find a state religion which superseded savage cults still
remembered in the country, and from the _Royal Commentaries of the
Incas_, written by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in the beginning of
the seventeenth century,[1] we are able to describe the religion of
Peru both before and after the Inca reformation.

[Footnote 1: Printed by the Hakluyt Society.]

"Before the Incas," this writer tells us, "each province, each
nation, and each house had its own gods, different from one another,
for they thought that a stranger's god could not attend to them but
only their own." They worshipped all manner of deities; of these are
mentioned herbs, plants, flowers, all kinds of trees, high hills,
great rocks, and the chinks in them; caves, pebbles, emeralds. They
also worshipped animals; the tiger, the lion, and the bear for their
fierceness, and the monkey for his cunning; these they did not kill,
but went down on the ground to worship them and would even suffer
themselves to be devoured by them, since they regarded these animals
as their own ancestors. All kinds of animals they treated in this
way; there was not an animal, how filthy and vile soever, so the
quaint words tell us, they did not look on as a god. Other Indians,
again, worshipped things from which they derived benefit, such as
great fountains and rivers; some worshipped the earth, and called it
mother, because it yielded their fruits; some the sea, calling it
Mamacocha; and a great number of other objects of adoration are
mentioned. They sacrificed animals and maize, but also men and women,
and these not only captives taken in war but also their own children,
smearing the idol with the blood. (In other quarters of the globe
this is a symbolic act showing that the idol and the worshippers all
partake in the same life.) Some tribes were fiercer than others, and
practised cannibalism more extensively. They were also well provided
with sorcerers and witches.

All this the Incas altered. They were a princely family, regarding
whose origin and accession to power various legends are told; the god
they worshipped was the sun, and they considered and called
themselves the children of the sun. Their father the sun, they said,
had sent their forefathers to teach the tribes various things they
very much needed to learn; to cultivate the fields, to breed flocks,
to live in peace, to respect the wives and daughters of others, and
to have no more than one wife. The Incas knew be