The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

136 Sabine MacCormack
said about the principles of political and social order that had brought
these spaces and structures into existence. Among the very first to contemplate
these principles was Pedro Cieza de Leon, who conversed with
Cusco's Inka inhabitants in some detail. From them he learned that the
city was divided into an upper (hanan) and a lower (uriri) region, which
were described as "Hanan Cusco" and "Urin Cusco," respectively; the
Inka lineages who resided in these two regions were likewise known as
"Hanan" and "Urin." Furthermore, so Cieza understood, Cusco was the
center of a network of roads that linked the city to the four parts of the
empire. In describing this road system, Cieza was reminded of the manner
in which the Romans had administered Spain, and thus he wrote:
Four royal roads issued from Cuzco's central square. On the road which they
call Chinchasuyo, one goes to the lands of the coast and to the mountains that
extend as far as the provinces of Quito and Pasto. On the second road, which
they call Condesuyo, they travel to the provinces of that name which are subject
to Cusco, and to the city of Arequipa. On the third royal road, which is called
Andesuyo, one travels to the provinces which are situated on the slopes of the
Andes and to some settlements which lie beyond this mountain range. On the
last of these roads, which they call Collasuyo, people travel to the provinces
which extend as far as Chile. In this way, just as in Spain the Romans made a
division of the peninsula into provinces, so these Indians, by way of keeping
control of the different parts of so vast a land, did by means of their roads. 23
Roman analogies of this kind, which were cited repeatedly by Spanish
historians of the Inka, served to explain the sheer size of the Inka empire
and also the sophistication and equity of Inka administration that Cieza
and others admired so greatly. But while explaining one issue, such
analogies hid from view several others. It was thus only in the early
seventeenth century that it became evident that the Inka had conceptualized
the four "provinces" of their empire as related to each other in
terms of hanan and urin, upper and lower, and that this relationship of
the provinces among each other mirrored relationships of dignity and
power among the inhabitants of the capital. The terms hanan and urin
were thus seen to describe not only, or even principally, geographical
location but also gender, status, cultural traits, and political and economic
position. Hierarchy was one aspect of this method of taking stock
of the world, and complementarity was another. According to the historian
Garcilaso de la Vega, who had grown up in Cusco as the son of a
23 Pedro Cieza de Leon, Crdnica del Peru. Primera Pane, p. 258.
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