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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "History of the Conquest of Peru," William Hickling Prescott masterfully chronicles the dramatic events surrounding the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in the 16th century. Prescott's prose blends rigorous historical analysis with vibrant narrative, immersing readers in the perilous journeys and fierce encounters of figures like Francisco Pizarro and Atahualpa. Demonstrating a meticulous approach to primary sources and drawing from a wealth of scholarly work, Prescott situates his narrative within a broader literary context of American historical writing, illuminating the cultural clash that marked this critical moment in history. William Hickling Prescott, an esteemed historian of the early 19th century, undertook this ambitious project after overcoming significant physical challenges, including near-blindness. His educational background and keen interest in the history of Spain and its conquests'—fostered by a rich legacy of Enlightenment thought'—shaped this authoritative text. Prescott's deep empathy for indigenous cultures coupled with his commitment to accuracy marks his work as a pioneering endeavor in historical literature. "History of the Conquest of Peru" is an essential read for students of history and enthusiasts of exploration narratives, as it not only provides a thorough account of one of the most significant European expansions in the New World but also evokes profound questions regarding conquest, civilization, and morality. Prescott's eloquent narrative and insightful analysis make this book a timeless masterpiece in the canon of American historical writing. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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History of the Conquest of Peru
Table of Contents
Introduction
Steel met empire beneath the thin mountain air, and a world seemed to tilt on its axis. From this emblematic collision springs William Hickling Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru, a narrative that examines ambition, faith, and the sudden reordering of power. Prescott dwells on the charged space where unfamiliar armies, landscapes, and beliefs confront one another. His story is not simply of victory and defeat; it is about the costs of encounter, the promises and perils of discovery, and the fragile scaffolding of authority. The tension he evokes—between courage and cruelty, order and upheaval—sets the keynote for the pages that follow.
This book is a classic because it marries literary grace to disciplined inquiry. In the nineteenth century, historical writing often aspired to the grandeur of epic, yet few works balanced drama with documentation as deftly as Prescott’s. His prose aimed at clarity and sweep, modeling a narrative history that could captivate general readers while satisfying scholarly curiosity. The work helped define an American contribution to world historiography, demonstrating that English-language history could be both artful and rigorous. Its longevity owes to this fusion: readers return for the storytelling, and scholars revisit it as a landmark in the evolution of historical craft.
History of the Conquest of Peru was written by the American historian William Hickling Prescott and first published in 1847. Composed in the 1840s, it followed his earlier study of Mexico and continued his exploration of Spain’s imperial expansion in the Americas. Prescott worked painstakingly with chronicles, official reports, and archival materials available to him, known for his meticulous method despite significant limitations to his eyesight. The book presents a sustained narrative of a sixteenth-century confrontation, framed by carefully assembled evidence. Its author sought to render a vast subject intelligible and compelling without sacrificing attention to the reliability and character of his sources.
The book offers an account of the Spanish expedition that entered the Andes in the 1530s and came into contact with a powerful Andean polity. Prescott prepares readers by sketching the social and political organization of that world, describing its institutions, religious practices, and material achievements. He then follows the unfolding engagement, observing leadership decisions, negotiations, and rapid shifts in fortune. Throughout, he remains attentive to geography—coast, sierra, and high plateau—and to the ways environment shapes possibility. Without preempting subsequent developments, this introduction alerts readers that Prescott’s central concern is the process by which cultures meet, measure one another, and redefine what is possible.
Prescott’s declared aim was to tell a true and instructive story. He compares testimonies, identifies divergences, and evaluates bias with a care that was notable in his era. At the same time, he writes with a moral imagination, inviting reflection on responsibility, justice, and the uses of power. The narrative alternates between panoramic survey and close portrait, suggesting both structural forces and individual agency at work. Crucially, he attempts to accord attention to indigenous institutions as subjects worthy of study in their own right. His method underscores that history is built from choices—of sources, emphasis, and tone—and that those choices shape collective memory.
The book’s impact radiated across literary and scholarly circles by confirming that historical narrative could achieve both popularity and esteem. Its success helped secure Prescott’s reputation as a leading American historian, encouraging later writers to marry archival research with vivid storytelling. The work’s careful footnotes and measured judgments demonstrated one path for English-language historiography, influencing how subsequent narratives of exploration and empire were framed. It also joined a transatlantic conversation about the ethics and meaning of conquest, inviting comparisons with European historians. In this way, the book stands at an important junction: a work of letters that also helped professionalize historical practice.
Enduring themes animate every chapter: the collision of worldviews, the volatility of authority, and the interplay between belief and technology. Prescott examines how charisma, ritual, and law can confer legitimacy, and how swiftly that legitimacy can erode under pressure. He is fascinated by contingency—the way chance and choice combine to redirect lives and states. Resourcefulness and ruthlessness often march together in these pages, prompting uneasy admiration and sober judgment. Above all, he shows the paradox of empire: its capacity to organize vast territories and its vulnerability to internal fissure and external shock. These themes remain provocative, inviting readers to weigh motives against consequences.
Prescott’s style is a defining strength. He composes with an eye for scene and character while maintaining analytic distance. Portraits of leaders emerge through action and context, not ornament alone, and set pieces give way to careful exposition of systems and customs. The prose carries a measured cadence that propels the narrative, yet the apparatus—citations, comparisons of testimony, and source critiques—grounds it. This balance preserves the book from becoming either romantic chronicle or dry compendium. For many, its appeal lies in precisely this dual mastery: a historian’s diligence harmonized with a storyteller’s ear, producing a work readable in long arcs and in studied segments.
As a nineteenth-century work, it bears the assumptions and limits of its time. Prescott relied heavily on Spanish and colonial-era sources, and his framing reflects perspectives common among his contemporaries. Later scholarship has revised, supplemented, and sometimes challenged elements of his account, especially through broader engagement with indigenous voices and archaeology. Yet the book’s importance endures, both as a literary monument and as an early synthesis that shaped how the subject entered public consciousness. Reading it today involves a double vision: appreciating its craft and influence while recognizing where it invites dialogue with newer methods and materials.
For contemporary audiences, the book’s questions are urgently familiar. It probes how power justifies itself, how societies remember or forget violence, and how narratives confer meaning upon sudden change. In an era debating globalization, cultural encounter, and historical memory, Prescott’s case study illustrates patterns that recur in different guises. His attention to sources encourages readers to scrutinize evidence, weigh competing accounts, and remain alert to silences. The story’s setting—mountains, roads, and courts—underscores the material and institutional dimensions of contact. As a result, the work remains a valuable companion to current conversations about empire, identity, and the ethics of telling the past.
Approached as both journey and inquiry, the narrative rewards careful reading. It moves from initial approach to deepening entanglement, tracing how institutions respond to stress and how leaders navigate crisis. Scenes of ceremony, negotiation, and uncertainty punctuate the march of events, reminding readers that history unfolds through fragile human choices. Prescott’s descriptive reach extends from architecture to logistics, from religious symbolism to law, allowing multiple points of engagement. Without anticipating outcomes, one can say that the book renders complexity comprehensible without flattening it. That equilibrium—between vast scope and human scale—helps explain why the work remains engrossing long after its first publication.
History of the Conquest of Peru continues to resonate because it combines intellectual ambition with narrative force. It offers a study of power in motion, of cultures facing one another across chasms of belief and habit, and of how records and remembrance contend for authority. Its classic status rests on accomplished prose, careful sifting of testimony, and themes that speak beyond their century. Readers find in it both the exhilaration of discovery and the unease of judgment. Engaging it today means meeting a foundational text with open eyes: to learn from its craft, question its vantage, and carry forward its enduring questions.
Synopsis
History of the Conquest of Peru, published in 1847 by William Hickling Prescott, recounts the rise of the Spanish in the Andean world and the collapse of the Inca Empire. Drawing on Spanish and mestizo chroniclers, royal documents, and travelers’ accounts, Prescott organizes a chronological narrative that combines political, military, and institutional history. He situates events within their geographic and cultural contexts, describing highland terrain, coastal routes, and administrative centers. The book aims to explain how a small European force imposed authority over a populous, organized state, and how subsequent conflicts among the conquerors and royal reforms shaped colonial rule in Peru.
Prescott opens with an overview of the Inca state before European contact. He outlines the empire’s expansion from Cuzco under successive rulers, the centralized authority of the Sapa Inca, and provincial administration organized in decimal units. He summarizes religion centered on the Sun, state control of land and labor through the mit’a, and social organization around ayllus. He notes the extensive road network, storehouses, and quipus used for accounting. The narrative also introduces succession practices and rivalries, setting the stage for the civil war between Huáscar and Atahualpa that weakened imperial cohesion on the eve of Spanish incursions along the Pacific coast.
The account then turns to Spain’s presence in the region, focusing on Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, and the cleric Hernando de Luque, who formed a partnership at Panama. Prescott recounts early voyages south in 1524 and 1526, marked by hardship, reconnaissance at Tumbes, and the episode of the men who remained with Pizarro on the coast. Pizarro’s journey to Spain secured the Capitulación de Toledo in 1529, granting titles and authority for a new expedition. The narrative emphasizes limited manpower, reliance on indigenous guides and pilots, and the incremental knowledge that made a third attempt feasible.
The third expedition, launched in 1531, established a foothold on the coast and advanced into the interior through alliances and negotiated passages. Prescott situates the Spaniards’ progress amid the ongoing Inca civil war, noting Atahualpa’s recent victories and consolidation of power after Huáscar’s defeat. The meeting at Cajamarca is presented as a planned encounter, arranged under assurances of parley. The Spaniards seized Atahualpa during the gathering, using shock tactics and firearms to neutralize larger numbers. Prescott relates the immediate reordering of authority around the captive ruler and the strategic exploitation of divisions among Inca generals and regional lords.
Atahualpa’s offer of a substantial ransom in gold and silver becomes a central episode, detailed through the collection, melting, and division of treasure. Despite the ransom, the Spaniards executed the Inca monarch, citing political and religious justifications. Prescott follows the subsequent march to Cuzco, the ceremonial capital, and the installation of Manco Inca as a compliant sovereign under Spanish oversight. The narrative describes Cuzco’s architecture, temples, and storage systems, while tracing the redistribution of encomiendas. New settlements, including the founding of Lima as the City of Kings in 1535, shift the administrative center toward the coast and maritime supply lines.
Prescott narrates the rapid deterioration of relations with Manco Inca, who launched a coordinated resistance. The siege of Cuzco and concurrent pressure on Lima tested Spanish logistics and alliances, as garrisons endured assaults and sorties over months in 1536–1537. Relief expeditions and indigenous auxiliaries helped break the sieges, though large portions of the highlands remained contested. Almagro returned from an arduous expedition toward Chile, claimed Cuzco according to his interpretation of territorial grants, and detained key Pizarro commanders. The dispute over jurisdiction and spoils escalated, entangling municipal councils, legal claims, and armed factions on both sides.
The conflict between the former partners culminated at the Battle of Las Salinas in 1538, where Almagro was defeated and later executed. Prescott charts the continued instability that followed. Francisco Pizarro’s administration in Lima faced opposition from Almagro’s adherents, administrative disputes, and the demands of settlers for encomienda security. In 1541, conspirators loyal to the Almagrist cause assassinated Pizarro. Royal commissioners arrived to restore order. Vaca de Castro defeated Almagro’s son at Chupas in 1542, asserting Crown authority. Meanwhile, the monarchy established the Viceroyalty of Peru and promulgated the New Laws to regulate encomiendas and curb abuses.
Implementation of the New Laws under Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela provoked resistance among encomenderos and led Gonzalo Pizarro to assume leadership of a rebellion. Prescott presents the clash between royal policy and settler interests, from the viceroy’s attempts at enforcement to his deposition and death at Añaquito in 1546. The Crown then sent Pedro de la Gasca with broad powers, clemency, and the promise of adjustments. Through negotiation and defections, La Gasca weakened Gonzalo Pizarro’s position. The confrontation at Jaquijahuana in 1548 ended the rebellion, enabling the consolidation of viceregal institutions and more stable colonial administration.
In closing, Prescott assesses the transformation from an indigenous empire to a Spanish colony, relating political outcomes to geography, resources, and administrative practice. He synthesizes testimony from chroniclers such as Cieza de León, Zarate, and Garcilaso de la Vega to compare perspectives on Inca institutions, conquest tactics, and colonial governance. The book underscores how internal Inca divisions, Spanish military organization, and royal intervention combined to shape events. It concludes with the establishment of lasting structures of rule and society in Peru, presenting the conquest as a sequence of decisions, conflicts, and reforms rather than a single decisive moment.
Historical Context
Set in the early to mid-sixteenth century, the narrative unfolds across the Andean highlands and Pacific littoral of the Inca realm, Tawantinsuyu, with its imperial center at Cuzco and provincial nodes like Quito and Tumebs. The book’s action circles through Cajamarca, Cuzco, and the nascent coastal capital later named Lima, tracing routes along the Qhapaq Ñan, the imperial road network. The temporal frame spans the late reign of Huayna Capac, the fratricidal war between Huáscar and Atahualpa, and the Spanish invasion beginning in 1532, extending to the consolidation of the Viceroyalty of Peru in the 1540s and the terminal suppression of the Neo-Inca state in 1572.
