Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador (Cambridge Latin American Studies)

This book examines the relationship between the indigenous peoples of northern Ecuador and disease, especially those infections introduced by Europeans during the sixteenth century. It addresses an important and often overlooked element in the history of Amerindian populations: their biological adaptability and resilience. But it is more than a history of disease incidents, medical responses, and population trends. The history of the biological adaptation it recounts also reveals much about a people's social and political experience under colonial rule. It differs from other studies in the field by its emphasis on the relationship between biological and social responses.

CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES GENERAL EDITOR SIMON COLLIER ADVISORY COMMITTEE MALCOLM DEAS, STUART SCHWARTZ, ARTURO VALENZUELA

71

NATIVE SOCIETY AND DISEASE IN COLONIAL ECUADOR

For a list of other books in the Cambridge Latin American Studies series, please see page

152.

NATIVE SOCIETY AND DISEASE IN COLONIAL ECUADOR SUZANNE AUSTIN ALCHON University of Delaware

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

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The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1991 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1991 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Alchon, Suzanne Austin. Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador / Suzanne Austin Alchon. p. cm. - (Cambridge Latin American studies: 71) ISBN 0 52140186 0 1. Indians of South America - Ecuador - Diseases. 2. Indians of South America - Ecuador - Population. 3. Indians of South America Ecuador - History. 4. Epidemics - Ecuador - History. 5. Peru (Viceroyalty) Population. I. Title. II. Series. F3721.3.D58A43 1991 986.6'00498-dc20 91-9110 CIP ISBN 0 521401860 hardback ISBN 0 521 52945 X paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2004

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

page ix

i

Along the avenue of volcanoes The setting Native society before 1534 The Inca conquest The native population before 1534

5 5 7 8 12

Disease, illness, and healing before 1534 The pathological setting Native concepts of health and illness Healing, ritual, and meaning

19 19 25 29

Conquest and epidemic disease in the sixteenth century The Spanish conquest of Quito Epidemics during the sixteenth century Hospitals and public health Demographic trends

32 32 35 43 46

Changing patterns of disease and demography in the seventeenth century Disease and natural disasters European medicine and public health Changing concepts of disease in native society Demographic recovery to 1690

57 57 66 72 76

Disaster and crisis in the 1690s The reforms of Palata, migration, and epidemics The disasters of the 1690s Demographic crisis

89 89 91 95

Disease and demographic stagnation in the eighteenth century

100

vi

Contents

Epidemics and endemic disease European medicine and public health Demographic stagnation and economic depression Native medicine and political resistance

ioo 108 113 124

Conclusion

130

Glossary B ibliography Index

134 137 149

Acknowledgments

The origins of this book are in a doctoral dissertation completed in 1984. During the past six years, I have had occasion to return to archives in Ecuador and Spain and, as a consequence, I have altered significantly many of the ideas contained in the dissertation. The intervening years have also given me the opportunity to read further and to think more about the nature of disease and its eflFects on the native peoples of colonial Ecuador. Thus, time and additional research have led me to change both structure and content, and I believe that the ideas embodied in the book are clearer and richer as a result. Over the years many people have given generously of their time, reading and commenting on various stages of this project. My mentor and dissertation adviser at Duke University, John J. TePaske, often put aside his own work to take on the onerous duties of editor and critic, and to him I am especially grateful. I am also indebted to Peter English, whose expertise as physician and historian of medicine has proved so valuable in the writing of both the dissertation and the book. Other members of my graduate committee, including Gerald Hartwig, Charles Berquist, and Carol Smith, shared their time and knowledge. Noble David Cook and Kenneth Andrien, fellow historians of colonial Spanish America, have read parts of the manuscript and offered encouragement; Ken also supplied me with copies of the censuses of 1779—81. Historical geographer Brian Evans provided useful information on the visita to Achambo in 1602—3. Charles Leslie was especially helpful, introducing me to the anthropological literature on the meaning of illness and the practice of medicine in native American societies and prodding me to think about the implications of that literature for the people of colonial Ecuador. W. George Lovell emphasized the importance of reconceptualizing the dissertation, and his careful reading and criticism of subsequent revisions have aided me immensely. Through this long process, his encouragement, friendship, and sense of humor never waned. Thanks also to Marie Perrone for her assistance in preparing the manuscript and tables and to Janet Ann

Vll

viii

Acknowledgments

Parks for her cartographic expertise. All of the above deserve only credit; I alone bear responsibility for any errors or omissions. In Ecuador, the staffs of the Archivo Municipal and the Archivo Nacional assisted me in every way. I especially want to thank Dr. Juan Freile Granizo, who shared freely with me his knowledge of the holdings of the Archivo Nacional. In Spain, the staff of the Archivo General de Indias patiently guided me through the Ecuadorian materials in that vast repository. Grants from the Shell Foundation and the Fulbright Fellowship Program permitted me to carry out my dissertation research in Ecuador and Spain. A General University Research Grant from the University of Delaware allowed me to return to Spain in 1986 to complete the research for the book. I am also grateful to the staff of the Morris Library of the University of Delaware, and in particular to those individuals in the interlibrary loan office who helped me track down many an obscure reference. My friends Maria Laura Romoleroux de Benalcazar, Diego Benalcazar, and Helge Vorbeck and their families graciously extended their hospitality and made my visits to Ecuador ones I shall always remember fondly. I especially want to thank Hernan and Marta Romoleroux for their kindness during my last trip to Quito. Micou M. Browne provided support and encouragement as well as a naturalists perspective on the topic. To my parents, Elizabeth Coombs Austin and Hadley Warner Austin, and my grandparents, Lilla Brown Coombs and William Waldorf Coombs, I offer thanks for so many things. Also, special thanks go to Tarn and the boys for restoring my sense of humor after many a long day. Finally, I extend my deepest gratitude to Guy Alchon, colleague, editor, and friend, who has helped to see me and the manuscript through the last five years.

For Lilla Brown Coombs and William Waldorf Coombs

CARIBBEAN

ATLANTfC OCEAN

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Seventeenth CBntury Audtenda of Quito

Map i. The Audiencia of Quito in the seventeenth century.

Introduction

Over the last twenty years historians have uncovered and illuminated a new history of Amerindian peoples under European rule. Spanish defeat and subjugation of native populations, so an older historiography once held, were the history of these peoples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More recently, however, scholars have concentrated instead on the Indians' resilience and adaptability — their capacity, in the face of terrible odds, to maintain themselves and their societies. The new historiography has begun to reveal the faces and voices of peoples long misunderstood. 1 Still, little attention has been paid to another, very important element in the history of Amerindian populations — their biological adaptability and resilience. The social history of these peoples, in other words, will remain incomplete without further development of their pathogenic and immunological history. Disease, of course, existed in the Americas long before the sixteenth century. But, just as native societies resisted and eventually adapted to European conquest, so too did they adapt to Old World pathogens. Just as the responses of Indian communities to the economic and political demands of Spaniards varied over time, so did the immunological responses of indigenous populations change over generations. What began in the sixteenth century as contact and invasion soon would involve both Indians and Europeans in a new history of biological and social adaptation. 2 And this story, as it For the Andean area, see Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples; and "The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1 7 4 2 1782," pp. 34—93; Spalding, Huarochiri; and De indio a campesino; Larson, Colonialism and Agrarian Transformation; and "Caciques, Class Structure, and the Colonial State in Bolivia"; SanchezAlbornoz, Indios y tributes; and "Migracion rural"; Cole, The Potosi Mita; Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches; and Salomon, Native Lords. For Mexico and Central America, see Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule; MacLeod and Wasserstrom, eds., Spaniards and Indians in Southeastern Mesoamerica; Newson, "Indian Population Patterns," 4 1 - 6 9 ; Indian Survival; and The Cost of Conquest; Hill and Monaghan, Continuities in Highland Maya Social Organization; Lovell, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala; and Zamora, Los mayas de las tierras altas en el siglo XVI. To date, the most thorough and innovative analyses of biohistorical issues can be found in the works of historian Crosby, The Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism.

