28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I02 



these superb constructions, and from many of them the Spaniards 

 have derived great riches; in one case, in the valley of Trujillo in 

 Peru, the so-called Shrine of the Sun, huge and uncouth, they told 

 me when I was in that kingdom that merely the 20 percent tax accru- 

 ing to His Majesty amounted to 85,000 pesos. Others were rifled 

 at Chimocapac, near Trujillo, and in many other sections of that king- 

 dom, and much wealth has been taken out of them ; and I have seen 

 many vagabonds hunting for guacas in their eagerness for the wealth 

 stored up in them ; those of Cuzco were very famous. Furthermore, 

 throughout the whole Peruvian Sierra the open country is full of 

 tombs shaped like turrets, which even today are full of skulls and 

 bodies of those heathen, dried up and mummified by the uniform 

 climate and thin air ; I myself have seen both, and this fact will be 

 attested by all who have traveled in those kingdoms. So this custom 

 of the Indians was learned and inherited from the Hebrews from 

 whom they are descended ; and the same practice is also observed by 

 the Moors, who, like the Indians, bury some of their wealth, with 

 meat and drink for the journey ; their false prophet Mohammed 

 adopted all this from the Hebrews. 



70. In addition to the foregoing, one finds among the Indians over 

 that wide territory many Hebrew words, with the same pronuncia- 

 tion and meaning as among the Hebrews. In New Spain, in the 

 Province of Zapotitlan called of the Suchitepequez, 36 leagues from 

 Guatemala, the Indians designate a language which is intelligible by 

 vinac, which is pronounced like the Hebrew word meaning intelli- 

 gence. There are many other similar cases in those provinces, while 

 in those of Peru some of the wives of the Inca kings were named 

 Anna, which is a Hebrew name and means gracious ; and the wife 

 of King Pachacuti Yupangui was named Anna Huacha Cuyac, gra- 

 cious lover of the poor. The tribe of the Puruaes near Riobamba, and 

 the Indians of Otavalo and other provinces of the district of Quito, 

 say ahhd for father, which is a Syriac word adopted by the Hebrews 

 through having lived long among the Syrians. There are countless 

 other Hebrew words which I do not mention, to avoid diffuseness, 

 which indicate with certainty the origin of the Indians from the 

 Ten Tribes. 



71. And it is not surprising or disconcerting that the Indians, 

 being so remote and isolated in the New World from any commerce 

 and intercourse with the Hebrews, should have grown forgetful and 

 lost the observance of the Law and divine worship, the use of letters 

 and the other good habits which their ancestors had learned from 

 their education and good doctrine. Since all that was lacking in those 



