Chimú

“ The people of Chimu, whose ruins we have been describing, belong to the coast division—differing in many respects from the Peruvian tribes in the interior. Our information in regard to the coast people is very limited. We have to judge them almost entirely from the ruins of their towns, and the remains of their handiwork. There is no reason to suppose they were the inferiors of the Peruvians in culture. It is quite the custom to speak of them as if they were low savages before the Incas conquered the country; and that they owe to the latter all their advance in culture. ”

“ The Chincha also were constantly at war with the Chimu, Chuquimancu and Cuismancu who each ruled large and civilized coast states. The Chincha were conquered by the Inca either in the reign of Pachacutec or in that of Tupac Yupanqui (more probably the former) somewhere about 1450. According to Estete, their ruler (under Inca tutelage) in the time of the Conquest was Tamviambea. The cultural development of the Chincha was, artistically speaking, not so high as that of the Chimu. It was, however, in pre-Inca times, relatively complex. ”

“ The Yunca peoples, both Chimu and Chincha, recalled a time when their ancestors entered the coastal valleys to make them their own, "destroying the former inhabitants,... a vile and feeble race," as Chincha tradition has it. In the uplands the followers of the Scyris of Quito were remembered as coming from the littoral ”

“ The remains cover a wide space and shew that the people who dwelt here and in the other coast valleys must have made considerable advances toward civilization, for the pottery and other utensils are better in artistic style than any other remains found in South America. The kingdom of the Chimu was overthrown by the Incas a century before the Spanish Conquest, and nothing is known of the race except that its language, called Mochica, was quite different from that of the mountain tribes who obeyed the Incas. ”

“ MUMMY FROM A HUACA AT PISCO.
[After a cut in T. J. Hutchinson’s Two Years in Peru (London, 1873) , vol. i. p. 113. The Peruvian mummies are almost invariably simply desiccated. Only the royal personages were embalmed (Markham’s Cieza de Leon, 226) . Cf. Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, ii. 135.—Ed.]
The Chimu dominion extended probably from Tumbez, in the extreme north of the Peruvian coast, to Ancon, north of Lima. The Chimus also had a strong colony in the valley of Huarcu, now called Cañete. But the valleys of the Rimac, of Lurin, Chilca, and Mala, north of Cañete ”

“ Immense huacas or pyramidal structures, some of them half a mile in circuit; vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization, existed in the ancient Chimu capital. One of the great huacas, or pyramidal edifices, called "the temple of the sun," is 812 feet long by 470 wide at the base, and about 150 feet high. ”

“ That the civilization found in the country was much older than the Incas can be seen in what we know of their history. Their empire had grown to be what Pizarro found it by subjugating and absorbing a considerable number of small states, which had existed as civilized states before their time. The conquest of Quito, which was not inferior to the Valley of Cuzco in civilization, had just been completed when the Spaniards arrived. The Chimus, subjugated a few years earlier, are described as even more advanced in civilization than any other Peruvian community. ”

“ In the labyrinth below{51} worked the designers, dyers, potters, weavers, and the gold-and silver-smiths, expressing the florid taste of the Chimus.
These sea-worshippers, fish-worshippers, made fish-gods of gold. In Chanchan their small fish-god has been found, worth three million dollars. With it were gold bowls, little figures of fish, lizards, serpents, and birds, neck and arm bands, scepters and diadems, and emeralds from the north. The larger fish-god is yet to be discovered. ”

“ In order that the peculiar appropriateness of the name may appear to the reader, it may be as well to explain that Chimo (the i and o of which are sounded long) is an Esquimau word of salutation, and is used by the natives when they meet with strangers. It signifies, Are you friendly? by those who speak first, and seems to imply, We are friendly, when returned as an answer. So well known is the word to the fur-traders who traffic with the natives of Hudson’s Straits that they frequently apply it to them as a name, and speak of the Esquimaux as Chimos. ”

“ CHIUAI was the fourteenth mikado of the Land of the Gods (Japan) . His wife, the empress, was named Jingu, or Godlike Exploit. She was a wise and discreet lady and assisted her husband to govern his dominions. When a great rebellion broke out in the south island called Kiushiu, the mikado marched his army against the rebels. The empress went with him and lived in the camp. One night, as she lay asleep in her tent, she dreamed that a heavenly being appeared to her and told her of a wonderful [Pg 274] land in the west, full of gold, silver, jewels, silks and precious stones. ”

“ At any rate, Hiuga, as the region in which he dwelt was called, was not likely to serve the ends of a party of warlike invaders, there being no part of Japan less fertile. So, as the story goes, Jimmu, being then fifty years old, set out to conquer some richer realm. He had only a few followers, some being his brothers, the others his retainers, all of them, in the language of the legends, being kami, or gods. Jimmu was righteous; the savages were wicked, though they too had descended from the gods. These savages dwelt in villages, each governed by a head-man or chief. ”

“ In summer the deer still wander down the dark ravines and lave their flanks in the river’s swelling tide, and in winter the frost-smoke still darkens the air and broods above the open water of the sea; but Fort Chimo, the joy and wonder of the Esquimaux and the hope of the fur-trader, is gone, and a green patch of herbage near the flat rock beside the spring alone remains to mark the spot where once it stood. ”

“ With a shout, Chi-dubula-taka seized a great clod of earth and launched it at Makoma. But the hero had his sack held over his left arm and the stones and earth fell harmlessly upon it, and, tightly gripping his iron hammer, he rushed in and struck the giant to the ground. Chi-dubula-taka grovelled before him, all the while growing smaller and smaller; and when he had become a convenient size Makoma picked him up and put him into the sack beside Chi-eswa-mapiri. ”

