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Whereas the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica developed
systems of writing, their Andean counterparts did not. As
a result, only two Incan accounts by Native American authors
survive. Both authors wrote in the second decade of the 17th
century, in a mixture of Spanish and native languages. Neither
man was ethnically Incan; both traced their ancestry to tribes
that had been conquered by the Incas. Nueva Coronica y Buen
Gobierno (translated as Letter to a King, 1978), by Felipe
Guaman Poma de Ayala, is a 1200-page letter addressed to the
King of Spain, illustrated with the author's own line drawings.
It was lost for nearly 300 years and was discovered in the
royal library of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1906. The second
work is Relación de Antigüedades deste Regno del
Pirú (about 1615; An Account of the Antiquities of
Peru, 1873), by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua,
much of which is virtually incomprehensible because the author
was only semiliterate. A third figure who could be considered
a native author is Garcilaso de la Vega, called El Inca (Spanish
for "The Inca"). He was born in Peru, the son of
a Spanish father and an Incan mother. However, he went to
Spain at the age of 21 and did not write Comentarios Reales
de los Incas (1609; Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General
History of Peru, 1966), an account of Incan culture and history,
until he was an old man.
The Nature of the Universe
Like the Mayas and Aztecs, the Incas believed in previous
creations and destructions of the universe. However, the division
of cosmological time into major epochs of creation was not
a central concern of Incan religion. Instead, the Incas emphasized
the arrangement of space into a sacred geography. A crucial
aspect of this sacred geography was the concept of huaca.
This term referred to any person, place, or thing with supernatural
power; almost anything unusual was considered a huaca. Examples
ranged from prominent features of the landscape (mountain
peaks, stone outcroppings, springs) to oddly shaped or colored
pebbles and plants. There were countless huacas in the Incan
world, and major ones defined the organization of sacred space.
Cusco, the Incas' capital, was the center of their universe.
More than 300 of the most important huacas in the area around
Cusco were conceived of as lying along 41 lines called ceques.
These lines radiated outward from the Coricancha, the principal
temple of Incan state religion, and extended to the horizon
or beyond. Like the Mayas and Aztecs, the Incas also saw the
earth as being composed of four quarters, whose dividing lines
intersected in Cusco. The ceques subdivided the four quarters.
Each ceque belonged to one of the quarters, and the care of
each huaca on each ceque was assigned to a particular group
of people. In this way the ceques helped to coordinate social
relations among people, as well as to organize sacred space.
Above the earth were the heavens, while the underworld lay
below. Neither the heavens nor the underworld seems to have
had the elaborate vertical layering common in Mesoamerican
conceptions, but the heavens had a complex geography. Like
the earth, the heavens were divided into four quarters, separated
by a giant cross formed by the Milky Way as it passed through
its zenith. The movement of astronomical bodies through the
four quadrants determined the Incan agricultural and ceremonial
calendars, and the ceques also served as sight lines for astronomical
observations.
Gods and Goddesses
As in other pre-Columbian religions, Incan gods and goddesses
actually represented a number of shifting and overlapping
divine powers. The upper pantheon contained a creator-sky-weather
complex with three principal components: Viracocha, the creator;
Inti, the sun god and ancestor of the ruling dynasty; and
Illapa, the thunder or weather god. The most important female
supernaturals were Pachamama, the earth; Mamacocha, the sea;
and Mamaquilla, the moon. The core of Incan religion was ancestor
worship. Ancestors were venerated as protective spirits, and
the bodies and tombs of the dead were treated as sacred objects.
Many other important huacas were also explicitly identified
with the ancestors. For example, some of the most important
shrines around Cusco were believed to be the petrified forebears
of the Incas. The bodies of dead rulers were among the holiest
huacas in the Inca realm. As sons of Inti and embodiments
of Illapa, the mummies of past rulers were the direct, visible
links between the Incas and their pantheon. Maintaining these
links, and through them the proper order of the universe,
required perpetual care of the royal mummies.
