Quipus in the colonial Andes
Knotted-cord records did not stop at the conquest. Acosta's 1590 Seville printing says the quipocamayos were bound to render account like public notaries and had to be given entire credit, and he saw knotted accounts produced at a corregidor's residencia as "testigos y escritura cierta". Garcilaso, who checked curacas' tribute against their knots as a boy, calls the system perishable. Against both, Solórzano records a judge of the Audiencia of Lima refusing quipus full faith in a tribute suit.
Why this wins its question: English pages that win "what is a quipu" describe Inca administration and then stop at 1532, with the colonial period reduced to a sentence about suppression. The interesting evidence is on the other side of that date and is quoted here from two digitised printings opened page by page: a 1590 Seville folio saying the knot-keepers were to be given entire credit like public notaries, a corregidor's residencia in which knotted accounts are produced as "testigos y escritura cierta", a general confession carried on a bundle of threads, and Garcilaso reconciling curacas' tribute against their knots because the curacas did not trust Spaniards on the figures. The same object prints Garcilaso calling the whole system perishable, and states what neither book can settle. It now also prints the case against: the paragraphs of Solórzano's Política Indiana in which the quipus of the Sacaca repartimiento are tendered against their encomendero in a suit over excessive tributes, the received doctrine that the quipocamayos are public officers whose registers are "espejo, y fuente de la verdad" is set out, and a crown judge then refuses them credit on hearsay about the medium, on a doubt about the office, on a general discount of Indian testimony and on the interest of the deponents. Two printings in favour and one against, each quoted from a page opened here, is a better answer to "were quipus legal evidence" than any summary that only has the affirmative half.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Acosta's chapter on the subject — "CAP. 8. De los memoriales y cuentas, que vsaron los Indios del Piru", libro VI of the Seville 1590 printing, folio 410 — defines them and states their legal standing in the same paragraph: "Son Quipos vnos memoriales, o registros hechos de ramales, en q̃ diuersos ñudos, y diuersas colores significã diuersas cosas", and "Auia para tener estos Quipos o memoriales, oficiales diputados q̃ se llamã oy dia Quipo camàyo, los quales erã obligados a dar cuẽta de cada cosa como los escriuanos publicos aca, y assi seles auia de dar entero credito." A Jesuit writing in 1590 says the knot-keepers held the standing of public notaries and were to be given entire credit.
The same folio places the quipu inside an explicit comparative scheme of writing rather than treating it as an absence of one: the Indians of Peru, Acosta writes, had before the Spaniards "ningun genero de escritura tuuieron, ni por letras, ni por caracteres, o cifras, o figurillas, como los de la China, y los de Mexico, mas no por esso conseruaron menos la memoria de sus antiguallas, ni tuuieron menos su cuenta para todos los negocios de paz, y guerra, y gouierno", supplying the want "parte có pinturas como los de Mexico … parte y lo mas con Quipos", and adding that what books can say of histories, laws, ceremonies and business accounts "todo esso suplẽ los Quipos tan puntualmente q̃ admira".
Folio 411 records the cords doing colonial legal work. Acosta writes that it happens in Peru "oy dia … quãdo van a tomar residẽcia a vn Corregidor", that the Indians come out with their itemised and verified accounts, alleging that in such a town they gave him six eggs and he did not pay for them, and in such a house a hen, and elsewhere two bundles of fodder for his horses, and he paid only so many tomines and still owes so many — and that for all this the finding is made on the spot "có quãtidad de ñudos y manojos de cuerdas que dã por testigos y escritura cierta". The knots are produced in a Spanish audit proceeding as witnesses and as certain writing.
The same folio reports uses outside government, on Acosta's own sight. He writes "Yo vi vn manojo destos hilos, en q̃ vna India traya escrita vna cófessió general de toda su vida, y por ellos se cófessaua, como yo lo hiziera por papel escrito", and that he questioned her about some little threads that seemed to him different, which turned out to be the circumstances a particular sin required for a complete confession. He further describes quipus of pebbles used by the old to learn the Pater noster, Ave Maria and Credo — wheels of them kept in church cemeteries for the purpose — and quipus of maize grains used to settle apportionments "en q̃ tẽdra vn muy buẽ cótador q̃ hazer por pluma y tinta".
Garcilaso de la Vega describes the office in the Comentarios reales (Madrid 1829 reissue, tomo II, page 457): the Incas "como si los ñudos fueran letras, eligieron historiadores y contadores, que llamaron Quipucamayu, que es el que tiene cargo de los ñudos"; the curacas and nobles of a province went to them to learn what had happened there, "porque estos, como escribanos y como historiadores, guardaban los registros"; they were obliged by office to study the signs and ciphers perpetually, and "por el cual oficio eran reservados de tributo y de cualquiera otro servicio". He adds that laws and ordinances were read off "por el color del hilo y por el número de los ñudos".