“ A FRIEND OF NAPOLEON ALL Paris held no happier man than Papa Chibou. He loved his work—that was why. Other men might say—did say, in fact—that for no amount of money would they take his job; no, not for ten thousand francs for a single night. It would turn their hair white and give them permanent goose flesh, they averred. On such men Papa Chibou smiled with pity. What stomach had such zestless ones for adventure? What did they know of romance? Every night of his life Papa Chibou walked with adventure and held the hand of romance. ”

“ The Guetare of Costa Rica, and perhaps the Sumo of Nicaragua, constitute northerly outposts of the territorially great Chibchan culture, the centre of which is to be found in the plateau of Bogotá, while its southerly extension leads to the Barbacoa of northern Ecuador. South of the Chibcha, in the Andean region lying between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, is the aboriginal home of the Quechua-Aymara peoples, nearly the whole of which, at the [Pg 188] time of the Conquest was embraced in the Empire of the Incas. ”

“ The history of Fort Chimo extends back to the year 1811, when Kmoch and Kohlmeister, two of the Moravian Brethren of the Okak Mission on the Atlantic coast, in the course of their efforts for the conversion of the Eskimos to Christianity cruised into Ungava Bay, discovered the George River, which they named in honor of King George the Third, and then proceeded to the Koksoak, which they ascended to the point of the present settlement. The natives received them well. ”

“ From Chame to the province of Chiru is eight leagues of uninhabited country in the same direction; and this Chiru is inhabited by a well disposed people, with a language of their own. From this province to that of Nata there are four leagues of uninhabited country. All these districts are fertile and level,— a very fine land abounding in supplies of maize, aji, melons different from those here, grapes, and yucas; with excellent fishing in the rivers and in the sea, and deer fit for the chace. The districts of Coiba and Cueva are the same in these respects. ”

“ Ha! Chamu, [21] art thou returned? I was beginning to think thee lost, like a stone dropped to the very bottom of the sea. And Chamu said: Thou art right: for I am like the oyster, and contain a pearl.
And he looked at Atirupa, and laughed, rubbing his hands together, with cunning in his eyes, that resembled those of a weasel. And he said: Maháráj, as I entered, I heard thee wishing for Shrí [22] to visit thee in the form of an abhisariká; and lo! here she is, in my form. And do not despise her, on account of my deformity: for Shrí is a lady, and capricious, and comes in strange disguises. ”

“ Chimangos abound most in settled districts, but a prospect of food will quickly bring numbers together even in the most solitary places. On the desert pampas, where hunters, Indian and European, have a great fancy for burning the dead grass, the moment the smoke of a distant fire is seen there the Chimangos fly to follow the conflagration. They are, at such times, strangely animated, dashing through clouds of smoke, feasting amongst the hot ashes on roasted cavies and other small mammals, and boldly pursuing the scorched fugitives from the flames. ”

“ This settlement was Chiburimura, of Chiburishima (Nakashima being the island to starboard) —evidently nothing more than a fishing station. First a wharf of uncemented stone rising from the cove like a wall; then great trees through which one caught sight of a torii before some Shinto shrine, and of a dozen houses climbing the hollow hill one behind another, roof beyond roof ”

“ And Atirupa looked at him with surprise: and he said: Chamu, this is very strange, and thou art not like thyself. Hast thou been eating poppy, [23] or art thou only drunk with wine? For it is no ordinary vision that could turn thee into a poet. Come now, go on. Describe for me the beauty that has awoken such emotion in a soul as dull and muddy as thy own.
And Chamu said: O Maháráj, who can describe the indescribable? There are things that cannot be described, but only seen: hardly even then to be believed, when gazed at by the eye. ”

“ The Isthmian peoples recognize (as do most other Americans) a fainéant supreme being, Sibú, in the [Pg 193] world above, with a host of lesser, but dangerous, powers in the realm of environing nature; and there is a paradise, at least for the noble dead, situated at the zenith, though the way thither is beset by perils, monsters, and precipices. Las Casas also mentions the belief in a supreme deity, Chicuna, Lord of All Things, as extending from Darien to Nicaragua ”

“ The king of Khiama is, without exception, the finest and handsomest man we had seen in Africa (far superior to Bello) ; and, with the exception of the king of Yariba, was most respectably dressed.
14th.—At six in the morning left Khiama, and halted in Subia at one at noon. The country traversed is full of bogs, which caused the horses to fall repeatedly with their riders. The chief of this [320] town gave me a goat and some yams, by command of the king of Khiama’s messenger. ”

“ After being three days in the storm, having only as much sail on the vessel as to steady her, the gale moderated a little, and we were able to hoist more sail, and make for the land, which proved to be a place called Chimoo, which was far below the point which we started from a week before.
Chimoo Bay is about fifty miles north of Amoy. It has been an opium station for foreign ships for some years; and here, even during the war, that trade was carried on in spite of the mandarins. The natives of the different towns on the shores of this bay are an independent and lawless race. ”

“ Even white and long bearded men had made her presents and offered her their tributes and homage. He had raised the fame of their beautiful capital far above that of any other cities in Mayapan and Xibalba. He had opened the country to the commerce of the whole world, and merchants of Asia and Africa would bring their wares and receive in exchange the produce of their factories and of their lands. In a word, he had made Chichen a great metropolis in whose temples pilgrims from all parts came to worship and even offer their own persons as a sacrifice to the Almighty. ”

“ As from a fountain, rich streams of knowledge flowed from the capital of Shinra, both over the peninsula and to the court of Japan. Even after the decay of Shinra’s power in the political unity of the whole peninsula, the nation looked upon Kion-chiu as a sacred city. Her noble temples, halls, and towers stood in honor and repair, enshrining the treasures of India, Persia, [49] and China, until the ruthless Japanese torch laid them in ashes in 1596. ”