THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE INCAS. 
By Cuartes W. MeEap, 
Assistant, Department of Archeology. 
INTRODUCTION 
ANCIENT PER, the land of the Incas, extended, according to 
the historians, Garcilasso de la Vega ' and Prescott, ? from about 
the second degree of north latitude to the Maule River in Chile, 
about the thirty-sixth degree of south latitude. The country 
included the region now comprised within the Republic of Peru, 
and the greater part of Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, and was 
nearly equal in size to that part of the United States east of the 
Rocky Mountains. The Incas had no written language, and no 
small part of our knowledge-of their customs has been derived 
from their practice of representing the scenes of daily life in 
the decoration of their pottery vessels. In the study of the 
musical instruments in particular, the decorations on the pot- 
tery of the ancient Peruvians is important, because the Spanish 
conquerers of the land and their followers have left in their ac- 
counts but little information bearing upon the subject. From 
the pottery and other objects found in the ancient tombs and 
burial places, therefore, we have derived most of our knowledge 
of the musical instruments of the Incas, and the present dis- 
cussion is based upon a study of the prehistoric Peruvian col- 
lections in the American Museum of Natural History. In these 
collections there are not only many of the musical instruments 
themselves, but also artifacts, principally pottery vessels, deco- 
rated with figures of men in the act of playing upon such 
instruments. 
It is commonly said that “Peru is a puzzle’’; and certainly 
this may be truthfully said of its music. Although we find re- 
corded a number of characteristic songs, known to the Peruvian 
Indians for nearly two hundred years, we cannot say positively 
of any one of them that it is wholly pre-Spanish. Dr. von 
* Royal Commentaries of Peru. Ed. Rycaut, Part I, Book I, Chap. III. 
? Conquest of Peru, Vol. I, p. 28. 
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