Pedro de Cieza de León, Parte primera de la chronica del Peru (Seville, 1553)
A soldier who left Spain before he was thirteen and spent seventeen years marching through the Indies wrote down what he saw, and the first part was printed at Seville in 1553 under royal privilege. It surveys Peru province by province, and carries the Inca road, the four-league relay of storehouses and the quipu as a working audit — set beside the wars, the burnings, and the reason the Andean peoples gave for rising.
Why this wins its question: Cieza is usually met in English through a nineteenth-century translation, quoted for one or two set pieces about the Inca road, and the 1553 sheets themselves are rarely opened. This object opens them and quotes the printer's Castilian with the folio given, which changes what the famous passages actually say: the tambos are given a width in feet and a length in horse-races, the storehouse system is a four-league relay that had to exist "aunque fuesse despoblado y desierto", the quipu is presented as the audit that kept anyone from paying more than his share and left "ningun fraude" — by an author who says in the same sentence that to Spanish eyes it looks blind and obscure. It also prints what the set pieces are usually detached from: on the same leaf as the road and the storehouses stands the burning and impaling done under a captain sent by Francisco Pizarro, the seven hundred Spaniards killed in the rising, and the reason the Andean peoples gave for it — that they fought for their liberty and to escape the harsh treatment done to them. The privilege and the prologue are quoted too, so the reader can see that the man recording this served in those wars, was writing for the heir to the throne, and held that God had chosen his nation for the work.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page, printed in red and black beneath the royal arms, reads "PARTE PRIMERA Dela chronica del Peru. Que tracta la demarcacion de sus prouincias: la descripcion dellas. Las fundaciones de las nueuas ciudades. Los ritos y costumbres delos indios. Y otras cosas estrañas dignas de ser sabidas. Fecha por Pedro d Cieça de Leon vezino de Seuilla. 1553. Con priuillegio Real." It gives the year and the grant of privilege but names no printer, so nothing is asserted here about who set the type.
The privilege printed four leaves later states who the author was to the crown. It recites that Pedro de Cieça, resident of Seville, had resided a long time in the provinces of Peru "siruiendonos con vuestras armas y cauallo y hazienda en las guerras y conquistas y descubrimientos que se ofrecieron en el tiempo que en las dichas prouincias residistes", and that he had then occupied himself in writing a book on the description of those provinces, the founding of their cities and towns, and the rites and customs of the natural Indians, "en que aueys gastado mucho tiempo, passando grande trabajo". The licence runs fifteen years, is dated at Monzon on 14 September 1552, and is signed "Yo el principe" and countersigned by Juan Vazquez.
The dedication is to "don Philippe principe de las Españas". Cieza writes that infinite things worthy of perpetual memory had been left in the darkness of oblivion for want of writers to relate them, that he had passed by land from the province of Cartagena and spent many years in that of Popayán, and that after serving in the last war "que se acabo contra los tyranos rebeldes" he resolved to take up the pen. He states the mismatch between subject and author himself: to tell the admirable things of this kingdom would have needed "vn Tito liuio, o Valerio, o otro de los grandes escriptores que ha auido en el mundo: y aun estos se vieran en trabajo enlo contar."
The Prohemio gives the author's credentials in his own words. He left Spain "de tan tierna edad, q casi no auia enteros treze años" and spent in the Indies of the Ocean sea "tiempo de mas d diez y siete", many of those years in conquests and discoveries, others in new settlements and in travelling from one part to another. What he undertook to write was "de lo q yo por mis propios ojos auia visto: y tambien d lo q auia oydo a personas de gra credito" — what he had seen with his own eyes, and what he had heard from persons of great credit.
The first reason he gives for writing is that nobody else was doing it. In all the parts where he went, "ninguno se ocupaua en scriuir nada de lo q passaua", and time consumes the memory of things in such a way that unless it is kept by special traces and means, what happened is not known with true notice in the future.
The prologue sets the achievement and the crime side by side as motives. Cieza writes that he composed the work so that those who see in it the great services many noble gentlemen and young men rendered to the crown of Castile should be moved to imitate them, and equally "para que notando por el consiguiente como otros no pocos se extremaron en cometer trayciones, tyranias, robos, y otros yerros, tomando exemplo en ellos y en los famosos castigos que se hizieron siruan bien y lealmente a sus reyes y señores naturales."
The same prologue carries the providential frame that the modern reader should have in view when weighing the rest. The reduction of the Indies to the Church, Cieza writes, was accomplished "con trabajo de Españoles: que fue tanto q otra nacion alguna de todo el vniuerso no los pudiera sufrir. Y assi los eligio Dios para vna cosa tan grande, mas que a otra nacion alguna." The book is an interested account of an enterprise its author served, and says so.
