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SOME ACOOUNT

o:B'

THE ILLUSTRATED CHRONICLE BY

'l'Hll

PERUVIAN INDIAN, D. FELIPE HUAMAN POMA

AYALA.

BY Dr.

R.rcHARD

PIETSCHMAJ\':l'f, Gi:ittingen.

WHEN

in the year 1908 I had the opportunity of visiting the

RoJal

Library of

Copenhagen, I knew already from sorne papers written by Dr. Gigas that frorn the

second half of the seventeenth centmy there had been collected

Denrnarll: ma:n.y

docmnents and much information in manuscript relating to Spain and its DominiQJlS.

But my expectations were surpassed when in exarnining the handwritten manu–

script-list I discovered that the Royal Library was

possession of a manuscript

entitled,

El p1·i1ne1· nueva co?'onica

bnen ,qobieTno,

written by a Peruvian India.n,

D. Felipe Huarnan Poma de Ayala, and illustrated by him with a great number of

pen-and-ink sketches.

is of the contents of this work that, at the kind

suggestion of our president, I give here an acconnt as a supplement to my pre–

lirninary notice in the

Naclwichten

of the Royal Society of Gi:ittingen, andLby

Sir Clements

Markham in his " Incas of Peru." My intention is to publish as

soon as possible the whole manuscript and illustrations.

As Huaman Poma tells us, his book is the result of sorne 20 or 30 years

of labour and experience. I t has, as a whole, not been written much before 161:3,

thongh sorne parts of the present work may have been taken from a previous

version cancelled or altered by the author. Huarnan Poma, or as he spells his ·

narne, Guarnan Poma, boasts his descent frorn the Yarovillca dynasty of Allauca

Huanuco, that reigned over the whole Chinchaysuyu, when Tupac Inca Yupanqui

conquered this region. The narne of this dynasty irnplies that it regarded itself as

descending from a god, for Yaro was, as we learn frorn other sources, one of the

narnes of Pariacaca, a god of the Huarochit"i Indians, and

villca

rneans "god " or

" divine." On the other side our author claims to be the son of an Inca princess

named Curi Ocllo, a daughter of Tupac Inca.

The aun of the work is to give a short accOtmt of the lústory of Peru; to

describe the ancient order of things, destroyed by the invasion of the Spaniards ;

and to make known the miserable condition of the Indians of the time.

The book is written in very incorrect Spanish, intermixed with Quichua words

that show sorne of the peculiarities of the Ohinchaysuyu dialect. Many quotaJtions in

Quichua are inserted, and sorne in other native languages of Peru, for the most part

prayers and songs. A great number of the prayers correspond to the formulas

analysed by Professor S. A. Lafone Queveao and by the late Dr. Miguel A. Mossi.