The Spanish intrusion occurred under the Habsburg monarch Charles V (Carlos I of Spain), amid Atlantic expansion shaped by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the Laws of Burgos (1512), and the Requerimiento (1513). Institutions like the Casa de la Contratación and the Council of the Indies (1524) orchestrated conquest, while firearms, cavalry, steel, and pathogens magnified Spanish advantages. Prescott situates events within this imperial framework, contrasting Castilian legal pretensions with frontier violence. He places the Peruvian campaign within transoceanic currents opened by Balboa’s sighting of the Pacific (1513) and Cortés’s conquest of Mexico (1519–1521), which furnished models, personnel, and expectations for Pizarro’s enterprise.
The Inca civil war (c. 1529–1532) followed the deaths of Huayna Capac and his heir Ninan Cuyuchi, likely from smallpox spreading southward before Spaniards arrived in force. Huáscar, based at Cuzco, faced Atahualpa, consolidating power around Quito under generals Chalcuchímac and Quizquiz. Atahualpa’s victory at Quipaipán near Cuzco in 1532 shattered Huáscar’s faction; Huáscar was captured, and the empire’s elite fractured. Prescott emphasizes how this internecine conflict weakened imperial cohesion, supplied the Spaniards with divided elites, and provided a context for alliances and information. In his account, the war’s devastation primed the shock of Cajamarca by eroding legitimacy and dispersing loyalists.
Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, and the cleric Hernando de Luque organized exploratory voyages from Panama in 1524 and 1526, probing Tumbes and Coaque and returning reports of a populous, wealthy highland empire. At Isla del Gallo in 1527, Pizarro’s “Famous Thirteen” chose to persevere, marking his reputation for audacity. The Capitulación de Toledo (1529) granted Pizarro titles, jurisdiction, and authority to conquer Peru, binding the enterprise to royal sanction and profit. Prescott uses these expeditions to explain the legal framework and rivalries that later erupted, stressing how competing claims and expectations sowed the seeds of civil wars among the conquerors.
The Spaniards established San Miguel de Piura in 1532, the first Spanish town in Peru, creating a logistical base before ascending to Cajamarca. They encountered Tumbes, the island of Puna, and coastal elites, then advanced along the Qhapaq Ñan toward the northern highlands. Pizarro’s force numbered under 200, with cavalry, a few cannon, and interpreters including Felipillo. This approach phase provided crucial reconnaissance, alliances, and psychological theater. Prescott threads eyewitness testimonies—especially Francisco de Xerez and Pedro Pizarro—to delineate escalating contact, misunderstandings, and calculated Spanish diplomacy that culminated in the fateful parley proposed at Cajamarca with Atahualpa.
On 16 November 1532 at Cajamarca, Pizarro lured Atahualpa into a seemingly peaceful audience in the plaza, where infantry, cavalry, and artillery lay concealed in ambush. Fray Vicente de Valverde presented a demand to accept Christian sovereignty; confusion over the book and authority precipitated the prearranged assault. The compact Spanish force, leveraging horses, steel, and noise, routed the unarmed imperial retinue and seized the Sapa Inca. Prescott devotes sustained attention to this set piece, comparing chronicles to reconstruct tactics, the role of Pedro de Candia’s artillery, and Hernando de Soto’s cavalry probes. He frames Cajamarca as the decisive rupture that transformed a negotiation into conquest.
Atahualpa, held prisoner, offered an immense ransom: a room in Cajamarca to be filled once with gold and twice with silver up to a line marked at his reach. Emissaries gathered plate, idols, and ornaments from Cuzco and other centers; the treasure was melted and distributed according to rank. Despite the ransom’s delivery, Atahualpa was tried and executed in July 1533, after a hurried proceeding alleging idolatry, fratricide, and conspiracy. Prescott scrutinizes the moral and legal pretenses of the trial, citing Las Casas, Xerez, and Garcilaso de la Vega to highlight inconsistencies and to question whether fear of Inca retaliation or greed drove the decision.
The aftermath of Cajamarca reshaped Andean politics. With the Sapa Inca dead, the Spaniards installed puppet claimants and mobilized factions among kurakas to secure supply and passage. The episode illustrated the asymmetry of warfare, the potency of spectacle, and the centrality of royal personhood in Andean governance. Prescott’s narrative—sober but vivid—treats Cajamarca as both military stratagem and moral watershed, arguing that the seizure, ransom, and execution condensed the paradoxes of Spanish imperialism: legalistic rhetoric masking opportunistic violence, piety entwined with plunder, and a small force leveraging divisions and symbols to dismantle an empire.
After leaving Cajamarca, Pizarro advanced into the southern highlands and entered Cuzco in November 1533 with native allies, notably from the Chachapoya and Cañari regions. The Spaniards seized temples, palaces, and warehouses, designating Manco Inca as a pliant sovereign. The occupation enabled the redistribution of encomiendas and the mapping of imperial storehouses. Prescott links the fall of Cuzco to the momentum produced at Cajamarca, portraying a fragile ascendancy built on alliance networks and strategic terror. He emphasizes how the city’s capture symbolized control over ritual and legitimacy while sowing the resentment that would fuel a vast Andean counteroffensive.
Manco Inca rebelled in 1536, orchestrating the Siege of Cuzco and coordinated assaults across the sierra. In May, tens of thousands besieged the city; Sacsayhuamán became the pivot of fighting. Spanish sallies, aided by indigenous auxiliaries, retook the fortress in brutal combat in which Juan Pizarro was mortally wounded. The siege lasted into 1537, spreading famine and fire before Manco withdrew to Vilcabamba. Prescott treats the siege as proof of enduring Inca logistical capacity and the limits of Spanish numbers. He uses chroniclers like Cieza de León to stress indigenous agency and the contingency of Spanish survival in the face of large-scale resistance.
Seeking a coastal base less exposed to highland insurrection, Pizarro founded the Ciudad de los Reyes (Lima) on 18 January 1535 near the Rimac River, with Callao as its port. The new city concentrated administrative, ecclesiastical, and commercial power, facilitating trans-Pacific and Atlantic exchange. Its cabildo orchestrated repartimientos, while roads linked it to Jauja and Cuzco. Prescott reads Lima’s foundation as strategic statecraft: anchoring Spanish presence near maritime supply and royal oversight. He underscores how the shift from highland to coast paralleled a transition from improvisational conquest to institutional governance, even as violence and factionalism persisted.
