Enemies and Ancestors, the story of the first Incas: Continuity in Andean Ideological tradition from Nasca to Inca

Paul R. Steele

Introduction

In August 2000 three days of papers were presented at the International Tiahuanaco/Huari Conference at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima. Recent archaeological discoveries included ceramics and textiles with wonderfully complex designs of staff-wielding anthropomorphs. The majority of papers used this evidence for analyses about Tiahuanaco/Huari interaction and influence with other cultures, local and regional, or the chronology (or "timeline") of social/political state development. Despite the beautiful iconography in such vivid colour few arguments concentrated solely on the images themselves; on what the artists thought they were creating when they painted and wove these designs. The imbalance was partially redressed by Anita Cook (Identidad y Género en las imágenes Huari), Constantino Manuel Torres (Iconografía de la parafernalia alucinógenic de los Andes Surcentrales) and Krzysztof Makowski (¿Convención figurativa o personalidad?: Las deidades frontales de báculos en las iconografías Wari y Tiwanaku).

Makowski argued that Tiahuanaco/Huari staff-wielding figures could represent deities, proto-human community ancestors, or a local curaca chief. The individual identity, whether it was carved on to the Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco or on much smaller media, depended on the context in which they were created. So a local chief might choose to depict his community ancestor while a high-ranking priest at Tiahuanaco might identify the image with a universal deity.

Makowski utilised colonial written accounts, specifically descriptions of the Punchao, the Inca image/deity of the day that resided in the Temple of the Sun in Cusco. For studies like Makowski's that are interested in cultural heritage, ethnohistoric descriptions are used as starting points about that culture. The drawback for the use of sixteenth century narratives is obviously temporal. While Huari/Tiahuanaco imagery was undoubtedly accompanied by stories that told of primordial deities and the coming of founding ancestors, around five-hundred years separate the decline of this rich iconography from Spanish written accounts. It is widely suggested that Inca Cusco culture was rooted in the traditions Tiahuanaco/Huari and can be traced back further to the earlier coastal cultures of Nasca and Paracas (Zuidema 1972: 35; Rostworowski 1988: 21-24). However the use of ethnohistoric sources to explain earlier Andean cultures frequently provokes hostility from Andean scholars today.

In identifying similar imagery with different types of characters, Makowski's approach naturally lends itself to a specific aspect of Andean culture: the identification of deep-seated expressions of logical or structural thinking. In particular, terminology based on groups of three provided a theoretical and abstract elaboration of Andean society expressed in narratives (Urbano 1979, 1987; Rostworowski 1996; Zuidema 1964, 1982). The best known example involves the logical prestige categories Collana, Payan and Cayao that divided the system of shrines around Inca Cusco into a hierarchy based on groups of three. Other examples of triadic categories can be inferred such as narratives describing the Inca and Chanca armies that were divided into three divisions before battle. Niles suggests that the threefold division could be the formalised memory of a famous battle, although this structuring device does inhibit the identification of real historical events (Niles 1999: 44).

For Zuidema the triadic structures found in ethnohistoric sources are most meaningful in terms of underlying Andean ideology and the interrelationships between these categories. That this pattern of thought can be traced back to pre-Inca Andean cultures was also explored by Zuidema more than thirty years ago (1972). Zuidema focused in particular on one large urn from the Huari culture (AD 550-1000) and suggested the continuity of Andean hierarchical categories and ideological themes in the iconography from earlier Nasca culture (AD 50-600). This paper will summarise Zuidema's identification of ideological tradition traced through Hauri and Nasca art and into colonial ethnohistoric sources. These underlying ideological structures are then reapplied to a particular episode from Inca history: the stories told to Spanish chroniclers about the coming of the Inca ancestors and the arrival of the first Inca in Cusco. In particular, attention is directed to the ideological base for governing. This includes beliefs surrounding ancestors who are located in the Under or Inner world and traditional Andean expressions that legitimised the territorial rights to conquered land and its people. This will attempt to show that the Inca stories of origin, recorded in the sixteenth century, contained deep-rooted aspects of Andean structural thought that can be traced back to pre-Inca cultures.1

Continuity in Andean ideology: examples from Huari and Nasca art

Zuidema focused on a Huari urn painted on two opposing sides, held in the Regional Museum of Ica [Figs.1-2] and a smaller Nasca pot, that was held in the Gothenburg Ethnographic Museum (now Museum of World Culture) 2

The Huari urn is one of three similar examples that Menzel originally classified as Atarco style that was i nfluenced by earlier Nasca style from the same region (Menzel 1964: 49). The urn probably dates to Middle Huari (1B-2A; ca. A.D. 800) and was most likely a high-status object not for everyday use (Anita Cook: personal communication, May 2001).

