Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/34

16 Blas Valera and the Inca Garcilasso are the two mestizo authors. The latter is so important a personage that a separate essay is devoted to his biography.

Gomara and Herrera were never in the country, and writers living after the end of the seventeenth century have no claim to be looked upon as original authorities.

There were two pure-blooded Indians whose writings are of very great value. The first was a chief living near the borders of Collahua, south of Cuzco, calling himself Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, who wrote his account of the antiquities of Peru in about 1620. I found the manuscript in the National Library at Madrid, and the Hakluyt Society published my translation in 1873. The Spanish text was afterwards edited and published by Jimenez de la Espada. It gives the traditions of the Incas, as they were handed down by the grandchildren of those who were living at the time of the Spanish conquest to their grandchildren. They are entitled to a certain authority, and Salcamayhua gives three Quichua prayers to the Supreme Being which are of extraordinary interest.

The work of the second Indian author is quite a recent discovery. It was found by Dr. Pietschmann, the librarian of the University of Göttingen, in the Royal Library at Copenhagen in 1908. The title is 'Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno,' de Don Felipe Huaman Poma de Ayala; a very thick quarto of 1179 pages, with numerous clever