The encomienda system transferred indigenous labor and tribute to conquistadors, codified earlier in the Laws of Burgos (1512) and invoked through the Requerimiento. In Peru, encomenderos imposed burdens that collided with Andean ayllu structures and reciprocal obligations, while Christianization proceeded through parishes and doctrinas. The Crown’s New Laws (1542) sought to curtail encomiendas’ perpetuity and protect natives. Prescott interleaves policy with practice, contrasting decrees with frontier abuses. He invokes debates on justice to foreshadow later controversies, showing how moral claims—echoed by Las Casas—intersect in the narrative with concrete exactions that destabilized both indigenous communities and Spanish unity.
Rivalries between Pizarro and Almagro erupted after the conquest of Cuzco, culminating in the Battle of Las Salinas near Cuzco on 6 April 1538, where Almagro was defeated and later executed. Disputes over the Chilean enterprise and the boundaries of “Nueva Toledo” and “Nueva Castilla” sharpened personal animosities. On 26 June 1541, Almagristas assassinated Francisco Pizarro in his Lima palace. Prescott treats these civil wars as a second, internal conquest, demonstrating how fortune, honor, and legal ambiguities unraveled the coalition that had taken Peru. He uses these episodes to interrogate the corrosive effects of greed and the fragility of authority in a frontier polity.
The Crown established the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1542. Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela arrived in 1544 to enforce the New Laws, clashing with encomenderos led by Gonzalo Pizarro. Núñez Vela was defeated and killed at Añaquito near Quito on 18 January 1546. The Pacificador Pedro de la Gasca arrived in 1547, nullified parts of the New Laws to peel away support, and defeated Gonzalo Pizarro at Jaquijahuana (Xaquixahuana) near Cuzco on 9 April 1548, executing him thereafter. Prescott presents this sequence as a struggle to impose metropolitan sovereignty, reading it as the institutional taming of a conquest society driven by private interest.
After the 1536–1537 insurgency, a Neo-Inca polity endured in Vilcabamba under Manco Inca and his successors Sayri Túpac, Titu Cusi Yupanqui, and Túpac Amaru I. Negotiations and hostilities alternated until Viceroy Francisco de Toledo’s campaigns culminated in Vilcabamba’s fall and Túpac Amaru’s execution at Cuzco in 1572. Toledo’s reforms—reducciones, a visita general, and a reorganized mita—also mobilized labor for mining centers like Potosí, discovered in 1545, driving global silver flows. Prescott situates Vilcabamba’s extinction and Toledo’s system as the definitive close of the conquest era, juxtaposing persistent Andean sovereignty claims with the bureaucratic consolidation of empire.
Prescott’s portrait functions as political critique by exposing the disjunction between royal law and frontier practice, and by scrutinizing the moral calculus at Cajamarca, the ransom, and Atahualpa’s trial. He highlights how encomienda exactions, coerced conversions, and punitive campaigns contradicted Castilian claims of just war. Through comparative judgments—often citing Las Casas and contrasting testimonies—he condemns the instrumentalization of religion and the elasticity of legal forms. His attention to factional bloodshed among Spaniards underscores how unregulated ambition eroded legitimacy, suggesting that empire’s promise of order was compromised by predation and improvisation.
Social hierarchies and dispossessions are central to the book’s indictment. Prescott recounts the disruption of ayllus, the exploitation of labor drafts, and the violent appropriation of sacred spaces, while tracing class divides within the conquerors—hidalgos, adventurers, and royal officers—competing for spoils. He marks the Siege of Cuzco and the persistence of Vilcabamba as testimony to indigenous agency, while noting how the New Laws and viceroyal interventions inadequately redressed abuses. The work’s careful sourcing and balanced tone nevertheless conveys a clear censure of conquest greed, arbitrary justice, and racialized dominion, offering a historical anatomy of power that interrogates the ethical foundations of imperial rule.
Author Biography
William Hickling Prescott was a leading American historian of the nineteenth century, renowned for elegant narrative histories of Spain and the Spanish conquests in the Americas. Living from 1796 to 1859, he helped establish historical writing as a literary art in the United States while insisting on careful use of sources. His best-known works include The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, The History of the Conquest of Mexico, The History of the Conquest of Peru, and the unfinished History of the Reign of Philip II. Working under severe visual impairment, he fashioned a disciplined research method that won international readers and enduring critical respect.
Prescott’s formal education culminated at Harvard College, where an accident during his student years permanently damaged his sight. The impairment redirected his ambitions toward scholarship conducted largely at home, with concentrated study of European history and languages, especially Spanish. He read widely in classical and Enlightenment historians, drawing particular inspiration from Edward Gibbon’s narrative sweep and William Robertson’s balance of literary grace with source criticism. Rather than pursue an academic post, he chose the model of a gentleman scholar, committing himself to long preparation before publishing. This foundation—linguistic training, immersion in historiography, and patience—shaped the accuracy and tone that later distinguished his major works.
From the 1820s into the 1830s, Prescott assembled a vast research apparatus. He relied on secretaries and specialized writing devices to compensate for limited sight, dictated drafts, and organized extensive notes and bibliographies. He secured copies of manuscripts, chronicles, and rare printed books from libraries and private collections in Spain and elsewhere, aided by scholarly correspondence that broadened his access to sources. Careful cross-checking and copious annotation underpinned his narratives, while polished prose and character portraits made them widely readable. Although he wrote outside university institutions, his methods—document-based inquiry, transparent citations, and evaluative bibliographical essays—placed him at the forefront of professionalizing historical practice in the English-speaking world.
The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, published in the late 1830s, established Prescott’s reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. The work treated the consolidation of Spanish monarchy, the fall of Granada, statecraft, and the cultural and religious transformations that marked the period. Reviewers praised its command of sources and stylistic clarity, noting how Prescott balanced political narrative with attention to institutions and culture. The book’s success brought translations and a broad audience, affirming his decision to specialize in Spanish themes. It also set a template for his later studies: a strong narrative spine supported by documentary notes and reflective historiographical commentary.
Prescott followed with The History of the Conquest of Mexico and The History of the Conquest of Peru in the 1840s, works that cemented his fame. He drew on Spanish chroniclers and accessible Indigenous testimonies to reconstruct the Aztec and Inca worlds and the campaigns of Cortés and Pizarro. Readers admired the vivid scenes, psychological portraits, and clear explanations of complex societies and imperial ambitions. While modern scholars critique nineteenth-century assumptions present in these narratives, they also recognize his effort to assess non-European civilizations with seriousness for his time. The books became staples of Anglophone reading on the early modern Atlantic world and retained influence for generations.
