Quitu

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Quitu

The term Quitu-Cara refers to the legendary pre-Hispanic founders of the Kingdom of Quito, in the modern state of Ecuador. The source is the Jesuit Juan de Velasco's 1789 Historia del Reino de Quito en la América meridional, which bases his account on three documents that are unavailable to modern scholars: Las dos líneas de los Incas y de los Scyris, señores del Cuzco, y del Quito, by Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan who accompanied Sebastián Benalcázar's conquest of Quito in 1533; Las antigüedades del Perú, by Melchor Bravo de Saravia, an oidor (judge) of Lima; and Guerras civiles del Inca Atahualpa con su hermano Atoco, llamado comúnmente Huáscar-Inca, by Jacinto Collahuaso, an eighteenth-century cacique of Ibarra (north of Quito).

According to Velasco, the Caras, also known as the Scyris after the title of their sovereign (Scyri means "Lord of all"), arrived on the western coast of what is now Ecuador in approximately 700 or 800 ce and founded a town there called Cara, named after their first ruler, Carán Scyri. They had navigated from across the sea on balsa wood rafts. Finding the coastal region unhealthy, they migrated up to the Andean region, where in 980 ce they defeated the barbarous native Quitus, ruled by King Quitu, and adopted his name as the name of their kingdom. Velasco asserts that the Scyris reached heights in governing, religion, the arts and sciences. For example, they excelled at carving precious stones, especially emeralds, the stone worn by the Scyri leader and later adopted by the conquering Incas. According to Velasco, their customs and achievements included the right to private property and inheritance of both goods and lands, proper burials away from population centers, a kind of writing system made of stones for preserving their deeds, and, most notably, pure religious practices, which they cleansed of fables by introducing the worship of the sun and the moon. Their state was expansionist, conquering or confederating with other polities in the region, always establishing a town with a central plaza and ceremonial buildings.

The Inca conquest led by Huayna Cápac in the late fifteenth century was actually a reunion, because the Incas and Scyris shared the same overseas origin, according to Velasco. Huayna Cápac married the last Scryi's daughter, Paccha. Their son, Atahualpa, struggled with the Cuzqueño Inca Huáscar for control of the empire, after Huayna Cápac split the empire in two. The Quitu-Scyri legacy has had long-lasting effects on Ecuadorian nationalist thought. Debates have ensued among Velasco's "defenders" and "detractors," though contemporary scholars have found no physical remains or other convincing proof of their existence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jaramillo Alvarado, Pío. El indio ecuatoriano, 4th edition. Quito, Ecuador: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 1954.

Jijón y Caamaño, Jacinto. Antropología prehispánica del Ecuador, 2nd edition. Quito, Ecuador: Museo Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, 1997.

Salazar, Ernesto. Entre mitos y fábulas: El Ecuador aborigen, 5th edition. Biblioteca General de Cultura, vol. 4. Quito, Ecuador: Corporación Editora Nacional, 2000.

Salomon, Frank. Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: The Political Economy of North-Andean Chiefdoms. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Silva, Erika. Los mitos de la Ecuatorianidad. Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 1992.

Velasco, Juan de. Historia del Reino de Quito en la América meridional, edited by Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco. Caracas, Venezuala: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1981.

Eileen M. Willingham

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture