¹ The term “aboriginal” is here used to denote members of the many local linguistic, cultural, and political groups subjected to Inca rule but remaining distinct from the Inca elite. Aboriginal groups differed widely among themselves. Political rivalries occurred both between culturally differing populations and among the various chiefdoms proper to each population. In the Quito area the chief linguistic-cultural groups of the non-Inca majority were “Cara” or “Caranqui”-speaking people from the region spreading northward to the Mira river, the speakers of an obscure tongue usually called “Panzaleo,” native to a region extending southward toward Ambato, members of adjacent Amazonian and Pacific-slope rainforest-dwelling societies (often called “Yumbos”), and, to a lesser extent, members of the more distant Puruhá and Pasto peoples. Cañari and Chachapoya colonies were implanted by the Inca state. See Murra, John V., “The Historic Tribes of Ecuador,” in Steward, Julian, ed., Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 2, The Andean Civilizations. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1946), pp. 785–821.Google Scholar See also Salomon, Frank: Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Tyrer, Robson B., The Demographic and Economic History of the Audiencia de Quito: Indian Population (Berkeley: University of California, Department of History, 1976), pp. 3–22, 349.Google Scholar

³ de Aguayo, Pedro Rodríguez, “Descripción de la ciudad de Quito y vecindad de ella” (1582) in de la Espada, Marcos Jiménez, ed., Relaciones Geográficas de Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), Vol. 2 p. 203.Google Scholar

⁴ See, for example, Beals, Ralph, Community in Transition: Nayón, Ecuador (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1966).Google Scholar

⁵ See, for example, Mörner, Magnus, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

⁶ See, for example, Bourricaud, Francois: Cambios en Puno (México: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1967).Google Scholar

⁷ den Berghe, Pierre Van and Primov, George, Inequality in the Peruvian Andes: Class and Ethnicity in Cuzco (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977), p. 4.Google Scholar

⁸ The reason is that, prior to about 1569, Spanish domination of native rural settlements generally took the form of “indirect rule” rather than intervention. Although most Indians were baptised, catechization advanced sluggishly for several decades. Most households contributed Spanish tribute and goods for Spanish markets via their local native lords.

⁹ de Atienza, Lope, “Compendio Historial del Estado de los Indios del Perú” in Jijón, Jacinto y Caamaño, , ed., La religión del imperio de los Incas, (Quito: Escuela Tipográfica Salesiana, 1931), p. 118.Google Scholar Atienza’s work is thought to date approximately 1575.

¹⁰ For example, in Juan Mosquera and Cristóbal de San Martín’s 1559 visita of six aboriginal villages close to Quito. It is conserved in a residencia of Lic. Juan de Salazar Villasante, AGI/S Justicia 673.

¹¹ This tendency is summarized in Lambert, Bernd, “Bilaterality in the Andes” in Bolton, Ralph and Mayer, Enrique, eds., Andean Kinship and Marriage (Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1977), p. 16–17.Google Scholar Lambert holds that parallel and patrilineal descent may both have been enforced but in different functional spheres.

¹² Sic; it is possible that the seeming allusion to marriage between males relates to Atienza’s (and other Spanish chroniclers’) belief that South American natives were given to homosexuality. But a simple error is the likelier explanation. Atienza, “Compendio Historial,” p. 104–106.Google Scholar

¹³ Atienza, , “Compendio Historial,” p. 92–93.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Atienza, , “Compendio Historial,” p. 154.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Burkett, Elinor C., “Indian Women and White Society: the Case of Sixteenth-Century Peru.” in Lavrin, Asunción, ed., Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Lavrin, Asunción and Couturier, Edith, “Dowries and Wills: a View of Women’s Socioeconomic Role in Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640–1790” Hispanic American Historical Review 59 (1979), 298–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ For Mexican wills in Náhuatl, see, for example, Cline, S.L. and Portilla, M. León, The Testaments of Culhuacán (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1984),Google Scholar or Lockhart, J.: Náhuatl in the Middle Years. Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 93–99, 117–121.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Namely, until protocols of Andean escribanos de naturales are uncovered and published; references to “scribes for natives” are common in 16th-century archives of the viceroyalty of Peru. At least one fragment is known to survive (personal information of Bruce Mannheim).

¹⁹ Vovelle, Michel: Piété baroque et déchristianisation: les attitudes devant la mort en Provence au XVIII^a siècle (Paris: Pion, 1973).Google Scholar

²⁰ The following testaments are conserved in the Archivo Nacional de la Historia, Quito, except as noted:

Barbara Pomaticlla: Testamento. 5^a Notaría, t.3 f.404r-408r. 1609.

Beatriz (Coquilago) Ango: Testamento. 1^a Notaría, t.3 f.371r-374r. 1596.

Beatriz, (Coquilago) Ango: Testamentó. ACM/Q (Archivo de la Cura Metropolitana, Quito). Sec. Parroquias, Caja 1. 1597.

Catalina Cañar: Testamento. 6a Notaría, t.5 f.750v-752r. 1598.

Catalina Cisintulli: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.2 f.324v-327v. 1593.

Francisca Vilcacabra: Testamento. 6a Notaría, t.2 f.497r-501v. 1596.

Juana yndia de los Quixos: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.2 f.86r. 1588.

Lucía yndia de Chillo: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.7 f.H4r-115r. 1600.

María de Amores: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.3 f.503v-507r. 1596.

María Astutilla: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.8 f.480r-482v. 1600.