The Huari example shows one centrally positioned and frontal figure that is the hawk-deity, the Inca symbol of dominance. Zuidema suggests this represents the king who holds two staffs in his hands. Above and detached from the staffs are two profile faces that are his sons. All three faces have human eyes and the profile face to the left includes the same grey-coloured eye as the central figure. Zuidema compared the king's elaborate collar to descriptions of actual feather collars as part of royal dress called tamta/tanta. The profile faces beneath the collar are comparable to subject peoples who represent the conquered element.

Zuidema identifies an interrelationship of the three faces consisting of a triad of the chief and his two sons and also a separate triad structure of chief, his sons and the four times two faces on the shirt. The opposite side of the urn shows a corresponding triad that is located in the Inner world. Here the central figure is enclosed by two serpents that oppose the king and two profile sons. The four monkey-like animals oppose the eight (two times four) profile faces. Both deity and serpents have split eyes that are non-human attributes and separate them from the king and his two sons. Zuidema suggests that the Inner world deity, the two serpents and four monkeys are also differentiated by their canine teeth. In fact the two sons also appear to exhibit the same canine teeth.

Zuidema compared the triad of figures to ethnohistoric sources that identified a threefold hierarchy of political functions. For instance the Inca king, Pachacuti has two principal sons Topa Inca and Amaru Tupac. Pachacuti as ruler and Tupac Yupanqui who represents the defenders of Inca territory together relate to the ruling Incas. Amaru Tupac is interested in agriculture and the low-class support group of farmers. He mediates between this group and the Inca. This associates Amaru Tupac with the defeated population.3 Zuidema identifies these three functions with three classes of animals: the hawk or more specifically the small coriquenque is associated with the ruling class; the eagle is a symbol of war; while felines, condors and serpents are symbols of the Inner world and of fertility. Amaru Tupac is linked to this third group through the description of his birth when dragons emerged from erupting volcanoes (Pachacuti Yamqui 1993 [1613, fol.12v.]: 224). The association of serpents may also explain the snake-like design around the eye of the right profile face.

To understand the interrelationship of these opposing triads more fully, Zuidema analysed an earlier Nasca pot. This includes the same structure although the elements that are detached on the Huari urn, are incorporated into one image on the Nasca example. On the Nasca pot a central figure is dressed in shirt and collar with an elaborate head-dress. Its right hand holds two humans, one of whom holds a weapon. These three figures have the same head ornament. Zuidema suggests the central and two right-hand figures correspond to the king and his two sons on the Huari urn. The central Nasca figure holds a solitary upturned figure in its left hand that is interpreted as a trophy head symbolising the conquered population. This figure corresponds to the eight profile faces on the Huari king's shirt. The Nasca example also includes the Subterranean deity, that here hangs on the mouth of the principal deity. Its face with large eyes is the Oculate Being that is traced back to late Paracas art and is identified later in Nasca art with the killer whale, the God of the Ocean. This deity also displays two long protruding serpent-tongues with animals attached.

Zuidema interpreted this imagery in terms of ethnohisoric information about ancestorship and the claims of founding ancestors over conquered territory. From idolatry sources Zuidema notes that the conquering chief was required to have the slain body of a defeated chief in his possession in order to legitimise his claim to conquered territory. The conquered chief was then claimed by the victor as his own ancestor and first occupant of the land. Thus the position of father represented the conquered population. Zuidema does not provide bibliographical references, but chronicler sources do describe the capture of enemy idols. For instance Polo de Ondegardo discovered the principal idol from the province of Andahuaylas, i.e. the Chancas, that was interred alongside that of Pachacuti Inca. This Inca had defeated the Chancas in battle and ordered the idol [ancestor?] be placed beside him in the temple Totocache (Polo de Ondegardo 1916 [1571]: 97). Rostworowski also notes that it was customary for the conqueror to appropriate the idols of the defeated enemies that were subsequently passed on as an heirloom among the panaca descendants (Rostworowski 1988: 52).

Zuidema also suggests that Andean ancestors represented the principal figure in a triadic structure. For instance central-highland idolatry sources described the local community ancestor as a lithified stone ancestor accompanied by two sons that constitute a triadic structure of the father and two sons, one primary and one secondary. For rituals to the ancestors in Inca Cusco, the king was accompanied by two wives who represented the Inca's primary and secondary sons. In addition the royal Inca mummies were kept temporarily in the Temple of the Sun towards the confluence of the two small rivers that bounded the ceremonial core of Cusco. On the Huari urn, Zuidema suggests the two serpents that enclose the deity represent this place. This same structure is represented on the Nasca pot by the two protruding tongues and attached animals.

