The Calchaqui: An Archeological Problem
By DANIEL G. BRINTON
The titles given below name but a small fraction of the articles and works which have appeared in the last decade on the ancient tribes of the Calchaqui and the archeology of the area they inhabited.
This fervor of investigation is fully justified by the importance of the questions to be settled. They rank among the first in the palethnology of the South American continent. Nowhere else east of the Andes are found remains of a culture rivaling that of Peru, and rising distinctly into that of the Age of Metals.
What relations did this culture bear to that of the Aymara and Quichua? Was is the child or the parent of the latter? Or does it reveal an independent center of civilization? What were the ethnic and linguistic affiliations of the people who occupied that area at the time of the conquest, and were they the authors of that culture?
These are the inquiries which for years have been engaging the attention of the leading antiquaries in Argentina, and it is my intention at present very briefly to state the conclusions to which they have arrived.
A few descriptive words will not be amiss. The ancient province of Tucumán, of the once viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, lay at the foot of the Andes, amid the upper feeders of the Rio Dulce and Rio Salado, between south latitude 26° and 29° and west longitude 63° to 66°, and thereabout. The most interesting portion of this region, archeologcially, is that known as Catamarca, which includes the valleys of Yocavil, Famaifil, Andalgalá, and others. Here are situated the remarkable fortress of Watungasta with its stone walls and cylindrical brick towers; the extraordinary fortified camp of El Pucará, 23 kilometers long and 9 wide, with stone walls 3 meters in height, flanked by circular redoubts with interior banquettes; the majestic remains of the Cerro Pintado; of the Punta de Balasto; and many others. For scores of leagues the soil yields abundant testimony of a dense and advanced ancient population. Foundations of stone and brick walls, fragments of neatly turned painted pottery, cemeteries where the dead were interred in large jars; stone axes, and other stone and bone implements; bells and ornaments of copper, needles of silver, chisels and plaques of bronze, numberless images, idols and amulets of stone, terra cotta, hardwood, and metal, rows of monolithic menhirs recalling those of Brittany, strange figures carved or painted on a flat surface of rocks,—these abounding vestiges of a vanished people still mutely testify to a progress in the arts and a development of social condition scarcely if at all surpassed anywhere on the continent of America by its indigenous inhabitants.
What do we know of these people by history or tradition? That fountain of legendary lore, Garcilasso de la Vega, tells us that they voluntarily submitted themselves to the rule of the Incas,[2] and von Ihering places the date of the occurrence about 1300 A. D. Tucumán thus became part of the Incasic province of Colla Suyu. Certain it is that the Spaniards, exploring the coutry in 1536 and later, found the Quichua tongue understood everywhere by the chieftains, although not by the common herd.
At that date the vales of Catamarca were inhabited by those whom the chroniclers call Calchaqui, which is apparently the Quichuia ’kallchay-cuy, “irascible, ill-natured,” a signification very suitable to these natives, for their wars and revolutions continued with little intermission until they were finally exterminated in 1664.
A double question here arises: What was the affiliation of these Calchaqui? And were they the builders of the great structures of Catamarca and the begetters of its civilization?
It must be said that no satisfactory answer has yet been given to the first of these inquiries. We have, in fact, no positive relics of the language of the Calchaqui; not a word. I say this with full knowledge of the analyses of local names by Lafone Quevedo, Quirogo, and others. The latter concludes that they spoke the tongue called by the missionaries “Cacana,” and that this was related either to the Araucanian or to the Guaycuru dialects of the Chaco. The industrious student Florentino Ameghino[3] argues from certain evidence that their tongue was a dialect of the Aymara; von Tschudi maintained that it was related to the modern Atacameño of the Pacific coast; while Dr. Th. Waitz set it down as a corrupt dialect of the Quichua. Such wide divergence among competent scholars proves only that the material is wanting to decide the question.
After all, it is of less interest than it would be, if we were to consider the Calchaqui as the exponents of the ancient culture. But of this there are grave doubts. The earliest explorers nowhere report them as a civilized people, and describe the land as filled with ruins when first visited. Therefore, von Ihering, Quiroga, and other archeologists incline to believe that the civilized builders of these remains had been overcome and dispossessed by wild and savage tribes long before the whites reached the region, very much as the mound builders of the Ohio valley had also succumbed to the inroads of barbarians, and fled or were exterminated.
All the archeologists agree in one point, and it has been especially emphasized by Ambrosetti—the Catamarcan remains are throughout Incasic, in design, technique, and symbolism. Of this identity of inspiration there can be no question, and it has been shown in a hundred details. We must, therefore, decide whether this was an extension of Incasic culture beyond the jurisdiction of Incasic rule; was it that of a portion of the Incasic state; or, as von Ihering boldly suggests, do we find in the vales of Catamarca the very source and birthplace of the Incasic culture itself?
These questions are still open. The vast collections in the Museo de la Plata, the researches in craniography by ten Kate, in linguistics by Quevedo, and in symbolism by Ambrosetti, are not yet sufficient to sustain either opinion. Much has been hoped from a comparison of the petroglyphs, and both Moreno and von Ihering have ventured boldly in the identification and interpretation of these rude markings. But nothing convincing has resulted from the similarities they point out; such recur between these inchoate designs everywhere.
That the religious ideas expressed in the symbolism of the remains of sacred art in the Catamarcan valleys are strikingly similar to those of the Incasic faith is a strong point which has been well brought out by Ambrosetti. The serpent symbol is expressed in identical technical form; the costumes of gods are often alike; the huacanqui, or love charms, are the same; the Peruvian trinity, tangatanga, recurs in Catamarcan wood-carving, and the curious old man with the long beard (un-Indian as he seems) appears on vases from the Calchaqui region as well as in the legendary figure of Viracocha.
All this forcibly impels to the conviction that the Catamarcan culture was essentially Incasic, but that it had already passed to degeneration and destruction before the arrival of the whites, and that the nations these found in the picturesque valleys of Tucumán were not the builders but the destroyers of the ancient glory of the region.
- ↑ Calchaquí. Por Adán Quiroga. Pp. 492, and app., pp. xxvi. Illustrated. Tucuman, 1897. Vol. 1.
Notas de Arqueología Calchaquí. Con dibujos. Por J. B. Ambrosetti. Bol. del Instituto Geográfico Argentino, 1896, 1897.
Die Calchaquis. Von Dr. H. von Ihering. Das Ausland, Jahr. lxiv, Nos. 48, 49.
Las Ruinas de Watungasta. Las Ruinas de la Fortaleza de Pucará. Por Gunardo Lange. Anales del Museo de la Plata, Seccion de Arqueología, 1892, etc.
Tesoro de Catamarqueñismos. Por S. A. Lafone Quevedo. Anales de la Sociedad Científicia Argentina, Tom. xxxix. - ↑ Comentarios Reales, lib. v., cap. xxv.
- ↑ Antigüedad del Hombre en La Plata; tom. ii., cap. xiii.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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