34 Singing Valleys 



cultivated varieties of maize growing in the irrigated fields, 

 and no wild varieties anywhere. 



The Incas, with their extraordinary genius for government, 

 developed the agricultural life of the tribes as the basis of soci- 

 ety. Their worship of the sun they linked with the tribal 

 devotion to the earth goddess. The Inca chief announced to 

 the world that spring had come by turning the first furrow in 

 the maize fields with a golden plow. The epitaph which Inca 

 Pachu composed for himself has been translated: 



I was born like the maize in the field. 



Like the maize, I was cherished in my youth. 



I came to maturity, I was spent, 



Now I am withered, and I die. 



Inca culture surpassed that in every part of the Americas be- 

 cause the Peruvians knew the use of bronze in weapons and 

 tools; they domesticated the llama which enabled them to 

 practise field agriculture, and they manured their lands with 

 guano. There was no need for them to move the milpas every 

 third or fourth year, as the Maya and the Aztecs who did not 

 fertilize their fields were forced to do. In four centuries they 

 spread an empire from northern Peru across Bolivia and into 

 northwestern Argentina. It was an empire in which justice and 

 mercy were set before cruelty. The Peruvians offered no human 

 sacrifices to their Lord the sun or to any of the lesser deities. 

 No human blood stained their altars. Nor can the charge of 

 cannibalism be laid against them, as it can be laid to the 

 Aztecs. Garcillasso comments with the awestruck wonder of 

 one who had seen the armies of Castile glut themselves at the 

 sack of Granada, that by Inca law it was a crime punishable by 

 death for a soldier to pillage. Moreover, he remarks, "the 

 penalty was exacted." 



As among the Maya, the Inca system of land tenure was 

 communal. Each village held title to its fields which were 

 allotted, one tupa to every married man not to own, but to 

 till. When a son was born, the father was granted one tupa 