Religious Leadership and Rituals
The Incan ruler and the mummies of his predecessors were the
most important religious leaders. They were assisted by a
hierarchical priesthood headed by the high priest of the Coricancha.
Important shrines also had staffs of female attendants who
wove cloth and brewed chicha (maize beer) for use in festivals.
Most ceremonies involved sacrifices of cloth, chicha, plants,
or animals. Human sacrifice was practiced, but only on the
most solemn occasions and in times of disaster. An elaborate
ritual life surrounded the mummies of deceased rulers, who
were treated as if they were still alive. They were maintained
in state in their palaces, and they continued to own the property
they had accumulated during their lifetimes. Their descendants
managed the mummies' property for them, consulted them as
oracles (bearers of messages from the gods), made sacrifices
to them, ate and drank with them, took them to visit one another,
and brought them out of their palaces to participate in major
ceremonies. Much simpler rituals of ancestor worship were
practiced in rural areas.
The Destination of Souls
The Incas had a more optimistic view of the afterlife than
the Mayas or Aztecs. As protective ancestral spirits, dead
Incas continued to play an active role in the world of the
living. They revealed themselves through the huacas and were
cared for and worshipped by their descendants. The Incas were
strongly moralistic, and they believed the souls of virtuous
people joined the sun in heaven. Those souls had plenty to
eat and drink. They remained connected to their descendants,
and their lives continued much as they had on earth. The souls
of evildoers went to the underworld, a cold and barren place
where there was nothing to eat but stones.
NATIVE RELIGIONS TODAY
In the centuries following the Spanish conquests of Mexico
and Peru most Native Americans were at least nominally converted
to Catholicism (see Roman Catholic Church). The blending of
native and Catholic beliefs was a complicated process, and
it followed different courses in different areas. In general,
the Aztecs made Catholicism the core of a new religion that
also incorporated native beliefs, while the Mayas retained
native beliefs as the core of their religion and added Catholic
elements. The Incan case, perhaps the most complicated of
the three, represented an intricate blending of native and
Catholic beliefs, aided by certain parallels between the two.
In essence, the Spanish conquest of 1519-1521 destroyed the
core of Aztec religion—the cult of warfare and human
sacrifice. The Aztecs were no longer able to feed the sun,
yet the universe survived, and Huitzilopochtli was discredited.
Aztec religion had lost its focus by 1531, when, according
to Catholic tradition, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to
an Aztec man named Juan Diego. Devotion to the Virgin spread
rapidly, and within six years 9 million Indians had been baptized
as Catholics in central Mexico. Worship of some Aztec gods
and goddesses, most notably ancient agricultural deities,
persisted. These deities were blended with Catholic saints
in the new religion. In contrast to the Aztec case, when the
Spanish began their conquest of the Maya area, Maya religion
was already fragmented. The great religious and political
centers of the Classic period had been abandoned more than
600 years earlier, and even the Post-Classic centers were
in decline. The religion practiced in hamlets and villages
emphasized ancient agricultural deities—such as the
rain gods (Chacs)—who proved to endure. Maya folk religion
still centers on these agricultural deities, and Catholic
and native beliefs are more distinct from each other than
they are among the descendants of the Aztecs. The Incas, like
the Aztecs, had a central imperial cult: the worship of the
royal mummies. However, the Incan imperial cult, like the
Mesoamerican worship of agricultural deities, was an expression
of the ancient and widespread religious tradition of ancestor
worship. The Spanish destroyed the royal Incan mummies and
their cult, but not the underlying tradition of ancestor worship.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, Incan and Catholic beliefs
were blended, revealing parallels between the two traditions.
For example, both the Incas and their Spanish conquerors made
special commemoration of the dead during the month of November
and had penitential rites that involved confessing sins to
priests. In recent decades evangelical Protestantism, especially
in the form of Pentecostalism (see Pentecostal Churches),
has been spreading rapidly among Latin American Indians. At
the same time, community-based social action movements are
a growing force within Latin American Catholicism. Whether
these are short- or long-term trends, and what effects they
will have on native religious traditions, are unresolved questions.
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