In the 1850s Prescott turned to The History of the Reign of Philip II, a large-scale project addressing monarchy, empire, religion, and state power in the Spanish world. Volumes appeared during that decade, but the undertaking remained incomplete at his death. The work continued his practice of extensive annotation and bibliographical essays, engaging debates about governance, religious policy, and resistance in Europe and overseas. Critics again praised the elegance and scope of his narrative, while discussing his judgments on controversial institutions and figures. Even as archival research expanded beyond what he could access, his combination of synthesis, documentation, and literary craft sustained his standing among historians and general readers.
Prescott died in 1859, having transformed American historical writing through meticulous research adapted to physical limitations and a prose style that reached a wide public. His books are now read both as literary classics of nineteenth-century historiography and as early syntheses that spurred deeper archival work by later scholars. They influenced subsequent American narrative historians, who emulated his union of documentation with engaging storytelling. Although many conclusions have been revised by modern scholarship, his bibliographical rigor, attention to sources, and respect for historical complexity continue to be valued. Today, Prescott’s works stand as landmarks that introduced Spanish and Spanish-American history to broad English-speaking audiences.
History of the Conquest of Peru
Book 1
Chapter 4
Education—Quipus[3]-Astronomy-Agriculture—Aqueducts-Guano— Important Esculents
"Science was not intended for the people; but for those of generous blood. Persons of low degree are only puffed up by it, and rendered vain and arrogant. Neither should such meddle with the affairs of government; for this would bring high offices into disrepute, and cause detriment to the state.1 Such was the favorite maxim, often repeated, of Tupac Inca[6] Yupanqui[1], one of the most renowned of the Peruvian sovereigns. It may seem strange that such a maxim should ever have been proclaimed in the New World, where popular institutions have been established on a more extensive scale than was ever before witnessed; where government rests wholly on the people; and education—at least, in the great northern division of the continent—is mainly directed to qualify the people for the duties of government. Yet this maxim was strictly conformable to the genius of the Peruvian monarchy, and may serve as a key to its habitual policy; since, while it watched with unwearied solicitude over its subjects, provided for their physical necessities, was mindful of their morals, and showed, throughout, the affectionate concern of a parent for his children, it yet regarded them only as children, who were never to emerge from the state of pupilage, to act or to think for themselves, but whose whole duty was comprehended in the obligation of implicit obedience.
Such was the humiliating condition of the people under the Incas: while the numerous families of the blood royal enjoyed the benefit of all the light of education, which the civilization of the country could afford; and, long after the Conquest, the spots continued to be pointed out where the seminaries had existed for their instruction. These were placed under the care of the amautas[2], or "wise men," who engrossed the scanty stock of science—if science it could be called—possessed by the Peruvians, and who were the sole teachers of youth. It was natural that the monarch should take a lively interest in the instruction of the young nobility, his own kindred. Several of the Peruvian princes are said to have built their palaces in the neighborhood of the schools, in order that they might the more easily visit them and listen to the lectures of the amautas, which they occasionally reinforced by a homily of their own.2 In these schools, the royal pupils were instructed in all the different kinds of knowledge in which their teachers were versed, with especial reference to the stations they were to occupy in after-life. They studied the laws, and the principles of administering the government, in which many of them were to take part. They were initiated in the peculiar rites of their religion, most necessary to those who were to assume the sacerdotal functions. They learned also to emulate the achievements of their royal ancestors by listening to the chronicles compiled by the amautas. They were taught to speak their own dialect with purity and elegance; and they became acquainted with the mysterious science of the quipus, which supplied the Peruvians with the means of communicating their ideas to one another, and of transmitting them to future generations.3
The quipu was a cord about two feet long, composed of different colored threads tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of smaller threads were suspended in the manner of a fringe. The threads were of different colors and were tied into knots. The word quipu, indeed, signifies a knot. The colors denoted sensible objects; as, for instance, white represented silver, and yellow, gold. They sometimes also stood for abstract ideas. Thus, white signified peace, and red, war. But the quipus were chiefly used for arithmetical purposes. The knots served instead of ciphers, and could be combined in such a manner as to represent numbers to any amount they required. By means of these they went through their calculations with great rapidity, and the Spaniards who first visited the country bear testimony to their accuracy.4
Officers were established in each of the districts, who, under the title of quipucamayus, Or "keepers of the quipus," were required to furnish the government with information on various important matters. One had charge of the revenues, reported the quantity of raw material distributed among the laborers, the quality and quantity of the fabrics made from it, and the amount of stores, of various kinds, paid into the royal magazines. Another exhibited the register of births and deaths, the marriages, the number of those qualified to bear arms, and the like details in reference to the population of the kingdom. These returns were annually forwarded to the capital, where they were submitted to the inspection of officers acquainted with the art of deciphering these mystic records. The government was thus provided with a valuable mass of statistical information, and the skeins of many-colored threads, collected and carefully preserved, constituted what might be called the national archives.5
But, although the quipus sufficed for all the purposes of arithmetical computation demanded by the Peruvians, they were incompetent to represent the manifold ideas and images which are expressed by writing, Even here, however, the invention was not without its use. For, independently of the direct representation of simple objects, and even of abstract ideas, to a very limited extent, as above noticed, it afforded great help to the memory by way of association. The peculiar knot or color, in this way, suggested what it could not venture to represent; in the same manner-to borrow the homely illustration of an old writer—as the number of the Commandment calls to mind the Commandment itself. The quipus, thus used, might be regarded as the Peruvian system of mnemonics.
Annalists were appointed in each of the principal communities, whose business it was to record the most important events which occurred in them. Other functionaries of a higher character, usually the amautas, were intrusted with the history of the empire, and were selected to chronicle the great deeds of the reigning Inca, or of his ancestors.6 The narrative, thus concocted, could be communicated only by oral tradition; but the quipus served the chronicler to arrange the incidents [1q]with method, and to refresh his memory. The story, once treasured up in the mind, was indelibly impressed there by frequent repetition. It was repeated by the amauta to his pupils, and in this way history, conveyed partly by oral tradition, and partly by arbitrary signs, was handed down from generation to generation, with sufficient discrepancy of details, but with a general conformity of outline to the truth.