2

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

developed in the northern sector of the viceroyalty of Peru - in Ecuador is the subject of this book. Because this study traces fundamental biological and social changes over many generations, it is important to assess the nature of Ecuador's native societies before the arrival of Europeans. The first chapter examines the physical and social settings and concludes with an analysis of the demographic history of the region before 1534. The second chapter introduces the pathological setting and relates it to native concepts about health, illness, and healing as they existed before the Spanish invasion. In so doing, it addresses the debate over the nature of pre-Columbian medical systems. The history of biological and social adaptation begins in the third chapter, where the congruent paths of sixteenth-century military conquest and epidemics of Old World diseases are analyzed. Chapter three also examines European attempts to deal with illnesses, both their own and those of the Indian population, through the establishment of hospitals and the creation of rules and regulations designed to protect public health. It concludes with an analysis of the documentary evidence on the catastrophic decline of Ecuador's native population during this period. In the fourth chapter, the resilience and adaptability of native society become especially clear. For although disease continued to exact a heavy toll during the seventeenth century, by 1690 the number of natives living in the north-central highlands of Ecuador had more than doubled. And although native concepts of disease underwent fundamental changes following the Spanish conquest, evidence suggests that the practice of native medical traditions continued largely unchanged. Demographic patterns, in addition, reveal the ways in which both individuals and communities responded to the onerous economic and political demands of Europeans by devising new social institutions and customs and by learning to use the mechanisms of colonial government to their own advantage. Population recovery, however, was to be short-lived in the audiencia (a jurisdictional and administrative unit of the Spanish empire; also, court of appeals) of Quito, and the fifth chapter examines the disasters of the 1690s and their demographic and economic effects on highland society. Chapter six then traces the disease history of the region during the eighteenth century, when these conditions reinforced each other and ensured that, at least in the sierra, Ecuador entered the era of independence with a declining Indian population and a shrinking economy. Significantly, it was during the same period that Quito's natives began to demonstrate immunological resistance to the very diseases that had devastated them for so long. At the same time, native opposition to colonial rule, often taking the form of violent protests, increased throughout the region. The old

Introduction

3

strategy of resistance through cooperation was replaced by direct confrontation, with native healers and shamans often leading the assault. The story of the relation between the biological and social history of the Indian peoples of highland Ecuador raises many issues of concern to historians of colonial Spanish America. Among these, the most central involve the consequences of the biological collision of two cultures so distinctly different from each other. But this study is more than a history of disease incidence, medical responses, and population trends. The history of the biological adaptation it recounts also reveals much about a people's social and political experiences under colonial rule. It is difficult to separate the biological from the social and political in the effort to understand the colonial history of Ecuador's Indian peoples. Indeed, this book insists that it is impossible.

Colombia

Peru Map 2. Highland basins of Ecuador.

1 Along the avenue of volcanoes

When the Spanish marched into the highlands of Ecuador in 1534, they knew that they were entering the northern sector of the Inca empire. Yet the terrain that they crossed and the societies they encountered were distinctly different from those of the southern Andes. These unique physical and cultural characteristics explain, in large measure, the area's special patterns of historical development both before and after the Spanish conquest. Inca control of the northern Andes had been achieved only a few years before the arrival of Europeans. Old World diseases quickly followed the Inca invasion and, in fact, preceded Pizarro and his men by several years. So even before the appearance of Spanish armies, demographic and political crisis gripped native communities throughout the Ecuadorian sierra. The setting The paramo (cool, humid highlands — 3,360—4,600 m) Andes of Ecuador are distinctly different from the puna (cold, dry highlands - 4,000-4,800 m) regions of the southern Andes, where higher elevations, lower temperatures, and an arid climate limit food production. In response to these challenging agricultural conditions, the indigenous inhabitants of Peru and Bolivia developed methods of food preservation enabling them to accumulate large surpluses. The level of political organization required to direct this effort, in turn, encouraged the development of large centralized state systems. Ecuador, by contrast, is characterized by lower elevations, higher temperatures, and constant humidity, allowing for year-round crop production. The milder climate and agricultural abundance of the northThe following abbreviations appear in the tables and notes: AGI - Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain AJC - Archivo Jijon y Camaano, Quito, Ecuador AM - Archivo Municipal, Quito, Ecuador ANHQ - Archivo Nacional de Historia, Quito, Ecuador

6

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

ern Andes did not necessitate the creation of vast political networks; hence the predominance of small-scale chiefdoms.l The parallel Cordilleras of the Andes are widely separated in Peru and Bolivia, in some areas by as much as 750 kilometers, but in Ecuador they run close together (with 130—220 kilometers between them), forming a series of insular highland basins where human populations have congregated for thousands of years.2 Beneath the long, narrow valleys flanked by towering volcanoes lie a series of geological faults, the periodic shifting of which produces violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. As a result, generations of highland residents have experienced frequent natural disasters, often claiming many lives and disrupting agricultural production. The climate of Ecuador is determined by a number of factors, including the cold Peruvian current, the warm countercurrent El Nino, and altitudinal variations. In the highlands, warm moisture-laden air from the Amazon collides with cold mountain air masses to produce much of the region's rainfall. But even within this limited area, "a 'crazy-quilt' pattern of innumerable micro-climates . . . prevail over short horizontal distances and lack a clearcut, orderly arrangement."3 Geographers and ecologists have divided the Ecuadorian highlands into five distinct climate zones. In the zone of perpetual snow located above 4,600 meters, melting snow and ice feed the many rivers and streams crucial to the local agricultural economy. Just below the snow line is the desolate paramo (3,500-4,600 meters), where poor soils and frequent frosts render the land unproductive. Below this lies the temperate zone, focal point of Indian and Spanish settlement. Here adequate rainfall, rich soil, and moderate temperatures provide farmers with an ideal climate for growing corn, wheat, barley, potatoes, and many types of vegetables. Below 2,500 meters are the subtropical and tropical zones, where fruit and vegetable production is largely determined by precipitation patterns. Where sufficient water is available, often at the bottom of river valleys, sugarcane, bananas, cacao, coffee, cotton, and other tropical crops grow in abundance. It was within this rich and complex ecological setting that Ecuador's indigenous societies developed their unique political and economic institutions. 1

2

3

For a discussion of this subject, see Troll, ed., Geo-ecology of the Mountainous Regions of the Tropical Americas, pp. 15—56; also see Murra, '"El Archipelago Vertical' Revisited," in Andean Ecology and Civilization, Masuda et al., eds., pp. 3—13. It was the German naturalist Von Hum bold t who first described the Ecuadorian highlands as "the avenue of volcanoes." According to Humboldt, "Nowhere in the Cordilleras of the Andes are there more colossal mountains heaped together, than on the east and west of this vast basin of the province of Quito." Von Humboldt and Bonpland, Personal Narrative, 3:307. Basile, Tillers of the Andes, p. 19.

Avenue of volcanoes

7

Native society before 1534 Until the end of the fifteenth century many chiefdoms, each with its own language and customs, dominated the Ecuadorian highlands. The Pastos, Caras, and Panzaleos populated the region extending from southern Colombia to Quito, and the Puruha and Canaris controlled the territory between Latacunga and Cuenca. These nations frequently fought among themselves but, before their consolidation under the Inca state, no one group exercised political hegemony over the region. Archaeologists have found evidence of hundreds of villages scattered throughout the north-central highlands. Within these communities, ranging in size from several dozen to several thousand people, most families built their thatched houses close to their fields rather than congregate around a nuclear settlement. 4 The population of each community was divided into kin groups later called parctaltdades by the Spanish. Like the Inca ayllu and Aztec calpulli, the extended kin group comprised blood relatives as well as others related by political or social bonds such as marriage, place of origin, or occupation. Individuals shared hereditary rights to agricultural lands and recognized one member as their cacique (political and economic leader). The relationship between ruler and subject was clearly delineated within a set of reciprocal responsibilities. Caciques ensured the stability of the community by mediating disputes, distributing labor assignments equitably, arranging marriages, establishing trade agreements with other communities, regulating markets, and maintaining local security. The cacique was also responsible for the distribution of communal surpluses, especially chkha (maize beer) and food on ceremonial occasions. In exchange for political and economic leadership and material largesse, lords enjoyed the prerogatives of power and privilege. Unlike commoners, the ruler was polygamous and therefore supported the largest household in the parcialidad. In addition to several wives and their offspring, these extended families often included siblings, aged parents, and the cacique's personal servants. The responsibilities of subjects to their lord included the planting and harvesting of crops on a portion of llajta (Indian village) land specifically set aside for this purpose, providing the household with a steady supply of firewood and game, and building and repairing the royal compound. Recent archaeological research has shown that caciques frequently chose to locate their houses on tolas (raised earthen platforms) close to the most productive agricultural areas.3 Corn was the staple food of the area's native population, but a variety of 4 Knapp, "Soil and Slope," p. 310. 5 Ibid., pp. 229-30, 352.