The narrative tradition of Inca Origins: Structural and Ideological Antecedents Undoubtedly the tradition surrounding founding ancestors was an important aspect of Andean ideology. To understand more fully the connection between ancestors and the tradition of legitimacy we will look at the narratives of the Inca ancestors recorded by Spanish chroniclers from the descendants of Inca nobility in Cusco. This tradition is based on two separate stories: a narrative of six to eight siblings consisting of four male Ayars and their sister/wives, Mamas, who emerged out of their pacarina, a cave and journeyed to Cusco leading to the installation of the first Inca king, Manco Capac. An alternative narrative tradition describes the boy Manco Capac who wears sheets of silver and a metallic diadem on his head. This reflects the sunlight and convinces the people to accept him as the son of the Sun. This version of Inca origins is sometimes known as the Shining Mantle story. Of particular interest are possible Andean structures that both stories were based upon. Following closely the words and actions of the Inca ancestors, it will be suggested that the two apparently different traditions may actually be based on the same deep-rooted ideological and structural traditions identified by Zuidema in pre-Inca art.

The Inca story is probably the best known Andean myth of origin and certainly one of the best documented. The Inca story shares many common themes with fragmentary ethnohistoric accounts describing the actions of regional ancestors. Founding ancestors were believed to have first established themselves on the land and allowed the living to make ancestral claims to those resources. Thus after emerging from their places of origin, the ancestors carried soil from their natal homeland looking to match this in foreign lands or tested the ground with a staff. They brought their own crops to cultivate and were credited with agricultural innovations to sustain those crops such as irrigation canals and terraced fields. In addition, founding ancestors were assumed to have metamorphosed into stone. As stone guardians of towns and fields, they were physical and visible reminders that reinforced community rights to that land.

The Inca origin tradition includes other forms that legitimised Inca rule. Betanzos' informants may have implied that these rights were bound up with the physical construction of Cusco. Thus after arriving in Cusco only the ancestor siblings constructed buildings "without allowing the people of Alcavicça to help, even though these people wanted to help" (Betanzos 1987 [1551-1557, prt.1, chap.4]: 20).4 Rather less subtle were descriptions of Manco and subsequent Incas as descended from the Sun. Thus the Incas wear the metal that represented the Sun, in the form of golden ear-plugs and a silver diadem that reflects the golden sunlight. The account of the Quipucamayocs (1542/1608) actually presents divine ancestorship as a joke that turns into an elaborate hoax.5 In fact the Inca relationship to the Sun was probably an important element of imperial strategy that marked the first Incas apart from servile ethnic groups.

The Inca origin tradition of the Shining Mantle suggests the Inca ancestors gained a foot-hold in the Cusco Valley through trickery and propaganda. Messengers spread the news of Manco's arrival and his resplendent metallic attire convinces the awe-struck populace of his divine ancestry. This tradition also includes two protagonists. Guaman Poma describes Mama Huaco as wife and mother to Manco Capac and also the nurse Pillco Ziza who looks after the young heir in the cave of Pacaritambo for two years before his accession (Guaman Poma 1980 [1615]: 61). Montesinos also describes Mama Ciuaco [Huaco] as one of two sisters who plot to install her son as Inca. The Quipucamayocs of Vaca de Castro describe two male priests who raise the young Manco and journey to Cusco with "ten or twelve others". In this tradition there is thus a structure of two helpers and one principal.

This structure applies elsewhere in the Quipucamayoc account. The two priests are responsible for the portable stone idol of Manco's father. It is not clear whether the stone object could have represented a small family heirloom (conopa), a household god (chanca), or the mummified remains of the father. The idol is carried to the hill that is subsequently named Huanacauri. Here a temple and tabernacle is constructed for the idol that becomes the focus of an oracular shrine. Later the idol is taken to surrounding towns to help persuade the people to accept Manco as their overlord (Vaca de Castro 1920 [1542/1608]: 7-12). So here a stone idol that represents Manco's immediate ancestor is used to help legitimise his claims.

To understand the possible underlying structures it is necessary to look closely at the Ayar/Mama sibling tradition. For this narrative, an Ayar, Auca or Cachi is converted into stone on the site of the future Temple of the Sun. Information about which Ayar is lithified in Cusco is ambiguous. Some scholars cite Ayar Cachi because he is described as the lineage founder of Chavín (centre) Cusco ayllu that may link him to Cusco itself. Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) was told both Cachi and Auca, but decided the latter must have represented the ancestral landowner in Cusco. For this sibling, Guaman Poma and Murúa substitute the name Cusco Huanca, a clear reference to his function.6 Auca is also a name that stands out from the other three Ayars. Cachi (salt) and Uchu (red chilli pepper) are foods or more specifically condiments, while Manco could also be a food plant, wheat.7 The quechua word Auca however, means warrior, enemy or adversary.

