Handbook of Inca Mythology

Paul R. Steele & Catherine J. Allen,

2004

ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California

(Pag. 213) MOUNTAINS

Throughout the Andes, mountains or smaller hills are the loci of many stories that tell of

encantado cerros (haunted hills) and frightening things that happen, generally at

midnight, that is the middle of the night. Today, the highest snowcapped peaks of the

Andes are thought to be inhabited and animated by powerful lords who act as guardian

deities to the people. These peaks are known by the name Apu, a word comparable to

Lord that was also used by the Incas as a title for army officers and high government

officials. The Apus (Quechua plural is Apukuna) are thought to keep watch over the

surrounding regions and to command a hierarchy of lower hills. Hierarchies can also

extend to regional and interregional sets. Rural Andeans refer to the Apus as

uywaqniyku, “those who nurture us,” and they feel that their relationship resembles that

between parents and children. These sacred places watch over and discuss human moral

and ritual behavior. Illness and bad luck are taken as signs of the Apus’ displeasure.

(Pag. 214) Trained diviners can communicate with the Apus by tossing handfuls of

coca leaves onto a woven cloth and studying messages encoded in the configurations of

leaves.

Most, but not all, mountains are considered male, and double peaks like Pitusiray,

which overlooks the Vilcanota River, and Paria Caca from Huarochirí tradition, were

especially revered. Collectively, ethnic groups shared common ancestors that could be

mountains, like Paria Caca and Huanacauri. These two peaks produced offspring who

formed more localized founding ancestors like Tutay Quiri in Huarochirí and the Ayar

siblings of the Incas. Regulated annual ceremonies were conducted at these sacred

mountains. Huanacauri and other peaks in the landscape overlooking Cuzco, like

Anahuarqui, were visited by teenage boys as part of their investiture into manhood

before entering adult society. The highest Andean peaks, like Llullaillaco (6,700 meters)

in northwest Argentina, were utilized by the Incas as the final resting points for

Capachucha sacrifices of young boys and girls. The mountain tundra areas (puna) near

high peaks were also synonymous with connotations of what was primitive, coarse, and

wild compared to the lower valleys of agriculturists. Thus, the poor man Huatya Curi, a

Yauyo highlander, was associated with wild animals that dwelled on the high puna.

(Pag. 215) Despite their primeval and ancestral qualities, Andean mountains are not

static objects fixed on the landscape, but are alive and can move across the landscape.

Peaks like Huacañyan, Anahuarqui, and Ancasmarca were believed to have grown

higher and higher as the floodwaters increased, thereby providing safe haven for

humanity and animals. Today, stories reveal how mountains may fold over themselves

or block roads in order to thwart human passage. Of course in reality, Andean landslides

have buried entire towns. The battle between Paria Caca and Huallallo Carhuincho, the

two mountain peaks from Huarochirí, reveals how Andeans viewed these animate

ancestors. Columbus sees Paria Caca and his five brothers/sons as a monumental

mountain family (1990). This mountain family moves across the landscape reorganizing

ethnic groups into new alliances and geographical relationships. The new kin-based ties

and descent groups are traced through the extended mountain family. The word Caca

(or qaqa) means “rock” as well as “gorge,” “abyss,” and by extension “valley,”

“ravine,” and “promontory.” Thus, the mountain Paria Caca represents varied

geographical features in the Andean landscape. This all-inclusive appeal is comparable

with a different set of meanings of the word Caca; these terms refer to one’s wife’s or

mother’s kinsmen: wife’s father, mother’s brother, wife giver. Kinship is manifest in the

Paria Caca mountain family of sons/brothers that traverses the landscape reorganizing

and uniting local communities and reshaping their boundaries, comparable to the

actions of an extended family of in-laws. Contemporary ethnography sheds light on the

relationship between these two sets of meanings: “When a mountain spirit wants to

initiate a more intensive and prosperous relationship with a household, however, his

demands can no longer be confined to food, and focus on the ritualist’s daughter as a

sexual partner…In these cases, the mountain spirit virtually becomes a ‘son-in-law’”

(Gose 1994, 79).