8

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

other crops was also cultivated, including beans, peas, squash, quinoa, and potatoes. Although archaeologists have uncovered some evidence of irrigation canals and mountainside terraces, throughout most of the north-central highlands adequate rainfall made such labor-intensive agricultural techniques unnecessary.6 Although the wet, mild climate of the Quito area enabled local residents to produce an abundance of agricultural goods, certain important commodities such as cotton, chili peppers, salt, and coca could only be grown at lower elevations. Therefore, highland society devised a variety of exchange mechanisms to ensure access to these and other coveted items. The most common avenue of trade was between llajtakuna (Indian villages). In this way families and communities could exchange local surpluses of corn, for example, for chili peppers grown in lowland areas. Long-standing relationships between ruling families, often reinforced by intermarriage, facilitated the flow of goods between communities. Northern chiefdoms also developed a system, similar to the Inca archipelago network, whereby a group of individuals, called kamayuj, resided permanently in foreign communities, providing agricultural labor in exchange for exotic products, which they sent back to their home settlements. In addition, an elite group of mindales (long-distance traders) specialized in the acquisition of specific lowland products such as gold, fish, coca, salt, and beads of various types. Because they controlled the flow of luxury items primarily consumed by ruling elites, mindales enjoyed special privileges, including the right to travel widely outside of their native regions and the right to pay tribute in gold rather than in labor. Mindales provided goods not only for their own llajta but also for tiangueces (permanent regional markets). The tianguez at Quito, for example, brought together people and commodities from all over the highlands as well as from the eastern and western lowlands. Thus, regional markets became central places not only for the distribution of goods but also for the dissemination of information and the accumulation of political and economic power for those who controlled the locale.7 The Inca conquest The natural wealth of the northern Andes did not go unnoticed, and economic rather than military interests motivated the first Inca incursions into this area. After the Spanish conquest, local informants explained that Inca traders began arriving sometime during the reign of Pachacuti Inca 6 7

For a discussion of indigenous agricultural technology, see ibid., pp. 234-95. Salomon, Native Lords, pp. 97-115.

Avenue of volcanoes

9

(1438-71). They brought with them luxury items such as silver jewelry and vessels, llama-wool textiles, and exotic ceramics, the novelty of which appealed to northern elites. Over a period of many years, local rulers came to depend on a steady supply of such goods; as a result, emissaries of the Inca state began to amass political and economic power, eventually opening the door to advancing Inca military forces.8 Topa Inca, heir to Pachacuti Inca, initiated the conquest of the northern Andes during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. His army eventually defeated the Canaris and subsequently used their capital, Tomebamba, as a headquarters for further military operations. Because the Canaris came under direct Inca control many years before their neighbors, Inca customs and institutions penetrated their area to a degree never attained farther north. By the eve of the Spanish conquest, the Canaris had adopted many of the economic and political practices of their conquerors as well as the official state language, Quechua. The Incas paid a high price in men and materials for the conquest of the chiefdoms to the north of Tomebamba. Although details are vague, both Spanish and Indian chroniclers agreed that subjugation of the Puruha required two military campaigns, and the defeat of the Carangues and Cayambes in the Otavalo area necessitated four campaigns over the course of some twenty years. Neither eastern nor western lowlands and their inhabitants ever came under Inca control. Huayna Capac, successor to Topa Inca, finally defeated the forces of Nasacoto Puento, cacique of Cayambe, in a massacre on the shores of Lake Yaguarcocha around 1500. According to Pedro Cieza de Leon, more than 20,000 adult males from the Otavalo area died in this battle. 9 In order to reduce the chances for future rebellions, Inca leaders ordered the forced relocation of large segments of the population. Many of the surviving rebels and their families were transported to the coca plantations of Matibamba far to the south in the province of Angaraes. Others were moved to the Huanuco region and still others to Cuzco. The Incas referred to these relocated populations as mitimae, and enclaves of mitimae were scattered throughout the empire. In their place came subjects from all over the southern highlands. The Huancas and Huayacunti from Cajamarca settled in the Chillos Valley near Quito. Other foreigners, including some Canaris, occupied land near Cotocollao, while mitimae from many distant areas of the empire now lived in El Quinche. Enclaves of foreigners also were settled in communities throughout Latacunga, Ambato, Chimbo, and Riobamba. 10 8 9

Ibid., pp. 215-18. "Cuentan los mismos indios que mando matar mas de veinte mil hombres y echarlos en la laguna"; Cieza de Leon, Obras, 1:53. 10 Information on mitimae populations is scattered throughout many sixteenth- and seventeenth-

io

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

Caciques who accepted Inca rule without protest were allowed to remain in power; but where loyalty was in question, Inca officials deposed the suspect and replaced him with someone more willing to cooperate. In communities where outsiders had assumed control and members of the traditional elite remained, hostilities often developed; the repercussions of these dynastic feuds continued well into the seventeenth century when descendants of pre—Inca ruling clans sought to reclaim their ancestral privileges. A revealing example of the lingering conflicts between native and Inca lords is provided by a suit filed in 1565 by Lorenzo Guamarico, cacique principal of the province of Chimbo. 11 Lorenzo had ruled Chimbo since the death of his father Rodrigo seventeen years earlier. In 1565, he petitioned the audiencia to order Santiago, cacique of San Rafael Cumbibamba, to obey and subordinate himself to Guamarico s rule. Santiago conceded that Lorenzo and his father Rodrigo had ruled Chimbo for many years, but he claimed that his own father Longomate had been the original cacique of the region. Both parties agreed that, about 1525, Atahualpa had deposed Longomate (for treason, according to Lorenzo Guamarico) and replaced him with his pariente (kinsman) from Cajamarca, Rodrigo. According to the testimony of Santiago, hundreds of mitimae came with Rodrigo and occupied many settlements throughout the region, confiscating large amounts of land from native inhabitants. Santiago argued that he should not be forced to subordinate himself to Guamarico because he had always exercised independent political control over San Rafael and because since the Spanish conquest he had been collecting and delivering local tribute to the encomendero (receiver of tribute and labor from the Indians) of the town, Juan de Larrea. Two years later, in 1567, the audiencia issued a decision denying Guamarico's request and upholding Santiago's right to independent political and economic control over San Rafael. The court's ruling undermined Guamarico's authority on the regional level and exacerbated tensions between native and Inca elites. This case also demonstrates that, as early as the 1560s, members of Ecuador's century documents. See, e.g., AGI, Quito 32, Don Francisco Garcia Ati, cacique de San Miguel, Latacunga a la audiencia (September 27, 1633); AGI, Justicia 682, Residencia tomada al Licenciado juan Salazar de Villasante oidor de la Audiencia de los Reyes, como a Corregidor y Justicia Mayor de Quito, por el Licenciado Fernando de Santillan Presidente de esta Audiencia de Quito, 1564; and AGI, Justicia 669, Don Lorenzo Guamarica cacique principal del pueblo de Chimbo con Santiago indio principal del pueblo de Cumbibamba, July 13, 1565 y siguio hasta October 14, 1567. Also see Salomon, Native Lords, pp. 158-67, and Miguel de Cantos, "Relacion para la real audiencia de los repartimientos y numero de indios y encomenderos que hay en el corregimiento de Chimbo," in Relaciones geogrdficas de Indias, Jimenez de la Espada, ed., 2:254-60. 11 AGI, Justicia 669, ibid.

