivated, were then waste and vacant. Upon the lake were
seen rafts made of the reed called by the natives totora, and on these rafts whole
families made their home, tossed here and there upon the waters by every change
of wind. They were in so brutalised a state that when asked to what nation of
people they belonged, they replied, “ We are not men, hut Uros,” as if they did
not consider themselves as belonging to the human species.f Were these Uros
(for so they named their tribe) the remains of the savage colonies sent from other
parts of Peru to supplant the Collas ? This inference hears at least the stamp of
probability, hut it still does not aid us in ascertaining whether the Collas themselves
were the remains of the primitive civilised Peruvians.^
It may he added, that Garcilaso describes the Peruvian tribes near the sea
coasts, to whom he applies the collective name of Yuncas, as living in the utmost
barbarism at the advent of the Incas. In proof of this statement he adduces their
mythology, which accorded divine attributes to every thing in which they observed
any dominant excellence. Thus, says he, they worshipped the fox for his cunning,
the deer for his swiftness, and the eagle for the perfection of his sight. These
superstitions, however, are not more surprising than those of the primitive ages of
civilisation in the old world; and there appears throughout the Spanish historian
an evident disposition to depreciate the character of the ancient tribes of Peru, in
order to palliate the cruel measures which were resorted to by the Incas for their
subjugation. Garcilaso himself describes a remarkable temple at Pachacamac,
which was erected by the Yuncas; and the Chimuyans, who were something
farther to the south, appear to have possessed extensive and regular edifices,
together with some other attributes of civilisation. The inhabitants of Chimu
resisted the Incas with great valor, and appear to have been very superior to most
* Garcilaso de la Vega, Comment. Lib. I ll, cap. 3.
t Acosta, Hist, de las Indias, Lib. I ll, cap. 6.—De Laet, Novus Orbis, Lib. XI.
t Indian tradition relates that the Collas were all destroyed at once, but attributes this catastrophe
to an inundation. See Herrera, Dec. I ll, Lib. IX, c. 1.