And when was that to be?

We are not left in doubt on this point.  It was to be when Viracocha should return to earth in his bodily form.  Then he would restore the dead to life, and they should enjoy the good things of a land far more glorious than this work-a-day world of ours.[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Dijeron quellos oyeron decir a sus padres y pasados que un Viracocha habia de revolver la tierra, y habia de resucitar esos muertos, y que estos habian de bibir en esta tierra.”. Information de las Idolatras de los Incas e Indios, in the Coll. de Docs. ineditos del Archivo de Indias, vol. xxi, p. 152.]

As at the first meeting between the races the name of the hero-god was applied to the conquering strangers, so to this day the custom has continued.  A recent traveler tells us, “Among Los Indios del Campo, or Indians of the fields, the llama herdsmen of the punas, and the fishermen of the lakes, the common salutation to strangers of a fair skin and blue eyes is ‘Tai-tai Viracocha.’"[1] Even if this is used now, as M. Wiener seems to think,[2] merely as a servile flattery, there is no doubt but that at the beginning it was applied because the white strangers were identified with the white and bearded hero and his followers of their culture myth, whose return had been foretold by their priests.

[Footnote 1:  E.G.  Squier, Travels in Peru, p. 414.]

[Footnote 2:  C. Wiener, Perou et Bolivie, p. 717.]

Are we obliged to explain these similarities to the Mexican tradition by supposing some ancient intercourse between these peoples, the arrival, for instance, and settlement on the highlands around Lake Titicaca, of some “Toltec” colony, as has been maintained by such able writers on Peruvian antiquities as Leonce Angrand and J.J. von Tschudi?[1] I think not.  The great events of nature, day and night, storm and sunshine, are everywhere the same, and the impressions they produced on the minds of this race were the same, whether the scene was in the forests of the north temperate zone, amid the palms of the tropics, or on the lofty and barren plateaux of the Andes.  These impressions found utterance in similar myths, and were represented in art under similar forms.  It is, therefore, to the oneness of cause and of racial psychology, not to ancient migrations, that we must look to explain the identities of myth and representation that we find between such widely sundered nations.

[Footnote 1:  L. Angrand, Lettre sur les Antiquites de Tiaguanaco et l’Origine presumable de la plus ancienne civilisation du Haut-Perou.  Extrait du 24eme vol. de la Revue Generale d’Architecture, 1866.  Von Tschudi, Das Ollantadrama, p. 177-9.  The latter says:  “Der von dem Plateau von Anahuac ausgewanderte Stamm verpflanzte seine Gesittung und die Hauptzuege seiner Religion durch das westliche Suedamerica, etc.”]

CHAPTER VI.