CiiAP. X. THE PERUVIAN INDIANS. 177 



oppression on the Indians in the shape of impressment for 

 the army. Villages are frequently surrounded by a party of 

 soldiers, and all the able-bodied men that can be caught are 

 driven away to serve in the ranks. This deplorable waste of 

 human life is rapidly reducing the already scanty popula- 

 tion ; and the system is more oppressive and cruel because it 

 is done in defiance of the law, by the military presidents and 

 generals who have hitherto been able to set the laws enacted 

 by civilians at defiance, when it suits their purpose.^ Yet on 

 the whole the condition of the Indians is immeasurably more 

 endui'able under the Republic than it was when they groaned 

 under the mitas of the Sj)anish corregidors. 



The history of these Peruvian Indians has been a very 

 melancholy one. The early accounts which the Spanish 

 clu'oniclers gave of the great empu-e of the Incas represented 

 the Indians as a people ruled by laws and usages which pro- 

 vided for almost every action of their lives ; neither a thief 

 nor a vicious man was known amongst them ; and they lived 

 in happiness and contentment, but under a most rigid system 

 of tutelage and subjection. Then came the Spanish con- 

 querors, and, after a quarter of a century of bloodshed and 

 rapine, the people found themselves bowed down by a grievous 

 yoke. While the most beneficent laws were enacted by the 

 Council of the Indies, their humane provisions continued to 

 be either entirely evaded, or converted into pretexts for addi- 

 tional modes of oppression. From upwards of thii'ty millions 

 the population was reduced to thi-ee millions within the space 

 of two centuries ; and all that can be said of the much-lauded 

 colonial legislation of Spain is that it prevented the Indians 

 from being actually exterminated ; and that, when Peru 



' So sti-ong is the feeling of the 

 Peruvian peojile generally against this 

 oppressive system, that, in the refonu- 

 ed constitution promulgated on Nov, 



25, 1860, forced recrmting was declared 

 to be a crime. 



" El reclutamiento es un crimen." — 

 TUulo xvi., art. 123. 



N 



