Encyclopedia of the Incas

frequently depicted in Moche and Chimú pottery, and its plumes incorporated
into Chimú and Inca featherwork. To the Inca, it was known as ñuñuma, a name
that the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega mentions is derived from the Quechua
word “to suck” (ñuñu) because of the sound it made while eating. Early Spanish
accounts describe its captivity in neotropical house yards, much like today.
Although it is assumed they were used principally for meat and possibly eggs,
the chronicler Francisco de Xerez’s early account of the fateful meeting between
Atahualpa and Pizarro describes gifts offered by an Inca messenger that included
two loads of dried and skinned ducks that were to be prepared into powdered
fumigants used by the nobility (see Invasion, Spanish).
The guinea pig (Cavia porcellus), or cuy (Quechua), is a medium-sized
caviomorph (infraorder of South American rodents grouped according to shared
cranial morphology) whose suspected wild ancestors (C. aperea or C. tschudii)
inhabit the Andes from Peru southward into the lower elevation grasslands of
Argentina. Although caviid skeletal specimens are frequently recovered in
archaeological sites, some of great antiquity, cuy is believed to have been
domesticated by at least 3600 BC in the central Andes. Archaeological evidence
includes occasional associations of mummified cuy with human burials, and
accurate depictions on Moche pots. As access to camelid herds and hunting of
wild animals was controlled by the Inca state, domestically raised cuy and ducks
were conceivably the few regular meat options available to commoners. Cuy
flourish on food scraps provided in the darkened settings of domestic dwellings.
Although the chronicles mention that cuys were common and abundant, their
consumption may have been restricted primarily to special occasions. According
to the Jesuit scholar Bernabé Cobo, cuys were consumed with their skin, like a
piglet, or prepared with hot peppers and river pebbles in their belly to create a
highly appreciated stew called carapulcra. Frequent sacrifice of cuys featured in
Inca notions of complimentarily, interdependence, and reciprocity. They could
be beheaded, burned, or cut open for propitiation, placation, thanks, and
requests. Cuys were used in Inca times, as they are today, in divination and
curing; their bodies were eviscerated, entrails were examined for omens, and the
afflicted could be rubbed or wiped with meat, fat, or viscera.