The earlier account of Betanzos (information recorded in 1551) provides little information about Ayar Auca. The Ayars Cachi and Uchu have prominent roles, while Auca is innocuous on the journey from Pacaritambo to Cusco. It is possible that Auca represented the defeated enemy/ancestral idol that is literally carried to Cusco. Reference to the portability of one Ayar is described by Montesinos. Immediately after the oldest brother (Cachi) is interred in the cave:

Tupac Ayar Uchu carried the second brother among some high rocks under the pretext of looking for the oldest one, and with them [rocks] he killed him, and he gave the women and his third brother to understand that Illatici Huira Cocha had converted him into stone…

(Montesinos 1882 [1644, chap.1]: 6)

Montesinos appears to be the only source that describes an Ayar ancestor who is physically carried. The one mention of Auca in Betanzos may also identify this character as the ancestral protector of the town and of agriculture. At the end of Betanzos' origin story, Ayar Auca helps Manco Capac and sister/wives build the Temple of the Sun and plant some maize.

Twenty years after Betanzos, Sarmiento described Auca as an ancestor landowner. Sarmiento includes the words "possession" and "mojon", that is a landmark or boundary stone (Sarmiento de Gamboa 1906 [1572, chap.13]: 39). This terminology would have been understood by the intended European readership that was to include King Phillip II of Spain. A tradition of legitimacy whereby a portable stone idol was required to claim territory would have been a logic foreign to Spanish legal concepts. Perhaps the change from an enemy ancestor to a landowning ancestor can be explained by the Indian adaptation to the new European institutions that governed land and property rights.

Before Toledo's reforms begun to take effect in the mid-1570's the struggle between traditional Andean property structures and new European legal codes had already become an area for conflict and exploitation. Throughout the later sixteenth century much of the land previously held by the Cusco panacas, Inca State cults, provincial curacas as well as communal ayllu land, was transferred into European patterns of private property. Numerous legal battles preserved in colonial documentation where claims and counter claims were made by descendants of Cusco nobility, curacas and ordinary ayllu members is a testament to this process. The claims of some indigenous nobility to lands belonging to their royal ancestors were in conflict with the traditional structures that governed land and property relations during the reign of the Incas (Siverblatt 1987: 114). The descendants or those who claimed descent from pre-Hispanic Inca nobility profited most. They could amass far more land and wealth than contemporary Spaniards and even increased what they held in pre-Hispanic times. For instance Doña Angelina, the wife of Betanzos used her ancestry to claim rights to lands in the Yucay Valley and San Blas in Cusco. Through her relationship with Spaniards and her privileged position in colonial society she was able to manipulate access to property (Silverblatt 1987: 116).

The acceptance and exploitation of European property institutions may help to explain the transformation of Ayar Auca from a portable stone idol into an ancestral landowner. The earliest versions of Inca origins (Betanzos/Cieza) either makes no or little mention of Auca. Later the inquiries of Toledo and Sarmiento were directed at undermining the traditional Inca view of their conquest and right to rule. The Toledan emphasis on the illegitimacy of the Incas is perhaps responsible for the conversion of Ayar Auca into a concept more familiar to European legal practice that now dictated ownership a nd access to land. The suggested correlation of characters from the two traditions of Inca origins is provided in the Table below:

Ayar Auca is listed as the fourth and last Ayar in most, but not all of the chronicler sources that recorded Inca origins. The idea that Auca represented the fourth and last category perhaps explains the unique information presented by Bernabe Cobo (1653) who probably copied from an earlier lost report by Polo de Ondegardo (1559). Cobo lists the four Ayars in the following order:

Manco Capac

Ayar Cachi

Ayar Uchu

Aya/Ayar Manco

There are two interesting points to note about Cobo’s [i.e. Polo’s] list. First the name Aya or Ayar Manco replaces Ayar Auca. Thus the first and fourth (and also the last) categories are linked through the name Manco. In terms of a fourfold structure, Cobo's description is comparable to the information from one sixteenth-century quipu. The quipu recorded food products: first maize, then quinoa, then potatoes, and then pillaged maize. The quipu thus records the fourth category as a negative aspect of the first category, maize (Arnold 1997: 37-38). Likewise Ayar Auca is also a negative aspect, i.e. defeated enemy, of Manco Capac.