The Peruvian quipus were, doubtless, a wretched substitute for that beautiful contrivance, the alphabet, which, employing a few simple characters as the representatives of sounds, instead of ideas, is able to convey the most delicate shades of thought that ever passed through the mind of man. The Peruvian invention, indeed, was far below that of the hieroglyphics, even below the rude picture-writing of the Aztecs; for the latter art, however incompetent to convey abstract ideas, could depict sensible objects with tolerable accuracy. It is evidence of the total ignorance in which the two nations remained of each other, that the Peruvians should have borrowed nothing of the hieroglyphical system of the Mexicans, and this, notwithstanding that the existence of the maguey[7] plant agave, in South America might have furnished them with the very material used by the Aztecs for the construction of their maps.7
It is impossible to contemplate without interest the struggles made by different nations, as they emerge from barbarism, to supply themselves with some visible symbols of thought—that mysterious agency by which the mind of the individual may be put in communication with the minds of a whole community. The want of such a symbol is itself the greatest impediment to the progress of civilization. For what is it but to imprison the thought, which has the elements of immortality, within the bosom of its author, or of the small circle who come in contact with him, instead of sending it abroad to give light to thousands, and to generations yet unborn! Not only is such a symbol an essential element of civilization, but it may be assumed as the very criterion of civilization; for the intellectual advancement of a people will keep pace pretty nearly with its facilities for intellectual communication.
Yet we must be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours. We know the effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear constant testimony to the adroitness and accuracy of the Peruvians in this. Their skill is not more surprising than the facility with which habit enables us to master the contents of a printed page, comprehending thousands of separate characters, by a single glance, as it were, though each character must require a distinct recognition by the eye, and that, too, without breaking the chain of thought in the reader's mind. We must not hold the invention of the quipus too lightly, when we reflect that they supplied the means of calculation demanded for the affairs of a great nation, and that, however insufficient, they afforded no little help to what aspired to the credit of literary composition.
The office of recording the national annals was not wholly confined to the amautas. It was assumed in part by the haravecs, or poets, who selected the most brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca.8 In this manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been borne down the tide of rustic melody to later generations.
Yet history may be thought not to gain much by this alliance with poetry; for the domain of the poet extends over an ideal realm peopled with the shadowy forms of fancy, that bear little resemblance to the rude realities of life. The Peruvian annals may be deemed to show somewhat of the effects of this union, since there is a tinge of the marvellous spread over them down to the very latest period, which, like a mist before the reader's eye, makes it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.
The poet found a convenient instrument for his purposes in the beautiful Quichua dialect. We have already seen the extraordinary measures taken by the Incas for propagating their language throughout their empire. Thus naturalized in the remotest provinces, it became enriched by a variety of exotic words and idioms, which, under the influence of the Court and of poetic culture, if I may so express myself, was gradually blended, like some finished mosaic made up of coarse and disjointed materials, into one harmonious whole. The Quichua became the most comprehensive and various, as well as the most elegant, of the South American dialects.9
Besides the compositions already noticed, the Peruvians, it is said, showed some talent for theatrical exhibitions; not those barren pantomimes which, addressed simply to the eye, have formed the amusement of more than one rude nation. The Peruvian pieces aspired to the rank of dramatic compositions, sustained by character and dialogue, founded sometimes on themes of tragic interest, and at others on such as, from their light and social character, belong to comedy.10 Of the execution of these pieces we have now no means of judging. It was probably rude enough, as befitted an unformed people. But, whatever may have been the execution, the mere conception of such an amusement is a proof of refinement that honorably distinguishes the Peruvian from the other American races, whose pastime was war, or the ferocious sports that reflect the image of it.
The intellectual character of the Peruvians, indeed, seems to have been marked rather by a tendency to refinement than by those hardier qualities which insure success in the severer walks of science. In these they were behind several of the semi-civilized nations of the New World. They had some acquaintance with geography, so far as related to their own empire, which was indeed extensive; and they constructed maps with lines raised on them to denote the boundaries and localities, on a similar principle with those formerly used by the blind. In astronomy, they appear to have made but moderate proficiency. They divided the year into twelve lunar months, each of which, having its own name, was distinguished by its appropriate festival.11 They had, also, weeks; but of what length, whether of seven, nine, or ten days, is uncertain. As their lunar year would necessarily fall short of the true time, they rectified their calendar by solar observations made by means of a number of cylindrical columns raised on the high lands round Cuzco, which served them for taking azimuths; and, by measuring their shadows, they ascertained the exact times of the solstices. The period of the equinoxes they determined by the help of a solitary pillar, or gnomon, placed in the centre of a circle, which was described in the area of the great temple, and traversed by a diameter that was drawn from east to west. When the shadows were scarcely visible under the noontide rays of the sun, they said that "the god sat with all his light upon the column." 12 Quito which lay immediately under the equator, where the vertical rays of the sun threw no shadow at noon, was held in especial veneration as the favored abode of the great deity. The period of the equinoxes was celebrated by public rejoicings. The pillar was crowned by the golden chair of the Sun, and, both then and at the solstices, the columns were hung with garlands, and offerings of flowers and fruits were made, while high festival was kept throughout the empire. By these periods the Peruvians regulated their religious rites and ceremonial, and prescribed the nature of their agricultural labors. The year itself took its departure from the date of the winter solstice.13
This meagre account embraces nearly all that has come down to us of Peruvian astronomy. It may seem strange that a nation, which had proceeded thus far in its observations, should have gone no farther; and that, notwithstanding its general advance in civilization, it should in this science have fallen so far short, not only of the Mexicans, but of the Muyscas, inhabiting the same elevated regions of the great southern plateau with themselves. These latter regulated their calendar on the same general plan of cycles and periodical series as the Aztecs, approaching yet nearer to the system pursued by the people of Asia.14
