Re: Amerindian navigators

[agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu (Domingo Martinez)]

In article <5rkvj6$c1u$1@trends.ca>, yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky) 
wrote:
>Thanks for these references, Domingo. Somewhere I have read that the Lord
>of Chincha was the second most important ruler in the Inca Empire, and
>that the Inca Emperor accorded him many signs of respect. This would
>indicate that Chincha traders made an important contribution to Inca
>economy. 

Not exactly.  But here, Yuri, here! is where you read it.  I wrote about it.  
But not that the Chincha Lord was "the second most important ruler" in the 
Inca empire (another one of your tall tales that you would love to be true and 
that, somehow, get mingled with a couple of facts you know and then become 
"smoking guns" or "reality" or "evidence"? ) The chronicles only  establish 
that:

1. At Cajamarca
2. The day of the capture of Atawallpa (memento: according to you, Yuri, the 
Inca with a chicken name: do you remember when you thought this was part of 
your evidence for pre-Columbian chickens? If you forgot, you can always check 
http://www.andes.missouri.edu/personal/dmartinez/diffusion/msg00056.html and 
surrounding files)
3. There were two litters with important people
4. One of them was Atawallpa, the other of the Chincha Apu
5. Both litters were luxurious
6. At the beginning, the Spaniards were not sure who among them was the big 
honcho, but they found that out fast, and Valverde did not doubt who to talk 
with.

Thus, the Lord of Chincha was accorded some privileges, that is for sure, also 
remembering that Atawallpa was still trying to reconstruct the polity after 
the bloody civil war and a dreadful hit of smallpox.  The wealth of the 
Chincha was very well known, as it was the wealth of the Chimu, the wealth of 
the Chachapoya, the wealth of the Wanka, etc.

The Chincha people's role in trade was important, but that was a mission given 
to them, I believe, by Atawallpa's grandfather (I will have to check this).  
Those 6,000 traders mentioned include both land and ocean-going traders, for 
the Chincha were also responsible for taking ceremonial goods (like the mullu) 
and other wares (like cotton fabrics) up to the capital and beyond.

If you have any reference (look how I give you the benefit of the doubt!) 
about the Lord of Chincha being  *the*  "second most important ruler" in the 
Inca Empire, I am sure you will be credited with causing a revolution in 
Andean ethnohistory, for it would go against what has been written about the 
powerful Qosqo panakas, dual power, hanan and urin, and what not...  But now, 
after a small pause, <SARCASM> I think that the only reference you will be 
able to come up with will come from the same place as your reference from the 
Chincha cultivating balsa trees, perhaps with seeds coming from the huge 
tootara trees (or were they reeds?:  oh, what the heck: they *must*  be the 
same thing, and sure the Incas or Chincha or somebody went to New Zealand! Do 
not you agree, Yuri?).</SARCASM>

>As far as the question you ask about where did the balsa logs needed for
>making sailing rafts come from, have it ever occurred to you that the
>Native Americans actually may have _planted them_ in the area for the
>purpose of harvesting the logs?

I have neither the evidence nor the imagination to pursue this.  Do you, Yuri? 
 Just in case: Do you know the temperatures of Chincha during the summer and 
during the winter?  Do you know anything about that, or are you trying to pull 
a balsa tree from a stretched tophat? Or may it be (the God of the Vatican 
forbid it!) that you just do not haveanything but a bright idea to weather the 
problem you found after checking your maps?

Well: balsa wood is a wild wood that requires temperatures and humidity well 
beyond what almost all of the Peruvian Coast (the exception is the 
extremenorth, Tumbes) will be able to provide.  Now say "I was wrong" and go 
confess your sins with the Pope of your choice.  (And please do not try to 
rationalize why "this could have been possible", or that "would have 
occurred".  Please?)

Domingo.

P.S. You may be interested in knowing that Chincha is not far north from Nasca 
(all temperate rainless desert in between), with its mysterious lines that * 
have*  to mean something special to your fertile but, alas, misguided 
imagination... Sorry: I meant to type scholarship!  You may find a birdman, or 
a batman, who knows!



Domingo Martinez-Castilla
agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu