gg() THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [etii.ann.i4 



From the Pecos, across the Rio Grande to Zufii and the far-distant 

 Hopi mesas, every Pueblo village accepted the yucca string and began 

 secret preparation for the rising. The time chosen was the new moon 

 of August, 1680, but, through a partial discovery of the plot, the explo- 

 sion was precipitated on the 10th. So sudden and complete was the 

 surprise that many Spaniards in the Pueblo country, priests, soldiers, 

 and civilians, were killed, and the survivors, after holding out for a 

 time under Governor Otermin at Santa Fe, fled to El Paso, and in 

 October there remained not a single Spaniard in all New Mexico. 

 {Bandelier, 1 <i, lb.) 



Despite their bitter disappointment, the southern nations continued 

 to cherish the hope of a coming redeemer, who now assumed the charac- 

 ter of a terrible avenger of their wrongs, and the white-skin conqueror 

 has had bloody occasion to remember that his silent peon, as he toils 

 by blue Chapala or sits amid the ruins of his former grandeur in the 

 dark forests of Yucatan, yet waits ever and always the coming of 

 the day which shall break the power of the alien Spaniard and restore 

 to their inheritance the children of Anahuac and Mayapan. In Peru 

 the natives refused to believe that the last of the Incas had perished a 

 wanderer in the forests of the eastern Cordilleras. For more than two 

 centuries they cherished the tradition that he had only retired to 

 another kingdom beyond the mountains, from which he would return 

 in his own good time to sweep their haughty oppressors from the laud. 

 In 1781 the slumbering hope found expression in a terrible insurrection 

 under the leadership of the mestizo Condorcanqui, a descendant of the 

 ancient royal family, who boldly proclaimed himself the long lost 

 Tupac Amaru, child of the sun and Inca of Peru. With mad enthu- 

 siasm the Quichua highlanders hailed him as their destined deliverer 

 and rightful sovereign, and binding around his forehead the imperial 

 fillet of the Incas, he advanced at the head of an immense army to the 

 walls of Cuzco, declaring his purpose to blot, out the very memory of 

 the white man and reestablish the Indian empire in the City of the 

 Sun. Inspired by the hope of vengeance on the conqueror, even boys 

 became leaders of their people, and it was only alter a bloody struggle 

 of two years' duration that the Spaniards were able to regain the 

 mastery and consigned the captive Inca, with all his family, to an 

 ignominious and barbarous death. Even then so great was the feeling 

 of veneration which he had inspired in the breasts of the Indians that 

 "notwithstanding their fear of the Spaniards, and though they were 

 surrounded by soldiers of the victorious army, they prostrated them 

 selves at the sight of the last of the children of the sun. as lie passed 

 along the streets to the place of execution." (Humboldt, 1.) 



In the New World, as in the Old. the advent of the deliverer was to be 

 heralded by signs and wonders. Thus in Mexico, a mysterious rising 

 of the waters of Lake Tezcuco, time comets blazing in the sky, and a 

 strange light in the east, prepared the minds of the people for the near 