Avenue of volcanoes

11

Indian elite had mastered the intricacies of the Spanish legal system and were using it to their own advantage. Under the Inca regime, local production determined tribute obligations. Therefore, most communities in the Quito area cultivated maize for Inca granaries and also continued to supply food and firewood to local officials. In addition, the state instituted the labor requirement of the mita (system of draft labor) in which a specific number of individuals worked for a predetermined period of time as laborers or as servants in the chiefs household. Some communities also supplied workers to weave cotton and llama wool into cloth, which the state later distributed as gifts. Thus, the variety and amount of goods and services demanded of residents of the northern Andes increased under Inca rule. No longer did subjects provide only for the needs of local rulers. Now they also supplied goods for state warehouses and served as laborers on large-scale construction projects. Extended service in the standing armies of the empire was also required of many males and often entailed spending long periods of time far from home. Following the death of Huayna Capac around 1525 and the subsequent outbreak of civil war between his sons, Huascar and Atahualpa, increased military demands placed a heavy burden on the empire. Much of the civil war was fought in the northern Andes, and as a result demographic and economic disruption was especially severe in this area. Cieza de Leon reported that, following their capture of Tomebamba, the army of Atahualpa massacred "more than 35,000 Canaris males and left many wounded." 12 Another Spaniard describing the same incident wrote, "of 50,000 not more than 3,000 remained." 13 When the Spanish reached the northern Andes in 1534, they encountered populations that had only partially assimilated Inca culture. The majority spoke only their native languages; north of Quito, the use of woolen clothing and the construction of stone buildings (Inca innovations) were still uncommon. In addition, many traditional religious practices survived, as did certain economic institutions. Politically, however, Incaappointed officials dominated the area, enforcing policies that emanated from the central government in Cuzco. Major projects, such as the construction and maintenance of roads, storehouses, tambos (way stations), and fortifications provided visible evidence of Inca control. 12

" . . . Atahuallpa quedo vencedor con muerte de muchos contrarios, canto que afirman que murieron entre unos y otros mas de treinta y cinco mil hombres, y heridos quedaron muchos." Cieza, Obras, 1:224. When Sebastian de Benalcazar arrived in the area a few years later, remnants of the Canari population, mostly women, children, and the elderly offered to aid the Spanish in their struggle to conquer Peru. 13 " . . . que de 50 mill que habia, no habian quedado mas que 3 mill," Hernando Pablo, "Relation que enbio a mandar su Magestad se hiziese desta ciudad de Cuenca y toda su provincia," in Relaciones geogrdficas, 2:267.

12

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

The native population before 1534 The debate over the size of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas still rages. On one side are those who argue that, before 1492, the New World was not densely populated, and that even in the highlands of Mexico and Peru, the number of inhabitants remained relatively low. These scholars dismiss contemporary Spanish sources as biased and unreliable and argue that, although Indian populations certainly did decline after the arrival of Europeans, the drop was far less dramatic than the opposition claims. 14 On the other side are those who insist that Mesoamerica and the Andean highlands supported dense populations before 1500 and that the introduction of European diseases and the brutality and exploitation of Spanish settlers significantly reduced demographic levels by the end of the sixteenth century. Proponents of high estimates generally accept the reliability of eyewitness accounts and other documents describing the size of native settlements and armies at the time of contact. These scholars have also used Spanish censuses and tribute lists in order to make backward projections that support their position. Others have adopted an ecological approach, calculating population based on the carrying capacity of the land. 15 14 In 1939, Kroeber calculated a hemispheric population of 8,400,000 with some 3,300,000 in Mesoamerica and another 4,000,000 in South America. Kroeber, Cultural and Natural Areas. Rowe later postulated a preconquest population of 6,000,000 in the central Andes. Rowe, "Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest," in The Handbook of South American Indians, Steward, ed., 2:183-330. For the same area, Steward arrived at a figure of 4,700,000; of these 500,000 lived in Ecuador; Steward, "The Native Population of South America," in The Handbook of South American Indians, 5:655—668. In 1954, Rosenblat estimated the number of indigenous inhabitants in the New World at 13,385,000 in 1492. His calculations included 5,300,000 in central Mexico and 6,785,000 in South America; of these, 3,300,000 resided in the Inca empire. Rosenblat, La poblacion indigena, 1:102. 15 Cook and Borah have estimated that in 1492 the native population of the Americas approached 100,000,000, with some 25,000,000 living in central Mexico. Borah, "CAmerica como modelo?" Cuadernos Americanos 6 (1962): 176—85; and Cook and Borah, The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest. Dobyns arrived at similar conclusions and

estimated that the population of the Inca empire numbered approximately 30,000,000. Dobyns, "Estimating Aboriginal Population." The calculations of Denevan (18,000,000) and Sanders (11,400,000) for central Mexico represent a middle ground. Denevan, The Native Population, p. 291. Sanders, "The Population of the Teotihuacan Valley, The Basin of Mexico, and the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region in the Sixteenth Century," in The Teotihuacan Valley Project, Sanders, eld., 1:385-457. Lovell,Lutz,and Sweezey have estimated that in 1525 the number of Indians in Guatemala, excluding the department of the Peten, was 2,000,000. Lovell et al., "The Indian Population." In Peru that position is represented by the work of Cook (9,000,000) and Smith (12,000,000). Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 114. Smith, "Depopulation," Current Anthropology 11 (1970): 453-64.

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But it is the implications of these calculations more than the numbers themselves that continue to generate controversy. To accept the premise that Mesoamerica and the central Andes were densely populated in 1492, one must also accept that these societies had achieved levels of political and economic development equal or superior to those of Europe. But many find this a difficult proposition to defend; and, because the existing evidence lends itself to such varying interpretations, debate is certain to continue for many years. In comparison to the research on the demographic history of Mexico and Peru, little has been written on Ecuador. Calculating the precontact population of any region of Latin America presents the researcher with a unique set of problems, and Ecuador is no exception. For administrative as well as economic reasons, Spanish colonization concentrated in the center of the Inca empire. A peripheral area such as Ecuador received considerably less attention, especially during the first decade of Spanish occupation. Hence documentation describing initial contacts with Indian communities, including estimates of their size, is almost nonexistent. Demographic disruptions that occurred before the Spanish entered the region further complicate the situation. The Inca conquest of Ecuador exacted a heavy toll, especially in the northern sierra around Otavalo. The civil war between Huascar and Atahualpa perpetuated the decline, especially in the southern highlands, where the Canaris were all but annihilated. But the most severe loss of population occurred between 1524 and 1533, when one or possibly two epidemics swept through the empire. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca ruler Huayna Capac died in Quito in 1524 after contracting a chucchu (chill) and rupa (fever).16 Miguel Cabello Balboa also attributed the death of Huayna Capac to a fever that coincided with a deadly epidemic in the Cuzco region. Sarmiento de Gamboa agreed that "an illness of fevers" was responsible but added that "others say it was smallpox and measles."17 But Cieza de Leon claimed that in 1527 Huayna Capac was in the Quito area, having recently completed the conquest of Otavalo, when he heard about Spanish ships off the coast. Shortly thereafter the Inca died in "a great epidemic of smallpox" that swept through the Andes. 18 The Jesuit Bernabe Cobo also claimed that an epidemic of smallpox broke out soon after Europeans began exploring the Peruvian coast. 19 Native chronicler Juan Santa Cruz Pachacuti described the epidemic as "measles," while Guaman Poma de Ayala iden16 17 18 19

Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:572-8. Cabello Balboa, Misceldnea Antdrtka, p. 393; and Gamboa, Historia indica, p. 131. ". . . cuentan que vino una gran pestilencia de viruelas." Cieza, Obras, 1:219. Cobo, History, pp. 1 6 0 - 1 .

14

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

tified it as "measles and smallpox."20 Certainly the appearance of spots (whether rashes or pustules is not clear) on the faces and bodies of victims supports the diagnosis of one of these infections.21 Given the timing of the outbreak, however, smallpox seems more likely. Spaniards introduced the smallpox virus from the Caribbean into central Mexico in 1520. During the next several years, the disease traveled south, reaching Panama by 1527. 22 From there the virus could have continued south in advance of Europeans, across the Isthmus and into the Andes. Yet another possible route of transmission was provided by the ever-increasing number of Spanish expeditions to the Pacific coast of South America. Years later native informants emphasized the destructiveness of this epidemic in their testimony to Spanish officials. Cieza de Leon provided the only estimate of mortality, claiming that "more than 200,000 persons died";23 but it seems likely that the number of deaths was considerably higher.24 Cook recently calculated that about nine million people lived in Peru in 1520. 25 Epidemics of smallpox and measles often claim between one-third to one-half of all individuals in a nonimmune population, so this first epidemic probably claimed 3—4.5 million lives in Peru alone. It also seems likely that before the Spanish conquest a second epidemic may have struck the Indian societies of the Andes, although no description remains. In 1531, an epidemic, identified by Newson as bubonic plague, began in Nicaragua; two years later, an outbreak of measles occurred.26 Again, these diseases could have arrived in Ecuador and Peru either overland from Panama or with an infected European seaman. If, in fact, plague or measles did precede Pizarro, between 25 and 30 percent of the remaining population would have perished.27 Lack of sources and the series of demographic disruptions that occurred before the Spanish conquest make it difficult to estimate the population of the north-central highlands of Ecuador in 1533. What little information remains was often written years later and reflects only the recognition that the number of natives had declined dramatically. Cieza de Leon, who 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. Manuscript 3169, Juan Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui, "Relacion de antiguedades deste reyno del Piru," 1613. f. 36; "murio mucha gente con la epidemia del sarampion y la viruela." Guaman Poma de Ayala, La neuva coronka, 1:85, 1:207. Measles is characterized by a rash that appears first on the face. In smallpox, the rash that appears initially evolves into pustules, eventually forming scabs. Newson, Indian Survival, p. 119. " . . . que vino una gran pestilencia de viruelas tan contagiosa que murieron mas de doscientos mil animas en todas las comarcas, porque fue general." Cieza, Obras, 1:219. Crosby, Columbian Exchange, pp. 35—63; Cook, Demographic Collapse, pp. 62—5. Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 114. Newson, Indian Survival, pp. 119-20. Cook, Demographic Collapse, pp. 6 5 - 6 .