Ynés Palla: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.4 f.51r-53r. 1594.

Ynés yndia natural de los Pastos Quillasingas: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.3 f.673r-675v. 1597.

Ysabel Auca Chuqui: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.3 f.638r-641r. 1596.

Ysabel Cañar yndia natural de Caraguro: Testamento. Ia Notaría, t.1 f.l9r-20v. 1583.

Ysavel Caguascango: Testamento. 5a Notaría, t.3 f.477v-478v. 1609.

²¹ Lavrin, Asunción and Couturier, Edith, “Dowries and Wills”, p. 286.Google Scholar

²² It is interesting that belief in the need for purgation, erected as Catholic doctrine only within the life of the testatrices, seems to have caught on quickly among urban yndias. Whether this reflects a high degree of orthodoxy or a transformation of the prehispanic belief in the need for living people to succor the dead, remains to be seen. On purgation, see Vovelle, Michel: La mort et l’Occident de 1300 ά nos jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 205–210.Google Scholar

²³ Ots Capdequí, María, José, “El sexo como circunstancia modificativa de la capacidad jurídica en nuestra legislación de Indias,” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 7 (1930), 368–369.Google Scholar

²⁴ For example, in most Andean societies descendents were expected to periodically feed, dress, and parade their mummified ancestors. In some they were expected to ask the consent of ancestors for marriages and business enterprises. Quito-area burials included shafts through which the living could pour drinks for the dead. Allen, Catherine J., “Body and Soul in Quechua Thought,” Journal of Latin American Lore 8 (1982), 179–196.Google Scholar See also Urioste, George, “Sickness and Death in Preconquest Andean Cosmology: the Huarochiri Oral Text,” in Bastien, J.W. and Donahue, J.M., eds., Health in the Andes, (Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1981).Google Scholar

²⁵ Oberem, Udo, Notas y documentos sobre miembros de la familia del Inca Atahualpa en el siglo XVI (Guayaquil: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Núcleo del Guayas, 1976), pp. 34–42.Google Scholar

²⁶ Coquilago Ango’s daughter Juana seems to have had no living offspring.

²⁷ These hopes were in large part frustrated; Carlos was to sell off parts of his inheritance and both he and Mencia later confessed poverty in petitions to the Crown. Oberem, , Notas y documentas sobre miembros de la familia Atahualpa, pp. 47–48, 162.Google Scholar

²⁸ For instance, Carlos Atahualpa’s daughter María Atahualpa eventually married Francisco García Ati of the powerful Latacunga-area Ati dynasty. Oberem, Udo, Notas y documentos sobre miembros de la familia del Inca Atahualpa, pp. 50.Google Scholar

²⁹ As Vargas calls, Jose Maria him; see “Diego Lobato de Sosa, un sacerdote modelo del siglo XVI,” Instituto de Historia Eclesiástica 1 (1974), 31–40.Google Scholar

³⁰ The fact that her son bore his paternal and her daughter his maternal surname is not by itself conclusive since it was not unusual for children born of servants to acquire their masters’ surnames irrespective of paternity. But in conjunction with Lucia’s silence about these children’s paternity, their names do raise a question. Ordinarily testatrices made sure to identify the fathers of their “natural” children and called on them for support; Lucia’s silence on this score may have been intentionally eloquent.

³¹ i.e. from the Amazonian peoples dwelling between the Napo and Pastaza rivers.

³² The natives of the area of the Bay of Guayas, on the Ecuadorian coast, were called Guancavilcas. Orthography notwithstanding, the text probably refers to this group and not to Huancavelica in Peru.

³³ María de Amores donated this garment to Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, in the Augustinian Convent of Quito, to become a chasuble in the care of her sodality.

³⁴ Cañar, roughly mdoern Cañar province of south highland Ecuador, was the home of a cultural and linguistic group widely scattered through the Andes by Incaic mitmaq operations.

³⁵ chakira in Quechua refers to several types of small beads used as treasures or prestige offerings to deities. In some parts of Ecuador and.southern Colombia strands of chakira also served as special-purpose currency. Common types were beads of Spondylus (spiny oyster) shell, gold, and silver; bone is also reported. See, for example, Marcos, Jorge, “Cruising to Acapulco and back with the thorny oysterset,” Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 9 (1978), 99–132 Google Scholar; Pualsen, Alison, “The thorny oyster and the voice of God,” American Antiquity 74 (1974), 597–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ Testament of María de Amores. ANH/Q 1^a Notaría, t.3 f.504r-505r. 1596.

³⁷ See Murra, John V., “La función del tejido en varios contextos sociales y políticos” in Formaciones Económicas y Políticas del Mundo Andino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1975), pp. 145–17.Google Scholar

³⁸ Testamento de Ynés Palla. ANH/Q 1^a Notaría t.4 f.52r-53r.

³⁹ Celestino, Olinda and Meyers, Albert, Las cofradías en el Perú: región central (Frankfurt/Main: Verlag Klaus Dieter Vervuert, 1981), pp. 114–124, 147–158.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Magnus Mörner notes that early mestizos did achieve integration into Spanish society “insofar as they had not been raised in isolation by their mothers”; growing up in urban settings close to Spanish fathers seemingly conditioned children for a different destiny than that of Spaniards’ rural “natural” offspring. The Andean Past: Land, Societies, and Conflicts (New York: Columbia, 1985), p.46.

⁴¹ e.g. Barbara Pomaticlla, also called Cargua Guaca.