The second point worth noting is that Cobo’s spelling of the last name is Aya not Ayar. This could have been a miss-spelling on the part of Polo, Cobo or Roland Hamilton.8 However the word Aya rather than Ayar, is the widely known quechua term for the dead. Thus it is possible to interpret the fourth and last category called Manco as Dead Manco. So again we may have the idea of the defeated and dead enemy that is adopted as the founding ancestor, i.e. father of Manco Capac.9

The basis for the above suggestions is the continuity of Andean structural thought. The Huari and Nasca examples attest to deep-rooted Andean forms of expression and the persistence of ideological ideas that surround the tradition of ancestorship and legitimacy. The reinterpretation of Ayar Auca in response to the new Spanish institutions that governed property relations did not alter these integral structures. One final example of these structures is found in Betanzos when the influence of his wife's family substituted Dona Angelina's father, Yamqui Yupanqui in place of Amaru Tupac, the principal son of the Inca, Pachacuti. Thus Yamqui was not described as an additional brother: rather he replaced Amaru Tupac and thus captured completely his history and position in the triadic hierarchy. The application of structural thought remained intact.

Works Cited

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Betanzos, Juan de 1987 Suma y narración de los Incas [1557], prologo, transcripción y notas por María del Carmen Martín Rubio, estudios preliminares de Horacio Villanueva Urteaga Demetrio Ramos y por María del Carmen Martín Rubio, Madrid: Ediciones Atlas.

Guaman Poma de Ayala, Don Felipe 1980 Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno [1615], 2 vols., transcripción, prólogo, notas, cronología por Franklin Pease, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.

Hamilton, Roland 1979 History of the Inca Empire by Bernabe Cobo [1653], translated and edited by Roland Hamilton from the Holograph Manuscript in the Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina de Sevilla, Austin: University of Texas Press, The Texas Pan Series.

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Menzel, Dorothy A. 1964 Style and time in the Middle Horizon, Ñawpa Pacha 2: 1-105.

Montesinos, Fernando de 1882 Memorias antiguas historiales y politicas del Perú [1644], Ed. M. Jimenez de la Espada, Colección de Libros Españoles Raros ó Curiosos 16.Madrid: Imprenta de Miguel Ginesta.

Niles, Susan A. 1999 The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire, Iowa: University of Iowa Press.

Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, Joan de Santacruz

1993 Relación de antigüedades deste Reyno del Pirú [1613], Ed. Pierre Duviols and César Itier, Cusco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos, Bartolomé de las Casas.

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Zuidema, R.Tom 1964 The Ceque System of Cuzco; The Social organization of the capital of the Incas, translation by Ev M. Hooykaas, International Archives of Ethnography, Supplement to vol. 50. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 305.

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Illustrations

Figures 1&2 Huari ceramic urn (Middle Horizon)

Figures 3&4 Nasca painted pot (Early Intermediate period)

Endnotes

1 Suggestions in this paper were first presented at the Sixth Essex Student Symposium on the Art and Architecture of Precolumbian America, March 1999, Colchester, United Kingdom.

2 I gratefully acknowledge the Museum of World Culture, Gothenburg, for permission to reproduce these pictures.

3 Pachacuti Yamqui implies a hierarchy in his description of these three Incas who sit on equal thrones but hold different classes of staff (Pachacuti Yamqui 1993 [1613, fol.26]: 233).

4 English translations throughout this paper are my own.

5 There is some doubt whether The Chronicle of the Quipucamayocs was actually based on an inquest held by Vaca de Castro in 1542, and not actually a later fabrication (see Porras Barrenechea 1986: 747-749; Urton; 1999: 30, 43; Julien 1999: 60).

6 Huanca is the name attributed to the lithified ancestors visible in or around the local community settlement. Stone huanca are associated particularly with one central-highland group, the Huari.

7 Bromus Mango was an edible cereal grown in nineteenth century Chile, principally to make beer, but now virtually extinct (Sauer 1963 [1950]: 495).

8 Hamilton suggests that his translated versions (1979 and 1990) of the Colombino-Cobo Manuscript in Seville is Cobo’s original work (Hamilton 1979: xiii-xvi). There are as yet no published editions of this manuscript in the original Spanish.

9 It is interesting to note modern stories of ancestors around Cusco. These describe the ancestors, often known as machus who live in an age of darkness. The first appearance of the Sun forced them to flee from the excessive heat. Those who did not escape were shriveled up and their calcified remains scar the landscape. Thus the Sun, from whom the first Inca descended is today considered to be the ultimate enemy of the ancestors.