Scholars tend to see the peoples of the region at the
time of the
Spanish conquest as in possession of historical memories reachius_back
to perhaps the tenth century A.D. Thus in the highlands the chronicles
of the Aztecs preserved an impressive record of their own history going
back about a century. They also knew something in historical, and not
just legendary, terms about events going back a few centuries before
that; and though much of this material was likewise about their own
history, they had some conception of the role of the Toltecs as well.
Yet they had nothing to tell of the people who created the imperial
city of Teotihuacan, let alone their predecessors; our only information
there is archaeological. In the lowlands the Maya of the early
sixteenth century preserved a record of events comparable to that found
in the highlands, but the detailed, if fragmentary, information we
possess on Mayan history in the first millennium A.D. is overwhelmingly
derived from the monumental inscriptions of the period, and not from
chronicles still in circulation when the Spanish arrived.
In the Andean region historical memory was significantly
shallower. The
Incas put a great deal of effort into remembering their own history, in
effect establishing foundations to preserve a record of the life and
deeds of each of the Inca rulers, at considerable cost in revenues and
personnel. This was not a disinterested activity: Inca history was
closely related not just to the prestige of the Inca state as a whole
but also to that of the particular Inca lineages associated with each
ruler. Not surprisingly, the Incas had no interest in extending this
high- maintenance historiography to their predecessors. Thus Tiahuanaco
in the southern highlands, a plausible imperial center comparable to
Teotihuacin and of roughly the same antiquity, is likewise known to us
only by its ruins, and the same goes for Huari farther north. The rule
in the Andean region is that the only state history we possess is Inca
history. The sole exception to this is the state of ChimU in the
coastal lowlands, a highly centralized kingdom conquered by the Incas
about 1470. The Incas did nothing to preserve its history directly, but
they did allow the dynasty to continue to exercise a measure of power
under their overlordship, and as late as the beginning of the
seventeenth century the royal family still retained a role under
Spanish rule. It is doubtless to this survival of the dynasty that we
owe the short, but valuable, account of its history that has reached us
through the Spanish sources. In the Andean case, moreover, writing was
not available to counteract the fading of historical memory in pre-
Columbian times.
