Myths of Creation

Reading Blog 5

Reading Garcilaso de la Vega’s book, the beginning really struck me. I have an affinity for creation myths (my personal favourite is the Norse myth of Ymir), so I really enjoyed reading about the Inca story. Something I found really fascinating was that the myth didn’t begin with the creation of the human race as a whole, but instead focused on the beginning of the Inca Empire with the pre-Incan “savages” already existing. Garcilaso certainly describes the pre-Inca peoples as inferior to the Sun God’s children, but their existence on the land is unusual for a creation myth. I guess it’s because it’s an imperial creation myth, so it focuses on the foundation of the Inca Empire and peoples rather than the world or humanity itself. Beginning the Incan culture with a prince and princess sent by the Sun God is also kind of similar to the Christian story of Adam and Eve, as Adam is often described as a prince, however Eve is usually depicted as a temptress of sin more than a heavenly ‘princess’. They are also not sent by God to teach humanity, they are the progenitors of the human race, so they are more of an origin of humanity story than an imperial creation myth. 

Garcilaso’s inferior description of the pre-Incan peoples does remind me of Christian missionary rhetoric; calling the peoples “savages” and describing their ways of life as if they are unsophisticated or ‘primitive’. That rhetoric also connects with the Sun God’s sending of the prince and princess to civilize the people, to teach them the complex Incan agricultural system and how to live in pueblos and cities, how to have marriages rather than ‘barbaric’ relations with each other. Garcilaso’s Spanish influence, from either his childhood, as he was born and raised in what is now Peru eight years after the initial conquest, or from writing in Spain after his childhood, certainly could have influenced the tone of his writing towards that. He does say of hearing the stories from elders in his family as a child: “if I had written it down at the time, this history would have been more copious” (50). Maybe it would have had a different tone/undercurrent as well? Our inherent personal biases are pretty much always present in writing and communication in general, it is hard to write free of an unconscious bias, so I find it very intriguing to try to explore and detect what biases are present in Garcilaso’s communication of Incan histories, as well as his own personal history.