Columbus notes the root word pari in Aymara refers to “rock,” “heat,” and “eruption,”

associated with a vital regenerating force. The volcano blows its top and thus doubles

itself: “Seen from below, the volcano rim seems like two soaring peaks split by the

abyss, destructive scission connecting to a magic multiplication or fertilization” (1990,

183). This fertilizing force is distributed throughout the region over which Paria Caca

and his sons/brothers traverse. Huallallo Carhuincho also fights with fire. Thus the two

mountain/volcanoes compete with the energizing force of red fire, but Huallallo

Carhuincho is volatile, unrestrained, and excessive.

Thus mountains have offspring and also pairs. For instance, Machu (old) Picchu is

overlooked by the peak Huayna (young/fresh) Picchu. Some prominent snow-capped

peaks around Cuzco are also described today with various functions within the social

structure of modern society. Thus the peak Salkantay is known as the Apu militar or the

lawyer, while another peak represents (Pag. 216) the medical profession. The most

important peak in the Cuzco region was Ausangate, the tallest mountain in southern

Peru. Today Ausangate is considered to be a creator of all things, but recently seems to

have lost much of its fame to the nearby Sinakara chain that is home to the increasingly

popular cult shrine of Qoyllur Rit’i. Around Cuzco, there is also more than one

mountain named Huanacauri. For example, near the community of Sonqo in

Paucartambo, the Incas are said to have crossed a local hill named Huanacauri as they

fled to the eastern lowlands ahead of the invading Spaniards. Some of the inhabitants

say that in the pachacuti that ends our world age, the Incas will return over the same

hill.

Carved boulders that dot the landscape can also represent miniature mountains and are

often intimately linked. Sight lines connect the sacred forces of the mountain with the

boulder and viewer. The idea of miniature model mountains may explain the thinking of

the south coast culture that constructed the famous Nazca Lines. Here straight lines

radiate from small hillocks on an otherwise featureless pampa. The lines or pathways

are frequently aligned to the distant mountains in the east. This was probably an attempt

to connect with the source of water that was so vital for coastal peoples.

Mountains continue to be intimately connected with the ancestral dead. Condenados

represent wandering spirits that have sinned and are consequently forced to dwell

permanently on the snow-capped peaks. Throughout much of southern Peru, Mount

Coropuna is thought to be the abode of the dead. Within Coropuna, the dead undergo a

process of desiccation, their body fluids forming a great internal lake that gives rise to

rivers in the world of the living (Gose 1994, 130–131). Bastien describes similar beliefs

in the Bolivian community of Kaata, whose inhabitants live on the side of a mountain

they conceptualize as a living human body (1986). After death, one’s soul travels

through underground streams to enter a subterranean lake within this mountain; the

same internal lake gives rise to the streams that support living people, animals, and

crops.

See also Cañari Origins; Coca; Dead, Journey of the; Dualism; Giants and the Miniature

World; Huallallo Carhuincho; Huanacauri; Inkarrí; Pachacuti; Paria Caca; Titicaca,

Lake; Tutay Quiri

Suggested Reading

Bastien, Joseph W. 1978. Mountain of the Condor: Metaphor and Ritual in an Andean

Ayllu. American Ethnological Society Monograph 64. New York: West Publishing.

Columbus, Claudette Kemper. 1990. “Immortal Eggs, a Peruvian Geocracy: Pariaqaqa

of Huarochirí.” Journal of Latin American Lore 16 (2): 175–198.

Gose, Peter. 1994. Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class

Formation in an Andean Town, chap. 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

(Pag. 217)

Silverblatt, Irene. 1998. “Political Memories and Colonizing Symbols: Santiago and the

Mountain Gods of Colonial Peru.” In Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South

American Perspectives on the Past, edited by Jonathon D. Hill, 174–194. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press.