It might have been expected that the Incas, the boasted children of the Sun, would have made a particular study of the phenomena of the heavens, and have constructed a calendar on principles as scientific as that of their semi-civilized neighbors. One historian, indeed, assures us that they threw their years into cycles of ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, and that by these cycles they regulated their chronology.15 But this assertion—not improbable in itself—rests on a writer but little gifted with the spirit of criticism, and is counter-balanced by the silence of every higher and earlier authority, as well as by the absence of any monument, like those found among other American nations, to attest the existence of such a calendar. The inferiority of the Peruvians may be, perhaps, in part explained by the fact of their priesthood being drawn exclusively from the body of the Incas, a privileged order of nobility, who had no need, by the assumption of superior learning, to fence themselves round from the approaches of the vulgar. The little true science possessed by the Aztec priest supplied him with a key to unlock the mysteries of the heavens, and the false system of astrology which he built upon it gave him credit as a being who had something of divinity in his own nature. But the Inca noble was divine by birth. The illusory study of astrology, so captivating to the unenlightened mind, engaged no share of his attention. The only persons in Peru, who claimed the power of reading the mysterious future, were the diviners, men who, combining with their pretensions some skill in the healing art, resembled the conjurors found among many of the Indian tribes. But the office was held in little repute, except among the lower classes, and was abandoned to those whose age and infirmity disqualified them for the real business of life.16
The Peruvians had knowledge of one or two constellations, and watched the motions of the planet Venus, to which, as we have seen, they dedicated altars. But their ignorance of the first principles of astronomical science is shown by their ideas of eclipses, which, they supposed, denoted some great derangement of the planet; and when the moon labored under one of these mysterious infirmities, they sounded their instruments, and filled the air with shouts and lamentations, to rouse her from her lethargy. Such puerile conceits as these form a striking contrast with the real knowledge of the Mexicans, as displayed in their hieroglyphical maps, in which the true cause of this phenomenon is plainly depicted.17
But, if less successful in exploring the heavens, the Incas must be admitted to have surpassed every other American race in their dominion over the earth. Husbandry was pursued by them on principles that may be truly called scientific. It was the basis of their political institutions. Having no foreign commerce, it was agriculture that furnished them with the means of their internal exchanges, their subsistence, and their revenues. We have seen their remarkable provisions for distributing the land in equal shares among the people, while they required every man, except the privileged orders, to assist in its cultivation. The Inca himself did not disdain to set the example. On one of the great annual festivals, he proceeded to the environs of Cuzco, attended by his Court, and, in the presence of all the people, turned up the earth with a golden plough—or an instrument that served as such—thus consecrating the occupation of the husbandman as one worthy to be followed by the Children of the Sun.18
The patronage of the government did not stop with this cheap display of royal condescension, but was shown in the most efficient measures for facilitating the labors of the husbandman. Much of the country along the sea-coast suffered from want of water, as little or no rain fell there, and the few streams, in their short and hurried course from the mountains, exerted only a very limited influence on the wide extent of territory. The soil, it is true, was, for the most part, sandy and sterile; but many places were capable of being reclaimed, and, indeed, needed only to be properly irrigated to be susceptible of extraordinary production. To these spots water was conveyed by means of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, executed on a noble scale. They consisted of large slabs of freestone nicely fitted together without cement, and discharged a volume of water sufficient, by means of latent ducts or sluices, to moisten the lands in the lower level, through which they passed. Some of these aqueducts were of great length. One that traversed the district of Condesuyu measured between four and five hundred miles. They were brought from some elevated lake or natural reservoir in the heart of the mountains, and were fed at intervals by other basins which lay in their route along the slopes of the sierra. In this descent, a passage was sometimes to be opened through rocks—and this without the aid of iron tools; impracticable mountains were to be turned; rivers and marshes to be crossed; in short, the same obstacles were to be encountered as in the construction of their mighty roads. But the Peruvians seemed to take pleasure in wrestling with the difficulties of nature. Near Caxamarca, a tunnel is still visible, which they excavated in the mountains, to give an outlet to the waters of a lake, when these rose to a height in the rainy season that threatened the country with inundation.19
Most of these beneficent works of the Incas were suffered to go to decay by their Spanish conquerors. In some spots, the waters are still left to flow in their silent, subterraneous channels, whose windings and whose sources have been alike unexplored. Others, though partially dilapidated, and closed up with rubbish and the rank vegetation of the soil, still betray their course by occasional patches of fertility. Such are the remains in the valley of Nasca, a fruitful spot that lies between long tracts of desert; where the ancient water-courses of the Incas, measuring four or five feet in depth by three in width, and formed of large blocks of uncemented masonry, are conducted from an unknown distance.
The greatest care was taken that every occupant of the land through which these streams passed should enjoy the benefit of them. The quantity of water alloted to each was prescribed by law; and royal overseers superintended the distribution, and saw that it was faithfully applied to the irrigation of the ground.20
The Peruvians showed a similar spirit of enterprise in their schemes for introducing cultivation into the mountainous parts of their domain. Many of the hills, though covered with a strong soil, were too precipitous to be tilled. These they cut into terraces, faced with rough stone, diminishing in regular gradation towards the summit; so that, while the lower strip, or anden, as it was called by the Spaniards, that belted round the base of the mountain, might comprehend hundreds of acres, the upper-most was only large enough to accommodate a few rows of Indian corn.21 Some of the eminences presented such a mess of solid rock, that, after being hewn into terraces, they were obliged to be covered deep with earth, before they could serve the purpose of the husbandman. With such patient toil did the Peruvians combat the formidable obstacles presented by the face of their country! Without the use of tools or the machinery familiar to the European, each individual could have done little; but acting in large masses, and under a common direction, they were enabled by indefatigable perseverance to achieve results, to have attempted which might have filled even the European with dismay.22
In the same spirit of economical husbandry which redeemed the rocky sierra from the curse of sterility, they dug below the arid soil of the valleys, and sought for a stratum where some natural moisture might be found. These excavations, called by the Spaniards hoyas, or "pits," were made on a great scale, comprehending frequently more than an acre, sunk to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and fenced round within by a wall of adobes, or bricks baked in the sun. The bottom of the excavation, well prepared by a rich manure of the sardines—a small fish obtained in vast quantities along the coast—was planted with some kind or grain or vegetable.23
The Peruvian farmers were well acquainted with the different kinds of manures, and made large use of them; a circumstance rare in the rich lands of the tropics, and probably not elsewhere practised by the rude tribes of America. They made great use of guano, the valuable deposit of sea-fowl, that has attracted so much attention, of late, from the agriculturists both of Europe and of our own country, and the stimulating and nutritious properties of which the Indians perfectly appreciated. This was found in such immense quantities on many of the little islands along the coast, as to have the appeaarnce of lofty hills, which, covered with a white saline incrustation, led the Conquerors to give them the name of the sierra nevada, or "snowy mountains."
