The Chanka and the Development of Native Lords in the Andes

FAIN: FB-52488-06

Sabine Patricia Hyland
St. Norbert College (De Pere, WI 54115-2099)

An NEH fellowship is requested to write a book on the development of the Chanka ethnic group in the Andean highlands. The first half of the book (to be co-authored with Brian Bauer) will be based on a three-year field investigation of the Chanka heartland, which included a systematic archaeological survey of 300 km2 of the Andahuaylas Valley. The second half of the book will be based on information gathered during intensive archival research in Peru as well as Spain. The results will be relevant to understanding the prehistory of Andean peoples, as well as to broader anthropological issues concerning the development of ethnic groups, processes of state development, and indigenous responses to conquests.

Associated Products

Gods of the Andes: A Jesuit Account of Inca Religion and Andean Christianity (Book)
Title: Gods of the Andes: A Jesuit Account of Inca Religion and Andean Christianity
Author: Sabine Hyland
Abstract: Gods of the Andes provides the first English translation of the earliest lengthy description of Inca religion, An Account of the Ancient Customs of the Natives of Peru (1594). The Account is part of a Jesuit tradition of ecumenical works on religion that encompasses the more famous writings of Matteo Ricci in China and Roberto de Nobili in India. It includes original descriptions of many different aspects of Inca religion, including human sacrifice, the use of hallucinogens, mummification rituals, the existence of transgendered priests in the ancient Andes, divination rituals based on animal entrails, oracles, burials, and confession. In her introductory chapters, Sabine Hyland presents the controversial life of the ascribed author, Blas Valera, a Jesuit who was ultimately imprisoned and exiled by the Jesuits for his “heretical” belief that the Incas worshiped the same creator god the Christians did; examines the Account in the light of other colonial writings about the Incas; and outlines what we know about Inca religion through other sources, comparing Valera’s version to those of other writers.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-04880-2.html
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Type: Translation
ISBN: 9780271048802
Translator: Sabine Hyland

The Chankas and the Priest: A Tale of Murder and Exile in Highland Peru (Book)
Title: The Chankas and the Priest: A Tale of Murder and Exile in Highland Peru
Author: Sabine Hyland
Abstract: How does society deal with a serial killer in its midst? What if the murderer is a Catholic priest living among native villagers in colonial Peru? In The Chankas and the Priest, Sabine Hyland chronicles the horrifying story of Father Juan Bautista de Albadán, a Spanish priest to the Chanka people of Pampachiri in Peru from 1601 to 1611. During his reign of terror over his Andean parish, Albadán was guilty of murder, sexual abuse, sadistic torture, and theft from his parishioners, amassing a personal fortune at their expense. For ten years, he escaped punishment for these crimes by deceiving and outwitting his superiors in the colonial government and church administration. Drawing on a remarkable collection of documents found in archives in the Americas and Europe, including a rare cache of Albadán’s candid family letters, Hyland reveals what life was like for the Chankas under this corrupt and brutal priest, and how his actions sparked the instability that would characterize Chanka political and social history for the next 123 years. Through this tale, she vividly portrays the colonial church and state of Peru, as well as the history of Chanka ethnicity, the nature of Spanish colonialism, and the changing nature of Chanka politics and kinship from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/chankas-and-the-priest-a-tale-of-murder-and-exile-in-highland-peru/oclc/932463360&referer=brief_results
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0-271-0712
Copy sent to NEH?: No

The Chanka: Archaeological Research in Andahuaylas, Peru (Book)
Title: The Chanka: Archaeological Research in Andahuaylas, Peru
Author: Sabine Hyland
Author: Brian S Bauer
Author: Lucas C Kellet
Author: Miriam Araoz Silva
Author: Carlos Socualaya Davila
Abstract: This book represents an unparalleled opportunity to examine theoretical issues concerning the history and cultural development of late-prehistoric societies in this area of the Andes. The resulting book includes an archaeological analysis on the development of the Chanka and examines their ultimate defeat by the Inca, along with a historical analysis of the Chanka during Inka and Spanish colonialism.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/chanka-archaeological-research-in-andahuaylas-apurimac-peru/oclc/608491200&referer=brief_results
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Multi-author monograph
ISBN: 9781931745604
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

The Quito Manuscript: An Inca History Preserved by Fernando de Montesinos (Book)
Title: The Quito Manuscript: An Inca History Preserved by Fernando de Montesinos
Author: Sabine Hyland
Abstract: This work is the first full length study of the Quito Manuscript, a unique indigenous history of South America, and includes the first critical edition of this valuable text ever published. The Quito Manuscript is striking on several levels. It contains an extensive pre-Incaic king list that covers many centuries of political authority in Peru before the advent of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo. No matter that some of the personages it mentions are clearly mythic, the work merits attention as an indigenous response to Spanish colonialism in the years just after the conquest. Its author rejects the slander that the early kings were morally corrupt idolaters and portrays them instead as thoughtful and just rulers, honorable predecessors of the Incas, who themselves acted with greater decency and wisdom than the Spaniards. These early peoples had a writing system all their own, he insists, and this fact (questionable though it may be) placed them on par with modern Christians. The Quito Manuscript is also noteworthy for its frank discussion of sexual themes – homoeroticism, pederasty, and the “love magic” that women used to turn the men of an earlier epoch away from their bestial inclinations. These topics clearly show how the interpretation of the anonymous author reflected Christian teachings, but they are not entirely overwhelmed by them. One can sense the Andean realities – the pride – just beneath the surface.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/quito-manuscript-an-inca-history-preserved-by-fernando-de-montesinos/oclc/162501927&referer=brief_results
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780913516249
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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