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Notes 1. References to Guaman Poma’s book refer to the original pagination as corrected on the Royal Library’s Web site, www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/en/frontpage .htm.The introductory material shows the colonial style of an Indian whowants to impress the pope and the king of Spain. Guaman Poma based this description of his chronicle on the religious works created to aid priests in converting the Indians to Christianity. He was familiar with the writing used in the book titled Doctrina christiana y catecismo para instruccion de los indios (Ciudad de los Reyes [Lima], 1584), which was written by a team of priests under the direction of Father Jose de Acosta. Guaman Poma was also familiar with the Catholic Bible and other historical works of the times, and his detailed record of his understanding of Christian doctrine as taught to him by Catholic priests offers invaluable insights into the acculturation process taking place in colonial times. He did not, however, master Spanish rules of agreement. He uses “El primer nueva coronica,” which should be La primera, and on MS p. 1 he writes: “la dicha coronica es muy util y provechoso” instead of “provechosa.” Such errors can be attributed to the fact that his native Quechua has no such agreement. Though many other chronicles had been written before, which Guaman Poma had read, he uses the word nueva to describe his work because it presents a new interpretation of the subject. 2. In this section Guaman Poma used the model of the sixteenth-century religious writer Fray Luis de Granada in his work Memorial de la vida cristiana (1566) (in Obras de Fray Luis de Granada, see pp. 205 and 301).The Latin quote copied from Fray Luis de Granada is the first line of Psalm 87 in the Douay-Rheims Bible, which is used here. Guaman Poma warns his readers of the peril they will encounter if they do not heed the advice in his book in the same way the prophet Jeremiah and Saint John warned their listeners. He shows his knowledge of biblical writings and uses religious rhetoric to show the importance of his own work. 3. The style of this letter and those to the king of Spain generally follow the epistolary usage of the times. Guaman Poma knew the formulas of courtesy required for official letters to dignitaries. In this passage he acts as a Catholic spokesman for the Indians in requesting that they be allowed to be ordained as priests. 4. To the west of Cuzco are the provinces of Lucana (or Rucana), Andamarca,Circamarca , and Sora. “Huamanga” was the colonial name for the city now known as Ayacucho. 296 “Chinchaysuyo” refers to one of the four quarters of the Inca Empire; it extended northwest from Cuzco and included Quito by 1520. Here Guaman Poma exaggerates the importance of his father, who did not, in fact, hold a high office in the Inca government. 5. Essentially the same historical names are repeated. Notice that key terms in Quechua and Spanish are left as in the original. The Quechua word runa means “person or man,” thus “Vari Viracocha Runa” refers to the people of the time of Variviracocha. The Quechua word “Inca” (“ynga” in the manuscript) refers not only to the ruler or emperor, but also to members of the royal family and all nobles. 6. Quipo (or quipu) is a Quechua word referring to a device for recording information , particularly numbers. It was made of strands of cord or thin wool, or cotton strings. From the main cord, smaller strings hang down. Knots tied in the smaller strings indicate numbers in a decimal system. It was used as a mnemonic device for remembering historical genealogies as well as for a variety of other purposes, such as keeping track of the amounts of food or clothing in a storehouse. See the illustration on MS p. 337. 7. European historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries accepted biblical chronology. Guaman Poma did so also, but he incorporates Andean traditions into the biblical framework. Here he says that an Indian named Vari descended from Noah. 8. Manco Inca, 1516–1545, was an Inca emperor crowned at Cuzco in 1533; loyal to Pizarro at first, he escaped in 1535 and organized a resistance movement. 9. The preceding is a list of topics covered in this chronicle. 10. Guaman Poma lists Indian languages and provinces of Peru.The general language of the empire was...

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