Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/200

164 and the sentence was commuted to servitude for themselves and their descendants. They were called yana-mayu cuna, which was soon corrupted into yana-cuna; and yana became the word for a domestic servant, as well as for the colour black. This institution of yana-cuna as domestic servants was quite exceptional, and no part of the regular Incarial system.

Not the least important part of that system was the policy of planting colonists, called mitimaes, especially in provinces recently conquered or supposed to be disaffected. Married young men from the yma huayna class, with their wives, were collected from a particular district and conveyed to a distant part of the empire, where their loyalty and industry would leaven a disaffected region. Vast numbers from recently conquered provinces were transported to localities where they would be surrounded by a loyal population, or to the eastern forests and unoccupied coast valleys. This was especially the case with the Collas, many of whom were sent as mitimaes or colonists as far as the borders of Quito. The Lupacas, on the western shores of Lake Titicaca, were exiled in great numbers to the southern coast valleys of Moquegua and Tacna. Their places were filled by loyal colonists from the Inca districts of Aymara, Cotapampa, and Chumpivilca.

This colonising policy served more than one purpose. Its most obvious effect was to secure the quiet and prosperity of recently annexed provinces.