Note 89 — INTRODUCTION.

The aboriginal people of Quito, or at least the dominant race which was found there when the first Ynca army invaded the country, is said to have spoken the Quichua language; and it has been mentioned, as a very curious fact, that the same language should have been spoken at Cuzco and Quito, at a time when those places held no intercourse with each other; whilst the inhabitants of the intervening country spoke totally distinct languages. As one explanation of this, it has been suggested that the Caras were a Quichua colony which, at some remote period, had come in balsas from the Peruvian coast, landed at Esmeraldas, and eventually marched up to Quito. But there is no probability that any large body of Quichuas ever reached the coast before they came as conquerors, and the Yuncas did not speak Quichua. In my opinion there is no sufficient evidence that the people of Quito did speak Quichua previous to the Ynca conquest. They were forced to adopt it afterwards by their conquerors, and it completely superseded their own more barbarous tongue: but in Cieza de Leon’s time, though Quichua was the official language, the Puruaes and other tribes of the Quitenian Andes still spoke their own language in private. (See p. 161.) There is a tradition that the giants, who are said to have landed at Point Santa Elena (see chap. lii), forced the Caras to abandon the coast, and retire into the mountainous district round Quito.