The Incas took their usual precautions for securing the benefits of this important article to the husbandman. They assigned the small islands on the coast to the use of the respective districts which lay adjacent to them. When the island was large, it was distributed among several districts, and the boundaries for each were clearly defined. All encroachment on the rights of another was severely punished. And they secured the preservation of the fowl by penalties as stern as those by which the Norman tyrants of England protected their own game. No one was allowed to set foot on the island during the season for breeding, under pain of death; and to kill the birds at any time was punished in the like manner.24
With this advancement in agricultural science, the Peruvians might be supposed to have had some knowledge of the plough, in such general use among the primitive nations of the eastern continent. But they had neither the iron ploughshare of the Old World, nor had they animals for draught, which, indeed, were nowhere found in the New. The instrument which they used was a strong, sharp-pointed stake, traversed by a horizontal piece, ten or twelve inches from the point, on which the ploughman might set his foot and force it into the ground. Six or eight strong men were attached by ropes to the stake, and dragged it forcibly along—pulling together, and keeping time as they moved by chanting their national songs, in which they were accompanied by the women who followed in their-train, to break up the sods with their rakes. The mellow soil offered slight resistance; and the laborer., by long practice, acquired a dexterity which enabled him to turn up the ground to the requisite depth with astonishing facility. This substitute for the plough was but a clumsy contrivance; yet it is curious as the only specimen of the kind among the American aborigines, and was perhaps not much inferior to the wooden instrument introduced in its stead by the European conquerors .25
It was frequently the policy of the Incas, after providing a deserted tract with the means for irrigation, and thus fitting it for the labors of the husbandman, to transplant there a colony of mitimaes, who brought it under cultivation by raising the crops best suited to the soil. While the peculiar character and capacity of the lands were thus consulted, a means of exchange of the different products was afforded to the neighboring provinces, which, from the formation of the country, varied much more than usual within the same limits. To facilitate these agricultural exchanges, fairs were instituted, which took place three times a month in some of the most populous places, where, as money was unknown, a rude kind of commerce was kept up by the barter of their respective products. These fairs afforded so many holidays for the relaxation of the industrious laborer.26
Such were the expedients adopted by the Incas for the improvement of their territory; and, although imperfect, they must be allowed to show an acquaintance with the principles of agricultural science, that gives them some claim to the rank of a civilized people. Under their patient and discriminating culture, every inch of good soil was tasked to its greatest power of production; while the most-unpromising spots were compelled to contribute something to the subsistence of the people. Everywhere the land teemed with evidence of agricultural wealth, from the smiling valleys along the coast to the terraced steeps of the sierra, which, rising into pyramids of verdure, glowed with all the splendors of tropical vegetation.
The formation of the country was particularly favorable, as already remarked, to an infinite variety of products, not so much from its extent as from its various elevations, which, more remarkable, even, than those in Mexico, comprehend every degree of latitude from the equator to the polar regions. Yet, though the temperature changes in this region with the degree of elevation, it remains nearly the same in the same spots throughout the year; and the inhabitant feels none of those grateful vicissitudes of season which belong to the temperate latitudes of the globe. Thus, while the summer lies in full power on the burning regions of the palm and the cocoa-tree that fringe the borders of the ocean, the broad surface of the table-land blooms with the freshness of perpetual spring, and the higher summits of the Cordilleras are white with everlasting winter.
The Peruvians turned this fixed variety of climate, if I may so say, to the best account by cultivating the productions appropriate to each; and they particularly directed their attention to those which afforded the most nutriment to man. Thus, in the lower level were to be found the cassavatree and the banana, that bountiful plant, which seems to have relieved man from the primeval curse—if it were not rather a blessing—of toiling for his sustenance.27 As the banana faded from the landscape, a good substitute was found in the maize, the great agricultural staple of both the northern and southern divisions of the American continent; and which, after its exportation to the Old World, spread so rapidly there, as to suggest the idea of its being indigenous to it.28 The Peruvians were well acquainted with the different modes of preparing this useful vegetable, though it seems they did not use it for bread, except at festivals; and they extracted a sort of honey from the stalk, and made an intoxicating liquor from the fermented grain, to which, like the Aztecs, they were immoderately addicted.29
The temperate climate of the table-land furnished them with the maguey, agave Americana, many of the extraordinary qualities of which they comprehended, though not its most important one of affording a material for paper. Tobacco, too, was among the products of this elevated region. Yet the Peruvians differed from every other Indian nation to whom it was known, by using it only for medicinal purposes, in the form of snuff.30 They may have found a substitute for its narcotic qualities in the coco (Erythroxylum Peruvianurn), or cuca, as called by the natives. This is a shrub which grows to the height of a man. The leaves when gathered are dried in the sun, and, being mixed with a little lime, form a preparation for chewing, much like the betel-leaf of the East.31 With a small supply of this cuca in his pouch, and a handful of roasted maize, the Peruvian Indian of our time performs his wearisome journeys, day ,after day, without fatigue, or, at least, without complaint. Even food the most invigorating is less grateful to him than his loved narcotic. Under the Incas, it is said to have been exclusively reserved for the noble orders. If so, the people gained one luxury by the Conquest; and, after that period, it was so extensively used by them, that this article constituted a most important item of the colonial revenue of Spain.32 Yet, with the soothing charms of an opiate, this weed so much vaunted by the natives, when used to excess, is said to be attended with all the mischievous effects of habitual intoxication.33
Higher up on the slopes of the Cordilleras, beyond the limits of the maize and of the quinoa—a grain bearing some resemblance to rice, and largely cultivated by the Indians—was to be found the potato, the introduction of which into Europe has made an era in the history of agriculture. Whether indigenous to Peru, or imported from the neighboring country of Chili, it formed the great staple of the more elevated plains, under the Incas, and its culture was continued to a height in the equatorial regions which reached many thousand feet above the limits of perpetual snow in the temperate latitudes of Europe.34 Wild specimens of the vegetable might be seen still higher, springing up spontaneously amidst the stunted shrubs that clothed the lofty sides of the Cordilleras till these gradually subsided into the mosses and the short yellow grass: pajonal, which, like a golden carpet, was unrolled around the base of the mighty cones, that rose far into the regions of eternal silence, covered with the snows of centuries.35
Book 1
Chapter 5
Peruvian Sheep—Great Hunts—Manufactures—Mechanical Skill— Architecture—Concluding Reflections
A Nation which had made such progress in agriculture might be reasonably expected to have made, also, some proficiency in the mechanical arts—especially when, as in the case of the Peruvians, their agricultural economy demanded in itself no inconsiderable degree of mechanical skill. Among most nations, progress in manufactures has been found to have an intimate connection with the progress of husbandry. Both arts are directed to the same great object of supplying the necessaries, the comforts, or, in a more refined condition of society, the luxuries of life; and when the one is brought to a perfection that infers a certain advance in civilization, the other must naturally find a corresponding development under the increasing demands and capacities of such a state. The subjects of the Incas, in their patient and tranquil devotion to the more humble occupations of industry which bound them to their native soil, bore greater resemblance to the Oriental nations, as the Hindoos and Chinese, than they bore to the members of the great Anglo-Saxon family whose hardy temper has driven them to seek their fortunes on the stormy ocean, and to open a commerce with the most distant regions of the globe. The Peruvians, though lining a long extent of sea-coast, had no foreign commerce.
They had peculiar advantages for domestic manufacture in a material incomparably superior to anything possessed by the other races of the Western continent. They found a good substitute for linen in a fabric which, like the Aztecs, they knew how to weave from the tough thread of the maguey. Cotton grew luxuriantly on the low, sultry level of the coast, and furnished them with a clothing suitable to the milder latitudes of the country. But from the llama and the kindred species of Peruvian sheep they obtained a fleece adapted to the colder climate of the tableland, "more estimable," to quote the language of a well-informed writer, "than the down of the Canadian beaver, the fleece of the brebis des Calmoucks, or of the Syrian goat." 1
