Long lost letter to the king.

• Author: Werner, Louis
• Position: 16th century Peruvian Guaman Poma's chronicles

Like gold and silver from the Spanish Main, colonial reports and records from the New World had a way of not reaching intended recipients. Once having been waylaid, rerouted, or simply lost at sea, few of these long-forgotten manuscripts ever came to light. Some did, however, and in this century those from Peru have been among the first to be recovered and read again. A previously overlooked account of the Conquest by Titu Cusi Yupanqui, son of the last great king, Manco Inca, was published only in 1916. An unknown chapter of the friar Martin de Murua's Historia general del Peru surfaced in the Duke of Wellington's library as late as 1945 -- one of his predecessor's spoils from the Napoleonic wars. Neither, however is more astonishing than the Nueva coronica y buen gobierno [New Chronicle and Good Government], an illustrated history and description of the Inca empire by the native-born Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala.

Covering much more than history and culture, the Nueva coronica is in fact the first and most richly detailed account of the Andean world from an insider's perspective. Guaman Poma, a native Quechua speaker of imperfectly acquired Spanish, composed the manuscript as a private letter to King Philip III of Spain. However, the letter was apparently never read by the man to whom it was sent. Indeed, there is no record of this extraordinary document ever having reached Spain. How it came to turn up in the Royal Library of Denmark, discovered in 1908 by the German historian Richard Pietschmann some three hundred years after its writing, remains a mystery.

Nearly twelve hundred pages long with four hundred pen-and-ink drawings, Guaman Poma's manuscript is divided into three sections -- the "Nueva coronica," recounting the pre-Columbian history of the Andean world -- from the biblical creation to the reign of the Inca Huayna Capac -- and describing native customs; the "Conquista," dealing with Spanish contact and colonization; and "Buen gobierno," a discursive treatise on the good and the bad of political administration under the viceroyalty.

Guaman Poma was a proud and lifelong Andean, whose name in Quechua means Falcon Puma. His Christian name reflected his apparently heartfelt religious conviction. He inherited the honorific surname de Ayala from his father, Guaman Malqui, having himself adopted it from the conquistador Luis de Avalos de Ayala, whose life he claimed to have once saved. Guaman Poma's paternal grandfather had been of the Yarovilca dynasty, which predated and was absorbed by the Inca empire; his mother was descended from the great Inca king and conqueror Tupac Yupanqui. However, Guaman Poma, believing that the Incas were "usurpers," made his claim to aristocracy based on his father's lineage.

Guaman Poma's impressive noble lineage, however, must be accepted on his word alone. Despite the many records and native genealogies kept by the Spanish, his name appears in no other royal bloodline or biography. In fact, of the three colonial records in which his name appears, one claims that "he has been shown to be an Indian of humble status who, through conniving, calls himself cacique; and without being lord of his people, is nevertheless respected as such."

It is indeed unusual that Guaman Poma's name and literary achievement did not appear in colonial chronicles postdating his own, a fact indicating how far outside the elite circles of educated native and mestizo Peruvians he lived and worked. Although apparently having been taught Spanish by his...