20 THE PEANUT— THE UNPREDICTABLE LEGUME 



"During my residence in Lima, I visited the ruins of Pachacamac, twenty- 

 miles south of the capital. . . . Pachacamac is one of the most notable spots 

 in Peru, for here, as we are told by the old chroniclers, was the sacred 

 city of the natives of the coast before their conquest by the Incas. ... In 

 Pachacamac, the ground around the temple seems to have been a vast 

 cemetery. Dig almost, any where in the dry nitrous sand, you will come 

 upon what are loosely called mummies, but which are the desiccated 

 bodies of the ancient dead. ... I will record what I found in a single tomb, 

 which will illustrate how a family, not rich, nor yet the poorest, lived in 

 Pachacamac. . . . Besides the bodies there were a number of utensils, and 

 other articles in the vault; among them half a dozen earthen jars, pans 

 and pots of various sizes and ordinary form. One or two were still in- 

 crusted with the soot of the fires over which they had been used. Every 

 one contained something. One was filled with groundnuts familiar to us 

 as peanuts." Since the coast tribes occupied this region before develop- 

 ment of the Incan Empire, some archaeologists consider these graves as 

 possibly antedating our Christian era, but overlapping of the various 

 culture periods of the area makes dating of the graves uncertain. There 

 can, however, be no doubt that they are very ancient, certainly pre- 

 Columbian. 



Monardes (16), who lived in Peru about 1550, described briefly the 

 subterranean fruits without giving a name for the plant. He said it was 

 grown along the Maranon River and was highly esteemed by both 

 Indians and Spaniards. 



Garcillosa de la Vega, son of an Incan princess and a Spanish father 

 and born in Peru in 153^, published in 1609 his "Los Commentaries 

 Reales" in which mention is made of "ynchic" as an important food of the 

 Incas. 



Thus, Peru has become conspicuously associated with the peanut, 

 and development of the cultivated forms is frequently cited as one of the 

 accomplishments of the Incas; but continued study of old manuscripts 

 has shown that cultivation of the peanut was by no means confined to 

 Peru and Brazil at the time Columbus visited the New World. It is of 

 interest in this connection to remember that the two common names for 

 the plant in Spanish-speaking countries, "mani" and "cacahuate," are of 

 North American origin. 



Las Casas (5), a priest who lived in "New Spain" (now Haiti-Santo 

 Domingo) from 1510-1530, mentioned "mani" among the food plants 

 being grown by a tribe of Indians on the island. Likewise Oviedo (17), 

 the official historian of "New Spain" 1513-1524, mentioned "mani" as 