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traveled through the Pasto area north of Quito during the 1540s, wrote: "In the past the area must have been much more populated. . . . One cannot travel anywhere (except for the most broken and difficult [terrain]) without seeing that the land had been populated and worked."28 Describing this same region two centuries later, Spanish geographer Antonio de Alcedo placed the precontact population at 600,000. 2 9 Even if this figure inflates the number of inhabitants, it supports the assertion of Cieza de Leon that the region had been much more densely populated before the Spanish conquest. Faced with labor shortages and tribute deficits, royal officials also commented on the demographic decline. According to Hernando de Santillan, president of the audiencia of Quito from 1564 to 1568, depopulation had led to confusion regarding tribute collections "because chiefs today want to retain the same system as in the time of the Inca, without respect for the diminution that has occurred." Santillan s comments on the rate of depopulation reflected the differing experiences of various regions. In some areas "not even one-fourth of the Indians" survived. Although some settlements experienced considerably less destruction, in others only 1 0 20 percent remained.30 In his description of the province of Otavalo written in 1582, corregidor Juan Sancho Paz Ponce de Leon noted the decline of the area's native population and went on to explain why it had occurred: It is said that in the past there were many more Indians, and so it seems from the lay of the land. . . . The Indians have diminished with the wars that they fought against the Incas and later with the conquest by the Spanish and finally with certain epidemics of smallpox and measles and typhus that have occurred in this area; and with these things they have been reduced.31

28 29 30

31

"Antiguamente debio de ser mas poblada . . . no se andara por parte (aunque mas fragosa y diflcultosa sea) que no se vea y parezca haber sido poblada y labrada." Cieza, Obras, 1:48. "El ilustrisimo don Lucas de Piedrahita dice que tenfa 600,000 habicantes cuando entraron los espanoles." Horacio Larrain Barros, Cronistas, 1:145. ". . . porque los curacas quieren hoy guardar la misma orden que en tiempo del inga, sin tener respeto a la disminucion que ha habido en las pachacas y guarangas, repartiendo a una pachaca tanto como la repartian en tiempo del inga, al respeto, no teniendo al presente el numero de indios que tenia en tiempo del inga, ni aun la mitad; y asi quedan unos muy agraviados y otros muy descargados. Porque en una misma provincia acaesce que de una pachaca o guaranga con las guerras y con las entradas en que los han llevado colleras y cadenas, y con otras pestilencias que los han venido despues de que los espanoles entraron en la tierra, no queda la cuarta parte de los indios que habia en ella en tiempo del inga, y hay otras pachacas que acaso se han conservado mas y les faltan menos indios; y en el repartir los tributos echan tanto a aquella que esta disminuida, que a veces no tiene diez indios, como a la que esta mas conservada, que tiene cincuenta o ciento." Santillan, "Relation," Biblioteca Peruana 3:402-3. "Dicen que en otros tiempos habia mucha mas cantidad de indios, y ansi lo paresce en la dispusicion de la tierra, segun las labores de sementeras que la dicha tierra muestra. Hanse

16

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

Once again these statements support the thesis that the number of natives living in the north-central highlands of Ecuador was far greater before 1534Despite the lack of data, several scholars have attempted to calculate the size of the precontact population of Ecuador. The comments of anthropologist Julian Steward neatly summarize the problem. "[The native population of} Highland Ecuador is reckoned entirely by analogy. A half million native population, which is close to the figure for the modern Indians gives a density of 300 [per 100 km 2 ] as compared with Peru's 390 [per 100 km 2 ]." 3 2 On the basis of the descriptions of various chroniclers, Ecuadorian demographer Cesar Cisneros wrote that "it would appear that at the time of the [Spanish] conquest our country had some 800,000 aborigines . . . the greatest concentration [of whom] inhabited the highland region." 33 Since the publication of Steward's essay in 1949, others have continued to use his estimate of a half-million as a base from which to begin their own calculations. Citing both Cisneros and Steward, Argentine historian Angel Rosenblat argued that a total of 1,000,000 inhabitants for all three regions of Ecuador (coast, highlands, and Amazonian lowlands) was too high, but that a population of 500,000 for the sierra appeared reasonable. 34 Although generally supporting Cook and Borah's figure of 25,000,000 inhabitants in central Mexico in 1519, historian John L. Phelan disagreed with high estimates for the Inca empire. According to Phelan: The population of South America was much less dense than that of Mexico at the time of the conquest, and the death rate among the Indians was much less in South America. . . . Epidemic diseases never took such an overwhelming toll in lives among the Peruvians as they did among the Mexicans. In fact, diseases did not become a cause of mass death in Peru until the eighteenth century, some two hundred years after the Indians had first been exposed to them.35

Citing both Cieza de Leon and Lopez de Velasco, Phelan argued that before the arrival of Europeans the native population of the central Andes (i.e., the audiencias of Quito, Charcas, and Lima) totaled between 3,500,000 and 6,750,000. Of these, some 750,000 to 1,000,000 resided

32 33 34 35

acabado estos indios con las guerras que tuvieron con el Ingua cuando los conquisto, y despues con la conquista de los espanoles y a la postre con ciertas pestilencias que en estas partes ha habido de sarampion y viruelas y tabardete; y con estas cosas se han apocado"; Juan Sancho Paz Ponce de Leon, "Relacion y descripcion de los pueblos del partido de Otavalo," Relaciones geograficas, 3:108-9. Steward, "The Native Population of South America," Handbook of South American Indians, 5:660. Cisneros, Demografia, p. n o . Rosenblat, "La poblacion indigena, 1:308-9. Phelan, The Kingdom, pp. 4 4 - 5 .

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in what would become the kingdom of Quito. 3 6 Although Phelan underestimated the size of the native population of the central Andes, his figure of 1,000,000 inhabitants for the audiencia of Quito may be fairly accurate. 37 Nevertheless, he clearly failed to recognize the devastating effect of disease on Indian communities throughout the viceroyalty of Peru. More recently, historian Horacio Larrain Barros and geographer Gregory Knapp have published their findings concerning the precontact population of the northern highlands of Ecuador. Based on the Otavalo census of 1582 (16,800) and Santillans depopulation ratio of 4:1, Larrain arrived at a total of 132,768 persons inhabiting the corregimiento of Otavalo in 1534. 38 Knapp, on the other hand, relied on archaeological evidence in order to calculate a population of 155,000 for the same area. He also estimated that in the richest agricultural areas, where residents had constructed raised fields, food production could have supported up to 750 persons per square kilometer. In less productive areas, population density ranged from 70 to 125 persons per square kilometer. 39 To date, much of the archaeological research in Ecuador has been confined to the coast and the northern sierra, leaving vast gaps in our knowledge of the prehistory of the rest of the country. Therefore, backward projection appears to be the only method currently available for calculating the population of the entire highland area before 1534. The earliest demographic data for the sierra region (from Otavalo to Cuenca) were compiled during the late 1550s. 40 Two documents based on a visita (visit or census) ordered by Viceroy Andres Hurtado de Mendoza include information concerning the native population during the mid-sixteenth century; but they arrive at different conclusions. One of these, an undated, unsigned copy of the 1559 visita of Pedro de Avedano, indicated that 48,134 tributaries and 240,670 individuals lived in the Quito area. 41 The 36 Ibid., p. 44. In his study of the demographic and economic history of the audiencia, historian Robson Tyrer claimed that Phelan's figures were too low, but he offered no revised estimate. Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," pp. 3-4. 37 The author calculates the preconquest population of the audiencia at 1,080,000. Discussion follows. 38 Larrain, Demografia 2:126—7. 39 Knapp, "Soil and Slope," pp. 307, 339. 40 Until that time documents contain demographic data limited to particular areas. A more accurate picture might be drawn using the Toldeo visita of the early 1570s, but a complete set of the individual repartimiento totals for the audiencia of Quito has not yet been discovered. 41 The original copy of the Avedano visita is located in the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid) in the Coleccion Juan Bautista Munoz. Also see AGI, Lima 1627, Papeles para agregar. It is significant to note that dividing the number of tributaries (48,134) into the total population (240,670) produces a factor of five precisely. This suggests that Avedano counted only the tributary population and then multiplied this figure by five (his estimate of average family size) in order to arrive at the total native population.

