Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas

8. Taqui Onqoy

84 Taqui Onqoy About ten years ago,1 more or less, a disaffection2 began to spread among the Indians of this land, during which they performed a type of song that they called taqui onqoy [dance sickness].3 Because Luis de Olivera, a lay cleric in Parinacocha Province , which is in the bishopric of Cuzco, was the first to witness this disaffection or idolatry while he was [the] priest of that territory, he explains here about the manner in which they carried it out and why. In the province of Parinacocha of the bishopric of Cuzco, the said Luis de Olivera, the vicar of that province, came to know that not only in that province, but in all the other provinces and cities of Chuquicaca, La Paz, Cuzco, La Paz, Cuzco [sic], Huamanga, and even Lima and Arequipa, most of the [people] had fallen into great apostasies. [They were] departing from the Catholic faith that they had received and returning to the idolatry that they practiced in [the] time of their infidelity. It could not be learned who could have started this business, except it was suspected and discussed that it was an invention of the sorcerers whom the Incas kept in Vilcabamba , where [the Incas] were uprising.4 Because this is what was believed to have occurred in this kingdom [blank space]. [In] the year of [15]70, and not before, the Indians held and believed that [people] had been sent from Spain to this kingdom [to search] for an ointment of the Indians to cure a certain illness for which no medicine was known except for that ointment.5 In those times [and] for this reason, the Indians went about very secretiveChapter 8 taqui onqoy [ 85 ly, and [they] distanced themselves from the Spaniards to such a degree that no [Indian] wanted to take firewood, herb[s], or other things to a Spaniard’s house. They say that [in this way, the Indian] would not be killed inside by having the ointment extracted from him.6 All of this was believed to have originated in that robber’s den [of Vilcabamba] to create enmity between the Indians and Spaniards .7 As the Indians of this land held everything of the Inca in such high regard, and [as they] claimed that the [belief] originated there [in Vilcabamba], they were convinced very quickly in any [blank space] until the Lord Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo defeated and expelled them from there, through which God Our Lord was greatly served.8 And returning to the resourcefulness of the devil in diverting thesepoor[souls],9 [ithappened]thattheybelievedthatallthehuacas of the kingdom that the Christians had demolished and burned had come back to life, and had formed themselves into two sides: some had joined with the huaca of Pachacama[c] and the others with the huaca Titica[ca].10 [They said] that all of them were flying aroundintheair,ordering[thepeople]togivebattletoGodanddefeat Him. And [they claimed] that they were already defeating Him. [They said] that when the Marquis11 entered this land, God had defeated the huacas and the Spaniards [had defeated] the Indians. But now, the world had turned around, [so] God and the Spaniards would be defeated this time, and all the Spaniards [would] die, their cities would be flooded, and the sea would rise and drown them so that no memory would be left of them. Within this apostasy, they believed that God, Our Lord, had made the Spaniards, Castile, and the animals and supplies of Castile, but that the huacas had made the Indians, this land, and the supplies that the Indians had before [the arrival of the Spaniards]. In this way, they were stripping Our Lord of his omnipotence. Many preachers appeared from among the Indians, who preached both in the punas [high, remote grasslands] as well as in the settlements. They went about preaching this resurrection of the huacas, saying that the huacas now were flying through the air, dried 86 ] Account of the Fables and Rites of the incas out and dying of hunger, because the Indians no longer made sacrifices nor poured chicha to them. [The Indians said] that they had planted many chacras with worms to sow them in the hearts of the Spaniards, [in the] livestock of Castile and [in the] horses, and also in the hearts of the Indians who remained Christians. [They said] that [the huacas] were angry with all of the...