Page:The American Indian.djvu/284

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232
THE AMERICAN INDIAN

good pottery, but the latter were considered cannibals. Cannibalism, in fact, is charged to a large number of these groups.

In the north, in what is now Ecuador, were the Canarian, who by their high development of gold work take a position intermediate to the Chibchan center; but their inland neighbors, the Jivaran, are more like the wild Amazon tribes.

The chief characters pertaining to Inca culture are: an organized government based upon gentile groups; the supreme authority resting in a council who appointed from a hereditary group a war chief, or Inca (see p. 149), agriculture advanced, maize, manioc, peppers, potatoes, fertilization with guanaco and other manures, elaborate irrigation systems; domestication of the llama, with the dog, guinea pig, birds, and monkeys as pets; some fishing on the coast and hunting in the interior; spinning and weaving highly developed, cotton cultivated, vicuna wool, elaborate designs and rich dyes; pottery carried to a high state of development, both in form and design, most unique form, the whistling jar; gold, silver, and copper mined, smelted and skilfully worked; true bronze was made by use of tin; tools and mechanical appliances simple, digging-stick and spade for farming, no hoe; no saws, drilling by rolling in hands; architecture massive, but plain and severe; a system of roads; stone, and suspension bridges; some water travel by balsa; an organized army and fortifications; no writing, but the quipu as a counting device; sun worship, an organized priesthood; a mythical white man founder called Viracocha; a deluge myth; human sacrifices rare, but offerings of animals common; a series of gens gods, or huacas; religious orders of virgins; a sacred shrine on Lake Titicaca; conventional confessions of sins to a priest; two important ceremonies, the new-fire with the banishment of disease and the sun festival.

13. The Guanaco Area. Adjacent to the Bolivian highlands, the elevated lands of the headwaters of the La Plata drainage are known as the Gran Chaco. This is a rolling, wooded, and, in part, swampy plain. Farther south it merges into the Pampas, a level, treeless prairie. Still farther south, we have a more elevated, scantily wooded country in Patagonia. This