Ancient Inca Indians

The common Inca greeting was "!Ama Sua, Ama Kjella, Ama Lllulla!" (anonymous). This greeting means "Don't lie, don't cheat, don't be lazy!" This sounds like pretty good advice. The Inca civilization extended along the western coast of South America beside the Andes Mountains. The ancient ruins of their cities are beginning to reveal themselves to us. In this paper, I intend to describe the lifestyle of the Inca Indians.

The civilization of the Incas is quite interesting. Planting crops was an important task because it was their only source of food. When it was time to plant crops, the Incas used a taclla (wooden spade) which is also known as the "foot plow." If there was no rain for the crops, The Indians dressed in mourning clothes and wept while walking through their villages (Beck, 39-40).

About half of the Inca population did not wear clothing. The clothing of the ones who did barely covered half of their bodies (Cobo, 26). The male wore loincloths or breechcloths. The women wore long dresses. They made their own clothing from alpaca and cotton. The best and warmest clothing did not cover

1

2

their arms or legs.

The Incas worshipped in a very different way than we worship. Instead of holding important ceremonies in a church, the Incas held ceremonies outside. The Temple of Three Windows was very sacred to the Incas. It was located in the Sacred Plaza. They worshipped the sacred shrines and other idols. Here are a few examples: the Sun, the Thunder God, Viracacha, the moon and stars, and the earth and sea (Kendall, 181). The intihuatana, a monument carved from granite bedrock, was probably used for the Incas' worship of the sun god, Inti (Flaherty, 43).

The Incas used stone to build things. Their homes were usually small and rectangular in shape. There were rarely any windows, and there was one low doorway. The roofs were made of grass. The homes were made out of fieldstone and adobe blocks and were held together with mud.

The Incas had many different skills. They spoke seven different languages per village. For example, Quechua and Aymara were the most common in Peru. There are also many others.

Education was not valued by the Incas as highly as it is to us. The children

3

learned by watching their parents. The sons of Inca nobility studied language, religion, and the history of the Incas for four years (McIntyre, 49). The Incas learned how to make pots and weave rugs and baskets. The medicine man (sorcerer) supposedly removed any illness and "cured" the ill patient.

The Incas did other things in addition to work. There are many legends about how the Incas