18

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

other, based on the same visita but contained in a relacion (report) by Oidor Juan Matienzo de Peralta dated 1561, calculated a total of 54,000 tributaries and 270,000 individuals for the same area.42 These two figures differ by 5,866 tributaries and 29,000 persons, a sizable discrepancy and one that is difficult to resolve. Because both censuses are based on many of the same data - and in fact the columns recording the amounts of tribute collected agree exactly in many cases - it may be that the Avedano copy contained incomplete totals and that the Matienzo document compiled in 1561 accurately represented the actual demographic situation. On the basis of the larger figure of 270,000 and using the depopulation ratio of 4:1 offered by Santillan, one can estimate that the precontact population of highland Ecuador would have numbered 1,080,000. One way to check that figure is by calculating rates of decline to 1561 according to our knowledge of mortality rates during virgin soil epidemics. A review of the literature on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epidemics of smallpox and measles among isolated communities indicates that in nonimmune populations almost everyone will become sick and that 3 0 50 percent will die. 43 This means that of a population of 1,080,000, between 590,000 and 756,000 would have survived the initial attack of smallpox. If, as seems likely, a second epidemic, of measles, followed, another 25-30 percent would have succumbed.44 Thus, on the eve of the Spanish conquest, the number of indigenous inhabitants remaining in the highlands of Ecuador probably totaled between 375,000 and 570,000. The disruption and violence of the European invasion, followed by severe epidemics in 1546 and 1558, could easily account for the further decline to 270,000 recorded in 1561. Although we do not know on what information he based his statement, Santillan may well have been correct when he asserted that in some areas three-quarters of the Indian population had disappeared since the Spanish conquest. A decline of 4:1 is somewhat greater than Cook's average ratio of 3.4:1 for highland Peru between 1520 and 1571, but it remains less than the rate of decline for the highland population of Huancas—Hatun Xauxa (7.3:1) and well within the realm of possibility.45 Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did the population of highland Ecuador again reach 1 million. 46 42

AGI, Lima 120, "Relacion de los naturales destos reynos del peru," 1561. Again, the number of tributaries was multiplied by five to arrive at the total population. 43 Cook, Demographic Collapse, pp. 62-6; Crosby, Columbian Exchange, p. 44. 44 Cook, Demographic Collapse, pp. 65-6. 45 Ibid., p. 50. 46 According to Cisneros, the population of the Republic of Ecuador totaled 1,271,861 in 1889. In 1945, approximately 2,000,000 persons resided in the highlands. Therefore, it seems likely that sometime during the first decade of the twentieth century, the number of inhabitants in the Ecuadorian sierra probably reached 1 million. Cisneros, Demografia, pp. 90—101.

2 Disease, illness, and healing before 1534

Although we can only speculate about the number of Indians living in the highlands of Ecuador before 1534, we can be certain of the ferocious destruction that accompanied the arrival of smallpox and measles. In order to comprehend the effects of these previously unknown infections and how they influenced the colonial experience of Ecuador's native inhabitants, we must first delineate the disease environment that existed before Europeans arrived. But it is equally important to understand pre-Columbian concepts regarding health, illness, and healing, because they too helped to determine the responses of Indian communities not only to invasion by Old World pathogens but also to the Spanish colonial system as it developed in the northern Andes. The pathological setting The most significant difference between patterns of disease in the Old and New Worlds was the absence of many "crowd-type" illnesses in preColumbian America. Native Americans had never experienced epidemics of smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, or cholera - all diseases that require dense human populations in which to proliferate. When the ancestors of American Indians crossed the Bering Strait they brought many diseases with them, but the cold of the far north and the rigors of the journey ensured that some of these organisms or their insect vectors died out. l Even after permanent agricultural communities developed, population levels remained too low to sustain acute infections that relied on direct human transmission for their propagation. Another factor contributing to the paucity of crowd-type diseases was the absence of domesticated mammals living in close proximity to human settlements. Many Old World infections, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, originated as zoonoses among animal populations; and although New World inhabitants had domesticated several species, includ1

Newman, "Aboriginal New World Epidemiology," p. 668.

19

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

ing dogs, turkeys, and South American cameloids, few pathogens made the leap - with the likely exception of typhus rickettsia, for which domesticated guinea pigs acted as a reservoir. Given the absence of acute, epidemic diseases, one might be tempted to assume that, before the Spanish conquest, serious illness was uncommon among native Americans. But as archaeological evidence mounts, it becomes increasingly clear that the Andes provided a suitable habitat for many parasitic and arthropod-transmitted diseases and that, before the sixteenth century, numerous chronic endemic infections flourished among Indian communities. Protozoan infections such as uta (leishmaniasis), Chagas' disease, toxoplasmosis, amebiasis, and giardiasis were certainly common, just as they are today. Leishmaniasis and Chagas' disease, both transmitted by arthropods, attack the mucous membranes of the face. In its acute form, the trypanosome responsible for Chagas' disease destroys cardiac and skeletal cells and can eventually result in death through myocarditis and meningo-encephalitis. Toxoplasmosis, another chronic protozoan infection, seldom becomes acute. However, when contracted during pregnancy, the disease can cause blindness, severe brain damage, or death of the fetus. Amoebas and giardias enter the body in contaminated water or food, or through wounds in the skin, producing fever, chills, and diarrhea. Ulceration of the colon and chronic malaise constitute the most serious longterm effects. Neither amebiasis nor giardiasis is in itself fatal, but during famines or in conjunction with other diseases, their debilitating effects often contribute to higher mortality rates, especially among children. A host of bacterial and spirochetal infections also affected the health of pre-Columbian populations. On the basis of salmonella antigens found in Peruvian mummies, paleopathologist Marvin Allison has suggested that typhoid fever may have existed in the Americas before 1492. 2 Other medical authorities, however, argue that because typhoid fever is a "crowd-type disease spread through contaminated food and water its presence seems unlikely given the dispersed settlement pattern found throughout most of the hemisphere." 3 Among the bacterial infections endemic to the region was one Europeans had never encountered before — bartonellosis, or Carrion's disease. According to Garcilaso de la Vega: Pizarro's men suffered from a strange and abominable disease which broke out on their heads and faces and over the whole of their bodies. At first a sort of wart appeared, which as it developed turned into a growth as large as a black fig. It hung from a sort of stem,

2 Allison, "Paleopathology," p. 78. 3 Garruto, "Disease Patterns," p. 580.

Disease before 1334

21

gave out a great deal of blood and caused great pain and nausea. . . . Many died, many more recovered.4

Victims of verrugas, as the Spanish named the disease, also experienced fever, headache, and severe pain lasting from one to three months. A more malignant form of verrugas called Oroya fever produces chills, high fever, bone pain, weakness, cramps, depression, and insomnia. In some cases complications, such as salmonella septicemia, can prove fatal. Of the several spirochetal infections attacking preconquest populations, pinta, a nonvenereal treponematosis, was probably the most common. Although this skin disease is seldom serious, it produces rashes of various colors — blue, pink, yellow, and violet — on the trunks and faces of its victims. These rashes, which can last for many years if untreated, often engender psychological stress and depression in the person so disfigured. In addition to pinta, it seems likely that two other treponematoses also infected pre-Columbian inhabitants. The treponemas responsible for pinta, yaws, and syphilis are indistinguishable in laboratory tests, indicating that different strains of the same organism trigger all three. Like pinta, yaws is a nonvenereal form of treponematosis transmitted by direct contact, especially among children. The yaws spirochete can remain latent for many years, emerging periodically to produce skin and cartilage lesions. Although the most serious cases can eventually cause lesions on the bones, yaws rarely, if ever, results in death. The controversy surrounding the debate over the origins of syphilis has continued unabated ever since the disease first appeared, in its most virulent form, in Europe in 1493. Since then scholars have proposed two explanations of the origins of this dreaded venereal infection.5 According to the unitarian school, pinta, yaws, and syphilis are all forms of the same disease. Sometime around the end of the fifteenth century, the yaws spirochete, which has been prevalent throughout the Old World for millennia, mutated and adopted a venereal form of transmission. Some proponents of this theory argue that syphilis was then introduced to the Americas, although others claim the disease already existed there. Supporters of the Columbian theory, including many Europeans who witnessed the initial epidemics, agree that the infection arrived in Europe with the men of Columbus's first expedition. Besides the timing, spread, and virulence of epidemics in the Old World, Columbian theorists cite archaeological evidence to bolster their argument. Since the first decade of this century, scientists have uncovered several skeletal remains displaying lesions of the skull, tibiae, and fingers characteristic of syphilis. Converse4 5

Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 2:661. Crosby offers a succinct summary of the evidence in Columbian Exchange, pp. 122-64.

