Polo de Ondegardo, Report on the government of the Yncas (Peru, c. 1560s; first printed in English, London 1873)
A corregidor of Cuzco who studied Inca law in order to govern by it, and whose working notes survive as a report that dates the empire from quipu king-lists, measures the courier relay in leagues and days, refuses informants who put the origin before the flood, and tells his own government that the wise legislation of the Yncas ought to be used and imitated. The same notes record the levy of girls that legislation also enforced.
Why this wins its question: Polo de Ondegardo is usually met as a name in footnotes to Acosta and to Toledo's reforms, or as the official who found the Inca mummies. This object quotes the notes: the refusal of informants who date the origin before the flood, the four-hundred-year ceiling read off quipu king-lists, the chasqui relay in tupus and days with the admission that the Spaniards used it themselves, the estimate of stone-working effort made after walking the quarries. It sets beside them, from the same pages, the levy of girls the admired system enforced and the fact that the whole study was done to administer the provinces its author governed - the achievement and the interest in one place, which is exactly what summaries of "Spanish respect for Inca institutions" leave out.
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 editor of the 1873 translation describes both the man and the document. Polo de Ondegardo was a lawyer who came to Peru with president Gasca, was corregidor of Charcas and afterwards of Cuzco, and "studied the language and laws of the Yncas with minute care, in order that he might be better able to conduct the administration of the provinces under his charge". What survives is not a finished treatise but "a rough draft or set of notes", covering the principle on which the Ynca conquests were made, the division and tenure of land, the system of tribute, and the regulations for preserving game and for forest conservancy - and pointing out, here and there, how the wise legislation of the Yncas ought to be used and imitated by their conquerors.
The report opens by sorting its own evidence. It states that the Ynca lineage was divided into Hanan Cuzco and Hurin Cuzco, from which it concludes they were natives of the valley of Cuzco, and dismisses those who say they came from elsewhere on the ground that the same informants place the event before the flood - "no credit should be given to them". It then dates the expansion: from what can be gathered from present tradition, it is not more than three hundred and fifty to four hundred years since the Yncas held only the valley of Cuzco as far as Urcos, six leagues, and the valley of Yucay, five. Memory of the lords, the volume adds, is preserved by their quipus, but judged by the reigns the historical period cannot be placed further back than four hundred years.
The explanation of Inca success is institutional rather than providential. The volume prints that the conquered peoples joined the Yncas, so that they always had a vastly superior force; that no province ever attempted to disturb them at home, and that the four roads out of Cuzco are all crossed by rivers that cannot be forded at any time of year; and that the advantage lay in better discipline and more knowledge, shown "in their edifices, bridges, farms, systems of irrigation, and in their higher moral lives". The same passage records the author's second premise without flattery: that having resolved to conquer, the Yncas "sought some colour and pretext for prosecuting their objects", the first being the story of seven men and women coming out of the cave of Paccari-tampu.
The courier system is reported in measurements, with a serving official's test of them. Chasquis were stationed at the end of every tupu, a tupu being a league and a half, in small huts holding two men who served night and day and were relieved once a month; a message ran from Cuzco to Quito, five hundred leagues, and an answer came back in twenty days; letters had been carried from Cuzco to Lima, a hundred and thirty leagues over a very bad road, in three days, and fresh fish brought up from the sea, a hundred leagues, in two. The author says he can believe it because "in our wars we have sometimes used these chasquis, and as it was an ancient custom, they readily made the arrangement" - Spanish administration running on an Inca relay it had not built.
On the masonry the report argues from inspection. It records that the buildings were of stone shaped without iron or steel tools, the stones fitted without lime and sand so that the junction is scarcely visible, that thirty thousand men were said to have been employed, and that there is as much well-cut masonry underground as above, "as well hewn as any that can be found in Spain". The author's estimate is his own and he says so: as they had nothing but stone tools, "it seems to me that a hundred Indians could not work and shape a single stone in a month", and he adds that he has examined the quarries himself and seen their contrivances.
The same notes record what the admired legislation cost. The volume describes girls taken from the provinces, kept and watched until thirteen or fourteen so that they should be virgins, assembled at Cuzco in the middle of March and distributed: some to the temples of the Sun, some to the service of Pacha-mama, some for the sacrifices offered through the year - "on these occasions they killed the girls" - and others to the Ynca and to those he favoured. They were chosen by the Apu-panaca without regard to whose children they were, and "the parents could not excuse or redeem them under any circumstances"; the report adds that this tribute would have been felt more than any other but for the belief about the souls of the girls who were taken.
The report is administrative in purpose, and the purpose is the reason the knowledge exists. Markham's introduction is explicit that Polo studied Inca language and law so as to govern the provinces in his charge better, and that the notes point out where that legislation should be imitated by the conquerors. Detailed Spanish knowledge of Andean tribute, land tenure and labour rotation was collected by officials who were about to assess tribute, allot land and rotate labour themselves; the accuracy and the interest are not separable.
Like the other three papers in the volume, Polo's notes had never been printed in the language in which they were written when Markham translated them for the Hakluyt Society in 1873 - which is why an English rendering of a rough Spanish draft is, for many readers, still the first form in which this material is met.