The strongest single piece of testimony for the colonial afterlife of the quipu is Garcilaso's own practice, on page 458: "Yo traté los quipus y ñudos con los indios de mi padre y con otros curacas, cuando por san Juan y Navidad venian á la ciudad á pagar sus tributos. Los curacas agenos rogaban á mi madre que me mandase les cotejase sus cuentas; porque como gente sospechosa, no se fiaban de los españoles que les tratasen verdad en aquel particular, hasta que yo les certificaba della, leyéndoles los traslados que de sus tributos me traían, y cotejándolos con sus ñudos." The cords were being used to audit the Spanish written tribute record, and the stated reason is that the curacas did not trust Spaniards to tell them the truth about it.
The fullest colonial defender of the system is also its devaluer, and the counterpoint should be quoted from him rather than around him. On page 457 Garcilaso writes of the Inca record-keeping devices that "como la esperiencia lo muestra, todos eran remedios perecederos; porque las letras son las que perpetúan los hechos; mas como aquellos Incas no las alcanzaron, valiéronse de lo que pudieron inventar". The mestizo author who could read the knots ranks them, in print, below the alphabet.
Garcilaso also states the system's dependence on a trained holder, which bears directly on what the cords could and could not do alone: "cada hilo y ñudo les traía á la memoria lo que en sí contenia", and the Indian who had not taken the accounts or any other past history into memory by tradition "era tan ignorante en lo uno y en lo otro, como el español ó cualquiera otro estrangero". On this witness the quipu is a record keyed to an oral tradition held by the keeper, not a self-sufficient text.
What these two printings do not establish should be stated plainly. Both are Spanish-language books written decades after the conquest by authors formed in European letters — one a Jesuit provincial, one a mestizo writing in Spain from memory and correspondence — and neither reproduces a quipu or explains how any specific cord was read. They are good evidence that knotted records were made, kept, produced in colonial proceedings and used for confession and tribute within living memory of their authors. They are not evidence of what non-numerical quipus encoded, and no claim here should be read as settling that question.
A third printing, opened in 2026 and added here, supplies the case the other two lack: a court that was asked to accept quipus as proof and refused. In libro III, capítulo XXVI of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana (Madrid, 1736 impression), §35 reports a hard-fought suit over excessive tributes against Don Alonso de Sotomayor, encomendero of Sacaca, in which the proof offered was the assertion and deposition of the officers "que de los mismos Indios se eligen para recoger estos libros, y pagarlos à los Encomenderos, que en el Reyno del Perú se llaman Quipocamayos, y razon de sus Quipos, que son unos ramales de hilos de varios colores, en los quales ván dando unos nudos con admirable concierto, y correspondiencia, que les sirven como de letras, y escrituras, de los quales tratan Acosta, y otros Autores." The identification with letters and writing, and the reference to Acosta, are the treatise's own.
The doctrinal position the treatise is arguing against is the one the other claims in this object document, and it is stated fairly before it is rejected. At §36 "Porque aunque no niego, que sea esta numeracion, y assercion de gran peso, quando se halla hecha bien, y como conviene, por ser estos Quipocamayos, como Oficiales publicos, electos para esta Administracion, à cuyos libros se suele dar entera fee, y recurrir como à espejo, y fuente de la verdad segun la opinion de muchos Doctores, que refiere latissimamente Nicolao Genoa". The quipocamayo as a public officer whose registers are a mirror and fountain of truth is presented as the received opinion of many doctors, not as an eccentricity — which is independent support for what Acosta's folio 410 says about entire credit.
The refusal is then given with four distinct grounds, and they should be separated because only the first is about the medium. At §36 "Todavia Yo no me atreveré à dár tal, y tan grande fee, y autoridad à estos Quipos: porque he oido decir, à los que entienden de ellos, que es muy incierta, falaz, è intrincada la forma de hacerlos, y de explicarlos: y tambien no sé, que se pueda afirmar, que los Quipocamayos se elijan con autoridad publica para este ministerio". The first ground is hearsay from unnamed informants about the reliability of the medium — the author does not claim to read quipus or to have examined any. The second is that the office was not a public appointment, which is a question about colonial administration rather than about cords. At §37 comes the third and broadest: "Y quando aun faltára todo esto, son Indios, cuya fee vacila, y assi tambien vacilará la explicacion, que dieren remitida à sus Quipos" — a general discount on Indian testimony, supported by analogy to Baldus on a notary father drawing an instrument in his son's favour and to the rule that the books of tax-gatherers and of a community's massari make no faith against a third party. At §38 a fourth is added: that the quipocamayos are themselves discharging their own accounts, or at least belong to the repartimiento in whose favour they depose.
What the added claims do and do not show. They show that in the first half of the seventeenth century the evidentiary standing of quipus was contested at the level of doctrine, that a body of jurists treated the quipocamayos as public record-keepers entitled to full faith, and that a judge of the Audiencia of Lima who later became a fiscal and councillor of the Indies argued and decided against that view in a tribute suit. They do not show how any other colonial court ruled, how often quipus were tendered, or that this decision was followed: the suit is reported by the man who decided it, in his own treatise, without a date, a record reference or the outcome of the case, and the informants who told him the cords were unreliable are not named. Read next to c3 above, in which Acosta describes knotted accounts being produced and acted on at a corregidor's residencia, the two together are evidence of a dispute, not of a settled rule in either direction.