22

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

ly, no trace of such scarring has ever been found on pre-fifteenth-century skeletons anywhere in the Old World. The fact that syphilis claimed many lives in sixteenth-century Europe whereas cases among native Americans were considerably less severe adds further support to the Columbian theory.6 Today, two other spirochetal diseases are also endemic to Ecuador's indigenous population, and it seems likely that they were present long before the conquest. Leptospirosis, which is transmitted through contaminated water, soil, and food, produces a fever that lasts for several days to several weeks and can recur. Occasionally complications such as anemia, meningitis, or hemorrhaging may develop, but in general, fatalities are rare. Two types of relapsing fever, the endemic variety transmitted by ticks and the epidemic variety carried by lice, also occur throughout the area. During an epidemic up to 50 percent of those affected may die, whereas fatalities among those suffering from the endemic variety average only between 2 and 10 percent. One can also build a strong case for the existence of both endemic (fleaborne) and epidemic (louse-born) typhus in the New World before 1492. Examinations of mummified human remains have revealed that head and body lice commonly infested native populations. 7 Lice prefer cool climates, and the heavy woolen and cotton clothing worn by Andean peoples provided safe habitats. In addition, most native households included several guinea pigs in the family's living quarters; these animals can be reservoirs for the typhus rickettsiae without themselves succumbing to the illness. Infected fleas can easily jump from rodent to human, transmitting the endemic form of the disease. Thus the rickettsia found the rodent reservoir, the arthropod vector, and the human victim all under one roof. Preconquest traditions of epidemics occurring during periods of social turmoil - wars, famines, and natural disasters - support the assertion that typhus existed in the Americas before the sixteenth century. In his history of the Incas, the Indian chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala described two epidemics that occurred long before the Spanish conquest. In describing the origins of the Incas he wrote, "The population was so numerous that it was able to survive a plague which once raged for six months throughout the kingdom. During this period the condors gorged themselves on the human corpses scattered about the fields and villages."8 Later, recounting the military achievements of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, Guaman Poma described another, more serious episode. The defeat of Chile was made possible by the ravages of plague, which lasted for ten years. Disease and famine, even more than force of arms, brought about the downfall of the 6 7 8

Shearwood, "Syphilis," pp. 47-55. Zinser, Rats, pp. 175-7; and Busvine, Insects, pp. 43-4. Guaman Poma, Letter to a King, p. 26.

Disease before 1534

23

Chileans, just as civil war between Huascar and Atahuallpa was later to facilitate the Spanish conquest. Peru itself suffered terribly from plague, famine and drought. For a decade no rain fell and the grass withered and died. People were reduced to devouring their own children and when the stomachs of the poor were opened it was sometimes found that they had managed to sustain life by eating grasses. 9

Furthermore, Guaman Poma wrote that the Incas associated "a plague of fleas" with death, suggesting that they may have connected these ectoparasites with the appearance of typhus. 10 If it existed in the Andes before the sixteenth century, typhus would have been the most lethal of all diseases. Both forms begin suddenly with fever, chills, severe headaches, exhaustion, and general pain. A skin eruption appears by the end of the first week; later the victim often becomes delirious and deaf. Death results from a collapse of the cardiovascular system. Mortality rates for endemic typhus average 2 percent but soar to 10-40 percent for the epidemic variety. Although small populations and dispersed settlements protected preColumbian Indians from the ravages of contagious viral diseases such as smallpox and measles, at least two types of viruses had evolved mechanisms that would have allowed them to survive among Amerindian communities. A family of herpes viruses, including herpes simplex (cold sores), varicella (chicken pox and shingles), and cytomegalovirus (a mononucleosislike illness), can remain latent within the human body for years after the initial attack. By remaining dormant for long periods and allowing their hosts a chance to recover, herpes viruses bypass the need for a constant supply of new victims or for intermediate reservoirs. When the viruses are reactivated, the human host becomes ill once again and can transmit the disease to others. These viruses can also pass from mother to fetus. Because these infections leave no unique physical evidence, it is impossible to be certain that they were present before 1530; but researchers have found these same types of viruses endemic among previously isolated populations of Amazonian natives. 11 The research of paleopathologists has also revealed three types of helminthic infections - pinworms, whipworms, and hookworms - in Peruvian mummies; but these scholars claim that "they were not common enough to produce a serious health problem." 12 Although they may not have posed a serious threat to public health, lack of energy and chronic malaise are common long-term side effects among those infected reducing productivity and weakening the body's defenses against other infections. Archaeological evidence also indicates that acute respiratory infections 9 Ibid., p. 42. 10 Ibid., p. 77. 11 Kaplan et al., "Workup on the Waorani," pp. 68-75. 12 Allison, "Peruvian and Chilean Populations," p. 525.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

were the most frequent cause of death among Andean residents, just as they are today. Paleopathologists have discovered incontrovertible evidence of pneumonia, blastomycosis, and tuberculosis in Peruvian mummies. 13 Samples of lung tissue taken from Peruvian mummies dating from the eighth century on show unmistakable signs of pulmonary and bloodborne (miliary) tuberculosis. These samples demonstrate that natives suffered most from the chronic, pulmonary form, with its characteristic symptoms of cough, fatigue, fever, and weight loss. In miliary tuberculosis, the bloodstream disseminates bacteria throughout the body, infecting many organs, including the eyes, lymph nodes, kidneys, intestines, larynx, and skin. This form of the disease almost always proves fatal. Tissue samples also indicate that bacterial pneumonia was especially common and that many individuals contracted the disease more than once. When pneumonia appears in conjunction with other diseases, such as tuberculosis or typhus, death often follows. Yet another serious respiratory infection was blastomycosis. Because the fungus responsible for producing the disease is transmitted in soil, those engaged in agricultural activities are most susceptible. The fungus produces lesions on the lungs, mucous membranes, and skin, and frequently results in death. In addition to pathological data, archaeological evidence provides information on the length and quality of life in the Andes. Human remains indicate that, before the Spanish conquest, 27 percent of the population had lived past the age of forty, while only 12 percent did so after 1534. Infant mortality had also been lower, with fewer children dying before the age of one. Both before and after the sixteenth century, however, nearly 50 percent of all children perished by the age of fifteen.l4 Much can also be learned about the history of disease in the Americas by studying present-day societies whose contact with outsiders has been limited. Before the arrival of missionaries in 1958, the disease environment of the Waorani, an isolated population of natives living in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador, resembled that of pre-Columbian communities. According to physicians and medical researchers who examined the Waorani between 1976 and 1984, before 1968 "epidemics of infectious disease were non-existent and those infections that did occur were rarely fatal." 15 In fact, although physicians found that most Waorani were infested with intestinal parasites, they showed few symptoms and appeared to be "remarkably healthy and robust people." 16 The evolution of the relationship between humans and disease in the 13 14 15 16

Allison, "Peruvian and Chilean Populations," p. 523, "Paleopathology," pp. 77-9. Allison, "Paleopathology," p. 77, and "Peruvian and Chilean Populations," p. 518. Kaplan et al., "Waorani," p. 71. Ibid., p. 70.

Disease before 1334

25

Andes spans thousands of years. Because many areas did not support dense populations until several hundred years before the arrival of Europeans, disease-causing organisms were forced to develop complex modes of transmission. For many infections, such as relapsing fever, leishmaniasis, Chagas' disease, and bartonellosis, arthropods were the vectors. Spirochetes and herpetoviruses could remain latent within the body of the human host for long periods. Typhus was particularly complicated: Arthropods served as vectors and guinea pigs as intermediate reservoirs. Low population levels placed yet another restriction on diseases. In order to survive, these organisms could not deplete their limited supply of human fuel; death of the host threatened the existence of all diseasecausing organisms. For this reason, most infections were chronic and endemic rather than acute and epidemic. So, although the disease environment of the New World was far from benign, indigenous inhabitants of the Andes clearly enjoyed better health and longer lives before the sixteenth century.

