190 Boo\ Reviews

substantiate their claims. On the other hand, were Cuauhtemoc planning the
massacre, he would certainly have needed Paxbolonacha's collaboration or, at
least, neutrality. Non-co-operation was a wise decision; a massacre of the
Spaniards would sooner or later have brought terrible retribution.
To linguist and ethnohistorian the papers are immensely valuable. The rela-
ci6n is the only surviving colonial document in or concerning Putun (Maya
Chontal). That once wide-spread language now survives only in a few villages
on the Tabasco-Chiapas border, and with bad Spanish adulteration at that. Close
to both Yucatec and Palencano Choi, it is a key language for the study of Maya
hieroglyphs of the classic period.
Until the appearance of this study, extremely little was known of the ethno-
history of southwestern Campeche and the Usumacinta-Grijalva delta. The
relacion not only has invaluable information on pre-Columbian history, e.g.
the founder of the dynasty came from Cozumel Island, on the far side of the
peninsula; it also gives incidental, but highly important details on Putun religion
and social and political organization. There is also interesting material resulting
from efforts, around A.D. 1600, to round up lapsed Christians from Yucatan and
groups of still pagan Cehach, whose territory covered many great, but long-
abandoned ceremonial centres of the classic period.
Scholes and Roys formed an ideal team in training and background—historian
and ethnohistorian and linguist—to digest this mass of material. Combining with
it scattered data from other sources, notably the 1530 entrada of Alonso Davila
(chiefly in Oviedo y Valdes) and a matncuia of Tixchel, on the coast just north
of Terminos Bay, to which the Indians were moved from Itzamkanac, they have
filled a once frighteningly large blank spot on the Maya cultural map with some
welcome details. Nor do the authors neglect the other Putun (Maya Chontal)
in the delta country with Potonchan as commercial and political capital. The
excellent maps, outcome of much thought, are important contributions to
knowledge.
This light on the whole Putun group multiplies its wattage as the importance
of that people in Maya commercial and political life becomes clearer. As the
merchants of Middle America, their trading canoes, holding up to fifty men
apiece, engirdled the peninsula of Yucatan; they had 'factories' far to the east
on the plains of Honduras, and westward, their ports, notably Xicalango, handled
traffic, on through bills of lading, to and from Tenochtitlan.
This trade expansion went hand in hand with political expansion, and each
year it becomes more apparent that this once barely known Maya group domi-
nated much of the Maya lowlands in the post-classic period. It is therefore fitting
that they should have been, so to speak, introduced to modern students in this
brilliant book by two of the greatest scholars of the Maya field.

J. ERIC S. THOMPSON

John V. Murra (ed.): Visita de la Provincia de Leon de Hudnuco en 1562

(Documentos para la Historia y Etnologia de Huanuco y la Selva Central,
tomo 1, Huanuco, Peru, 1967). Pp. 436. No price stated.
 Bool{ Reviews 191
Waldemar Espinoza Soriano et al.: Visita Hecha a la Provincia de Chucuito
por Garci Diez de San Miguel en el ano l$6j (Documentos Regionales para
la Etnohistoria Andina, no. i, Casa de la Cultura del Peru, Lima, 1964).
Pp. 448. No price stated. Both obtainable from Iturriaga & Co., Apartado
4640, Lima.
It has long been recognised that the visita records of Spanish officials in the
New World constitute an outstandingly important body of historical source-
material—a veritable Potosi where rich veins can be struck, and valuable facts
and figures be quarried. The recognition of this fact, however, has unfortunately
not yet led to any wildly enthusiastic silver-rush. The reasons for this are easy
enough to understand, although not particularly creditable to historical scholar-
ship. Visita records are, by their nature, long, tedious and repetitive documents.
Difficult to locate, difficult to read, and very difficult to interpret, they do not
provide the same kind of easy access to the study of pre-conquest and post-
conquest America that is offered by sixteenth-century chronicles. It is not there-
fore surprising that scholars have tended to shy away from the systematic study
of such demanding sources, and to confine their attention to more graceful
literary productions.
Yet the chronicles of conquest and colonization, while themselves by no means
yet exhausted as important historical sources, need to be weighed and checked
against other types of records, of which notarial documents and visita reports
are those which have so far been least exploited. The surveying, publishing and
editing of this neglected documentary material is a major challenge confronting
modern historical scholarship; and while the process will undoubtedly be arduous
and slow, the long-term rewards are likely to be very great. There are already
several indications that our knowledge and understanding of pre- and post-
conquest institutions and society are capable of being not simply enriched but
transformed by the intelligent use of the information provided by sixteenth-
century officials and notaries.
A pioneer in the exploitation of material derived from Spanish colonial visitas
has been Professor John V. Murra, whose explorations into the history of pre-
conquest Andean society with his colleagues of the Instituto de Investigaciones
Andinas have already shown how much can be achieved by an intelligent
co-ordination of the skills of anthropologists, archaeologists and historians. The
two volumes under review are themselves the outcome of this team-work, and
provide an admirable indication both of actual achievement and of future possi-
bilities. The first volume is an entirely new edition of the report of the visita to
the Huanuco regio.n conducted by Inigo Ortiz de Zuniga in 1562, previously
published in 1920-25, but not easily accessible. The second is a transcription of
the hitherto unedited account of the visita of Garci Diez de San Miguel to the
province of Chucuito, in the form in which it was presented to the Council of
the Indies in 1568 (the full record, as taken down on the visita itself, has not
been found). Both volumes contain supplementary documents, including the
account, in the_ Huanuco volume, of an earlier visita to the same region, which
affords useful opportunities for comparative study. Neither volume has notes to
the text, but the value of both is greatly enhanced by the presence of essays by
various hands on different aspects of the visitas. These essays include one in each
192 Boo\ Reviews
volume by Professor Murra on the ethnological importance of the visitor's find-
ings; biographical accounts of the two visitors; an admirable general survey by
Rolando Mellafe, setting the Huanuco visita into its historical context; and
additional contributions on the implications of the same visita for the study of
agriculture, archaeology and demography.
Although each volume stands by itself, the two taken together complement
each other admirably, and suggest something of the range of information, the
similarities and the contrasts, to be found in visita records. The two visitas both
took place in the Peru of the 1560s, at a time when the Crown was slowly and
painfully establishing its control at the expense of the conquerors. The purpose
of each was to provide information about the condition and obligations of the
native population, which would help the Crown to determine the character and
extent of Indian tribute and services in a way that would combine the maximum
benefit .to a hard-pressed royal treasury with the minimum dislocation of certain
long-established social patterns. But within this context of common policy and
purpose, the visitas reveal sharp differences, which bear eloquent witness to the
varieties of social and institutional organization in the territories conquered by
Spain.
The differences begin with the personalities of the two visitors themselves.
While both were originally soldiers of fortune, Garci Diez, having already served
as corregidor in Chucuito, was much better prepared to conduct a visita than
Inigo Ortiz de Zuniga, whose qualifications for this particular task appear
minimal. Indeed, Ortiz emerges as a sixteenth-century Uriah the Hittite,
despatched as far as possible from the capital to allow the viceroy to enjoy the
charms of his wife. (Unlike Uriah, however, he returned from his assignment,
which he accomplished with embarrassing promptness.) His report undoubtedly
lacks the perceptive appreciation of Indian society and Indian problems displayed
by Garci Diez; but it is, on the other hand, a much fuller document, with the
richness of detail that comes from house-to-house surveys. Ortiz, however, was
visiting a considerably smaller area, with a population of only some,io,ooo, as
against the 100,000 inhabitants of the area covered by Garci Diez. But in spite
of the size of his region, Diez still manages to convey a more immediately vivid
impression of native life and attitudes than. Ortiz. He asked, for instance, if the
Indians would be interested in having a hospital built in the village, to which
the answer was in the negative, on the grounds that ' cuando estan los indios
malos en su casa comen lo que quieren y se hartan y cuando van al hospital los
matan de hambre y tienen piojos' (pp. 118-19).
The regions covered by the two visitors were remarkably different in character.
Chucuito, on the southern shore of lake Titicaca, was the Aymara kingdom of
Lupaqa, whereas Huanuco was Quechua-speaking. Chucuito belonged to the
world of the altiplano, although the visita records the existence of Lupaqa out-
posts as far away as the Pacific coast. An economy based on llamas and alpacas
made it a wealthy region, and one which remained directly tributary to the
Spanish Crown, since encomiendas had never been granted here. Huinuco, on
the other hand, was encomienda territory—farming and stockraising land of the
type which the Spaniards knew and appreciated. The ethnic and political units
in the Huanuco area were not as large as those in the Lupaqa kingdom, but
 Reviews 193

both areas reveal interesting traces of the old dualist structure of political organi-
zation. The visitas to both make it possible to glimpse something of the complex
network of reciprocal obligation on which'pre-conquest Andean society depended
for its functioning and survival, just as they also make it possible to see some-
thing of the way in which that society was being eroded by the imposition of
alien rule and alien demands.
The publication of these two visitas is therefore an event of considerable
importance for scholars in many different fields. There is material here for
anthropologists, historians, archaeologists and demographers, but it is not material
which easily yields up its secrets. If it is approached, as it needs to be approached,
with a number of questions in mind, it is at least as likely to provoke fresh
questions as to provide conclusive answers to the first. New and sometimes
startling facts suddenly present themselves. What, for instance, are the social,
political and economic implications of the heavy predominance of women and
children among the population of the Huanuco region in the decades following
the conquest? This is the kind of problem posed by the volumes under review.
Professor Murra and his colleagues have rendered a great service, both in making
the material available and in suggesting some of the ways in which it can be
used. Having set their hands so successfully to the plough, it is to be hoped that
they will not let themselves be deterred by the arduous character of an under-
taking which must be discouraging in its magnitude, but from which so much
will eventually be learnt.

King's College, London j . H. E L I I O T T

John Grier Varner: El Inca : The Life and Times of Garcilaso de la Vega
(Austin, University of Texas Press, 1968, 95/-). Pp. 413, illustrated.
According to a Peruvian myth, after the last Inca's head was buried, his body
began to grow under the soil; when it is complete, the Incas will return.
Biologically, the ultimate resurrection of an Indian Peru may be inevitable, but
in the domain of culture the mestizo must prevail. The preservation of the Incaic
element in Peruvian culture owes more to the Inca Garcilaso than to any other
single person. Successive Spanish authorities recognized as much by their
attempts to censor, modify or suppress his message. Yet the Royal Commentaries
is a living work, more so than any other account of the age. It is not an accident
that their author has become ' the Inca' by antonomasia.
The mysterious pervasive quality of his book has been perceived by historians
of literature and philosophers of history. Some have attributed it solely to
humanistic idealism; others have seen in it a new interpretation of the City of
God. But it transcends the bounds of conventional Utopianism, for its subject is
a real society, not an invented one. It remains both a historical source and a
vision. Our understanding of it is inseparable from the understanding of its
author. Since the Texas Press was inaugurated with the publication of Dr
Varner's Florida in 1951, and recently published my own version of the Royal
Commentaries, it is fitting that the same press should now produce a substantial
life of the Inca. In order to complete the programme it might publish an
English translation of the Inca's Leon Hebreo and a symposium on his ideas.