Shamans, Supernaturals & Animal Spirits: Mythic Figures From the Ancient Andes

Inka Culture
The extraordinary phenomenon that drove and shaped
Andean civilization over millennia––the periodic
ascendance of a powerful highland culture that imposed
its worldview, religious beliefs, mythical icons, and design
aesthetic over a vast region and diversity of peoples––found its
ultimate expression in the Inka Empire (AD 1400–1535).
Because it is the sole pre-Conquest culture (apart from the
Chimú) for which a trove of somewhat contemporaneous
written records exists, we have a better picture of Inka history,
rule, society, religion, mythology, and ceremonialism––as well
as of the ideas, people, and events that animated them––than
for any other Andean people.
Inka lore, rites, and traditions also tend to be the lens through
which anterior Andean societies, customs, and arts are
considered and interpreted (as in this catalogue). Given the
lack of other sources of information besides archaeological
context or later ethnohistorical and anthropological materials,
this modern-day projection seems inevitable. However, this
inclination undoubtedly assumes a greater continuity and
consistency of meaning and symbolism throughout the pre-
Columbian Andes than may be warranted.
The Chronicles, comprising administrative and church records,
commentaries, tracts, and histories produced by both colonial
and native chroniclers, generally date to after the indigenous
peoples’ cataclysmic encounter with the Spanish in the late
15th/early 16th century. The narratives mirror a time of
disintegration and transition (and are typically larded with
the overt biases, distortions, and misunderstandings of the
Spanish priests, soldiers, administrators, and other observers
who wrote them). But fascinating information is embedded in
the accounts. Among the most illuminating are those written
by men of noble Inka ancestry, such as Huamán Poma (1613)
and El Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega (1609). Those men had, if
not immediate experience of an intact Inka world, certainly
a profound historical memory, knowledge, and connection
to it. And although he only arrived in the New World in
1609, seventy-five years after the Conquest, the Spanish Jesuit
Bernabé Cobo’s comprehensive work is another invaluable
source (especially for its description of the intricate network
of sacred places and shrines that was essential to Inka religious
cults).
The manuscripts yield insight into the workings of Inka
cultural and social institutions, as well as the strategies of state
and economic organization that facilitated the rapid expansion
(in less than 150 years) of a small society centered on Cusco
in the southern highlands of Peru to a multi-ethnic, multilingual,
multi-faceted empire. At its maximum, the territories
and peoples under Inka domination extended 2500 miles in
four cardinal directions, to present-day Ecuador, northwestern
Argentina, and central Chile, absorbing the Chimor Kingdom
in the north-central coast, the fringe of tropical forest on the
eastern flanks of the Andes, and all other areas and cultures in
between.
The Inka state represented the last, great, synthesizing cultural
and economic force of the pre-Columbian era. The stony
remains of Inka monumental cities, palaces, shrines, and
ceremonial buildings still mark the landscapes of Peru and its
neighboring countries. The most notable are concentrated
in the sacred Urubamba and Cusco valleys where the royal
temples, cities, and citadels, such as Cusco, Ollantaytambo,
Sacsahuaman, and Machu Picchu, were built. But Inka
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