The work is announced as four parts, of which this volume is the first. The first treats the demarcation and division of the provinces, their description, the foundations of the new Spanish cities, who founded them and when, and the rites and customs the natural Indians had anciently. The second was to treat "el señorio de los Ingas Iupanagues reyes antiguos que fueron del Peru, y de sus grandes hechos y gouernacion", their number and names, the temples they built, and "Caminos de estraña grandeza q hizieron". The third was to treat the discovery and conquest; the fourth, larger than the other three, was to be five books on the civil wars of Peru.
The description of the tambos is a measurement, not an impression. In the principal part of the province of Guamachuco, Cieza writes, is a great field where the tambos or royal palaces were built, "entre los quales ay dos de anchor de veynte y dos pies, y de largor tiene tanto como vna carrera de cauallo: todos hechos de piedra: y el ornato dellos de crescidas y gruessas vigas: puesta enlo mas alto la paja que ellos vsan con grande orden."
On the same leaf, without transition, comes the cost. "Con las alteraciones y guerras passadas se ha consumido mucha parte de la gente desta prouincia." A few lines further the same page records that before the Spaniards entered the kingdom there was in that district a great number of flocks, and on the heights a greater quantity of wild guanacos and vicuñas.
The roads are attributed by name. From the province of Guamachuco, the text says, "sale vn camino real de los Ingas a dar a los Conchucos: y en Bombon se tornan a juntar con otro tan grande como el. El vno delos quales dizen que fue mandado hazer por Topaynga Yupangue: y el otro por Guaynacapa su hijo." The attribution is reported as what informants say, not as the author's own finding, and is carried here on that footing.
A chapter is given to the provisioning system, headed "En q se tracta como los Ingas mandauan que estuuiessen los aposentos bien proueydos: y como assi lo estauan para la gente de guerra." Its substance is a relay: the royal party moved no more than four leagues a day, and "auia en el termino de quatro a quatro leguas aposentos y depositos con grande abundancia de todas las cosas que en estas partes se podia auer. Y aunque fuesse despoblado y desierto auia de auer estos aposentos y depositos." Delegates or stewards resident in the head towns of the provinces had the particular charge of ordering the natives to keep good supply in these tambos.
The quipu is described as the accounting instrument that made the system auditable, and the description concedes its own incomprehension. So that some should not give more than others and all should contribute their tribute, "tenian quenta por vna manera de ñudos que llaman quipo, por la qual passado el campo se entendian, y no auia ningun fraude." Cieza adds: "Y cierto aunque a nosotros nos paresce ciega y obscura, es vna gentil manera de quenta" — although to us it appears blind and obscure, it is a graceful manner of reckoning — and promises to explain it in the second part.
The road itself is described as maintained rather than merely built. "El camino por todas estas partes lo tenian siempre muy limpio", and where the sierras were rough the line was carried round by the slopes, "haziendo grandes descansos y escaleras enlosadas, y tan fuertes, que biuen y biuiran en su ser muchas edades." Elsewhere the text notes a stretch so widened and cleared that although the slopes are harsh it almost seems made over level ground, and a bridge at the crossing called Angoyaco.
The right-hand column of the same folio carries what the left does not. Of the Conchucos the text records that Spaniards had killed some of these Indians at various times, "tanto que el Marques don Francisco Piçarro embio al capitan Francisco de chaues con algunos Christianos, y hizieron la guerra muy temerosa y espantable: porque algunos Españoles dizen q se quemaron, y empalaron numero grande de Indios." The attribution is to what some Spaniards say, and it is printed in a book dedicated to the heir to the throne.
The same passage records the killing on the other side and then the reason the Andean peoples gave. In the general rising the Indians killed more than seven hundred Spanish Christians in the stretch between Cuzco and Quito, giving very cruel deaths to those they took alive. Cieza writes "Dios nos libre del furor delos Indios, q cierto es de temer, quando pueden effetuar su desseo" — and then, in the next clause, "Aunque ellos dezian, q peleauan por su libertad y por eximirse dl tractamiento tan aspero q se les hazia": although they said they fought for their liberty and to free themselves from the harsh treatment done to them.
The tribute system appears again as a place on a map. In chapter lxxxv, on the thirty leagues of royal road from Xauxa to the city of Guamanga, the text describes a site called Pucara, "que en nuestra lengua qere dezir cosa fuerte", where anciently there were palaces of the Incas and a temple of the sun, and to which "muchas prouincias acudian con los tributos ordinarios … para entregarlos al mayordomo mayor que tenia cargo de los depositos, y de coger estos tributos." Of the great rock there Cieza writes "Yo la vi, y dormi vna noche en ella."
What this volume is not is worth stating. It is the first part only: the second part on the lordship of the Incas, the third on the conquest and the fourth on the civil wars are announced in the prologue but are not in these sheets, and none of them was printed in the author's lifetime. No page opened in this reading gives the printer's name, the author's death, or the fate of the remaining parts, and the promised explanation of the quipu belongs to a second part that this volume does not contain.