(1997), Saignes (1999), Cussen (1999), Cummins (2002),
Gose (2003), and Estenssoro Fuchs (2003, 1996).
Evidence for the convergence between what one can
surmise about an Andean huaca complex of beliefs and prac-
tices and those of the Catholic cult of the saints is compel-
ling, especially in accounting for early transformations. But
such convergences are not confining, as if pre-Hispanic un-
derstandings of huacas had to dictate an entire colonial after-
math of belief and action. What stands out, rather, is the un-
remitting dynamism of that which came to converge, a
thrilling capacity for localized adaptation and translocal re-
production shown both by huacas (Urton, 1990; Taylor,
1987; Salomon and Urioste, eds., 1991) and by Christian
images in the hands and minds of native Andean people.
Saints, like huacas, were many and various, and they were re-
producible in ways that defy simple notions of how copies
and peripheries relate to originals and centers. Evidence of
the often unofficial and overlapping diffusion of saintly cults
and their devotional communities turns up everywhere and
in ways that ought to revise not only elderly presentations
of a “spiritual conquest of Indians” but also the most unidi-
mensional portrayals of indigenous cultural agency and resis-
tance. This brief entry emphasizes colonial Indians’ complex
motivations and continuing kinds of receptivity to ideas and
practices that, whether sparked by non-Indian mobilizers or
not, often became operative in shared and transforming colo-
nial terms.
A PROLIFIC PAST IS PERCEIVED. An exploration of the ways
in which the originally foreign power of saints was brought
within and became vital parts of a colonial Andean cultural
and religious system begins with conquest-era perceptions.
One of the first in a series of perceptions glides past the An-
dean phenomena whose divine personalities and webs of re-
lations would guide early indigenous understandings of
Catholic Christian saints.
When Hernando Pizarro and other members of his ad-
vance raiding party wrote about their time in the coastal val-
leys of Peru just south of what became the Spanish capital
of Lima in January 1533, theirs were among the first Europe-
an minds with an opportunity to engage with fundamental
native Andean religious forms and meanings.
Their encounter with Pachacámac, a venerable divine
force of pan-Andean proportions, reveals Spanish instincts
in the period immediately after the seizure of the Inca Atahu-
allpa in Cajamarca. Despite learning from Andean infor-
mants and from one of Pachacámac’s attendants of the divin-
ity’s long oracular tradition, and of an awesome world-
making and world-shaking might that had been taken
carefully into account by the Incas, Pizarro and his compan-
ions were otherwise concerned. Accumulated offerings of
gold and silver to Pachacámac caught their attention. They
admired, too, the jewels, crystals, and corals bedecking a
door at the very top of the pyramid structure.
Pachacámac himself struck the treasure seekers both as
hideous and as a sad indication of the native people’s gullibil-
ity. In crossing over the final threshold at the top of the pyra-
mid, the Spaniards faced what their Judeo-Christian tradi-
tion and experience had fully prepared them to identify as
an “idol.” Here was a male figure carved at the top of a wood-
en pole. It took no effort and less theology to perceive Pacha-
cámac as Miguel de Estete did, as a thing beneath contempt,
a vile material form crafted by human hands and pilfering
the adoration human beings ought to reserve only for the
Christian God. The precious offerings, reportedly piled
around the figure and adorning the site, showed only how
much Andean peoples had been hoodwinked by an active
devil who “appeared to those priests and spoke with them,”
conspiring to siphon “tribute” from up and down the entire
coast and demanding a respect that in Incan times was ri-
valed only by the Temple of the Sun in Lake Titicaca (Pizar-
ro, [1533] 1920; Estete, [c. 1535] 1924). It mattered partic-
ularly to establish whether the famous voice and oracular
utterings of Pachacámac were the handiwork of the devil
speaking through him or, as Hernando Pizarro sought to
prove through interrogation of an Indian minister, artifice
worked by the false god’s attendants.
It was not long, however, before Pachacámac gave pause
to different minds. Pedro de Cieza de León, who blended his
own observations and inquiries with information about the
coastal region gained from the Dominican Domingo de
Santo Tomás, among others, can represent an uneasy transi-
tion. While still content to label his subject the “devil Pacha-
cámac” and fascinated by tales of the vast quantities of gold
and silver the “notables and priests” of Pachacámac were said
to have spirited away in advance of Hernando Pizarro’s arriv-
al, Cieza also pushed harder and uncovered more (Cieza de
León, [1553] 1995, pp. 214–215). His closer examinations
and those of others beginning in the 1540s and 1550s began
to reveal the huacas’ multifaceted natures and interrelation-
ships with other divine figures.
Pachacámac’s divine personality offers one of the more
majestic but still broadly illustrative cases in point. While
consistently described across coastal and Andean regions
as a predominant creative force “who gives being to the
earth” (Castro and Ortega Morejón, [1558] 1938, p. 246;
Santillán, [1563] 1968, p. 111b; MacCormack 1991,
pp. 351–352, 154–159), he coexisted with other divine fig-
ures. The other huacas, too, were sometimes creative found-
ers, oracular voices, and otherwise translocally significant. In
some cases, sacred oral histories recounted these ancestral be-
ings’ origins, featured their contributions to local and region-
al civilization, in many cases told of their lithomorphosis into
the regional landscape, and, importantly, explained their in-
terrelationships and coexistence with other divine beings. Ex-
planations of the natural environment and entire histories of
interaction between human groups were encapsulated within
the durably fluid form of the huacas’ narratives, which them-
selves were remembered by ritual tellers, singers, and dancers
(Salomon, 1991).
In Pachacámac’s midst, Dominican friars from the con-
vent at Chincha in the 1540s and 1550s learned much about8606 SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF THE COLONIAL ANDES