Native concepts of health and illness Every society evolves its own concepts of health and illness that define various physical and emotional conditions affecting the well-being of individuals. Because these beliefs are derived from and simultaneously reinforced by relationships within the community and the physical and cosmological universe, ultimately they reveal as much about the nature and structure of a society as they do about the specific ways in which illness is defined, diagnosed, and treated. Thus, the ways in which indigenous populations understand what it means to be healthy or sick not only demonstrate their knowledge of human physiology and pathology but also explain how they make sense of their world and their history. In recent years, a debate has developed about concepts of health and disease in Amerindian societies. Like the controversy concerning preColumbian population estimates, this also raises questions about the abilities and achievements of the New World's native inhabitants. On one side are those who argue that native medical practices lacked a sophisticated, systematic structure of interpretation and classification, that Spaniards introduced European humoral theories, and that this accounts for the wide spread use of humoral pathology throughout Latin America today. 17 On the other side are those who cite evidence of an original American humoral system, similar to and yet distinct from the Old World model. Anthropologist Joseph Bastien, for example, argues that the Andean sys17

See Foster, "On the Origin of Humoral Medicine," pp. 355-93; Edmonson, "A Mayan Perspective"; and Guerra, "Aztec Medicine," pp. 315-38.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

tern was based on a cyclical theory in which health resulted from the unimpeded movement of fluids through the body. Sickness developed when the cycle was interrupted either by a blockage or by the loss of fluids.18 Health could be restored only by reestablishing the cycle. Like a landslide on the side of a mountain, illness signified "disintegration of the body which [was] caused by imbalances of nature, cleavages within the lineage, or punishment by the ancestors."19 Thus, although both Amerindian and European systems emphasized balance, the system devised by indigenous peoples of the Andes included a cyclical concept based on their knowledge of mountain hydraulics. 20 Andean concepts of physiology and classification closely resemble those of the traditional European system in other ways. In form and function, the three fluids of life (air, blood, and fat) correspond to the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) of Hippocrates and Galen. Both also include principles of opposition with regard to the use of hot and cold categories, although whether native Americans developed their own taxonomic system on the basis remains in dispute. Some claim that Europeans introduced the concept along with the categories of wet and dry and the notion of degrees of intensity. According to Foster, nonliterate native societies could not manage such a complex set of theories and eventually retained only hot and cold distinctions. 21 Opponents insist that other concepts of duality were central to the philosophies of many native American societies, including the Aztecs and Incas. Furthermore, anthropologists have found that binary-temperature theories of disease classification exist even in isolated societies only recently contacted by outsiders. 22 They also claim that the almost total absence of wet and dry classifications and degrees of intensity was not due to any deficiency within Amerindian peoples; rather, their absence supports the argument that hot/cold and humoral theories developed independently in the New World. 23 Much evidence cited in support of this argument is based on direct observation of the beliefs and practices of those who continue to rely on traditional systems of classification and healing. Proponents of the American theory claim that today in many areas of the Andes the etiology of 18 Bastien, Healers of the Andes, p. 46, and "Differences," pp. 45-51. 19 George L. Urioste, "Sickness and Death in Preconquest Andean Cosmology: The Huarochiri Oral Tradition," in Bastien and Donahue, eds., Health in the Andes, p. 9. 20 Bastien, "Differences," p. 48. 21 Foster, "On the Origin of Humoral Medicine," p. 381. 22 Messer, "The Hot and Cold," pp. 339-46; Lopez Austin, The Human Body, 11270-6; Colson and Armellada, "An Amerindian Derivation," pp. 1229-48; and Wilbert, "Pneumatic Theory," pp. 1139-46. 23 Lopez Austin, The Human Body, 1:270—6, and Colson and Armellada, "An Amerindian Derivation," p. 1241.

Disease before 1334

27

illness, as well as the processes by which it is cured, maintain continuity with pre-Columbian traditions. Bastien argues that the medical system of the Qollahuaya, long renowned for their healing expertise, is a continuation of ancient thought. For many centuries these residents of highland Bolivia, known as "lords of the medicine bag," have traveled throughout the Andes diagnosing and healing with herbs and rituals. Inca rulers considered their medical services indispensable and, in order to ensure their constant presence, chose the Qollahuaya to carry the royal litter. Today their descendants continue to practice their curing arts, although most have now settled in urban areas where they operate herbal clinics. 24 The Qollahuaya derive their concepts of human physiology from their understanding of the relationship between the individual, the ayllu, and the mountainous environment in which they have lived for many generations. Just as the ayllu controls land along a vertical axis involving a variety of ecological zones, each contributing its own unique products to the survival of the community, so too is the body seen "as a vertical axis with three levels through which blood and fat flow from the center to the peripheral. . . .Basically the body is a hydraulic system with distillation, circulation, and elimination processes which operate by centripetal and centrifugal forces of liquids." 25 Ayllus are interdependent, maintaining bonds of reciprocity: So too are the parts of the body interrelated, relying for their nourishment on the sonco or heart, which compresses and distills the three fluids of life — air, blood, and fat. 26 Another source of evidence that many have ignored can be found in sixteenth-century chronicles. Although Inca concepts about health and illness do not occupy a central place in these works, they do occasionally appear. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, "The chill of a tertian or quartan they [the Incas] call chucchu, 'trembling,' fever is rupa, with a soft r, 'to burn.' They feared these illnesses a great deal, because of the alternating extremes of heat and cold." 27 Similar references to hot and cold classifications also exist for sixteenth-century Mexico, where Spaniards noted that natives "could explain the properties of medicinal plants by no other means." 28 These statements support the view that pre-Columbian peoples had indeed formulated classificatory systems based on the properties of hot and cold — further evidence that a humoral system of medicine had developed independently in the Americas. According to Guaman Poma, Andean peoples recognized the season24 25 26 27 28

Bastien, "Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts," pp. 595-611. Ibid., pp. 595-6. Ibid., p. 598. Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:122. Lopez Austin, The Human Body, 1:274.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

ality of disease patterns, anticipating increased illness during particular months. The heavy rains of February brought food shortages, and many survived on yuyos (unripened fruit), "producing diarrheas and serious stomach ailments leading to death, especially among the elderly and young, not only because of eating green fruit but also because being hungry all of the bad humors of the body combined with the fumes of the earth abundant at this time." 29 During the dry months of June and July, disease increased once again. July was considered especially unhealthy because of the "many illnesses that attack the health of all, great, rich, women and children." 30 Guaman Poma also emphasized the centrality of balance in Inca medical thought. The Incas believed that humoral balance through moderation of diet and behavior ensured a long and happy life. Because certain foods and activities disturbed biological and communal systems, social strictures proscribed dietary and behavioral actions. The Incas, rulers, commoners, as well as the ancient peoples of these kingdoms, lived long and healthy lives, many reaching the age of 150 to 200 years because they had an ordered and methodical regimen for living and eating. Children were not allowed to eat greasy foods, sweets, fat, honey, hot pepper, salt, or vinegar; [boys] could not sleep with women, nor drink chicha, nor be bled until they were 50 years old; on the other hand, they purged themselves with Bilcaturi every month. . . . In this way they maintained their health and prolonged their lives. 31

Regular purges "taken when they felt heavy or sluggish, more often in health than in sickness," unblocked the physiological cycle so that fluids could travel unimpeded through the body. They resorted to bleeding less 29

"Era tiempo de aguas y llovia mucho, por cuyo motivo habia abundancia de verduras, sobre todo, Yuyos; pero como escaseaban alimentos y existia hambre en este mes, muchos se veian obligados a comer estos Yuyos, asi como la fruta que en esta epoca estaba completamente verde, produciendose diarreas y enfermedades graves del estomago que ocasionaban la muerte, especialmente en los ancianos, ancianas y ninos, no solo por alimentarse con esta comida y fruta verde sino tambien porque con el hambre todo el mal humor del cuerpo se juntaba con el vapor de la tierra abundante en este tiempo" (Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:168). Guaman Poma's use of the word "humors" as well as his reference to "the fumes of the earth" suggests that in this passage he had combined elements from both Andean and European humoral traditions. 30 "Durante este mes, el clima se va haciendo templada y suave, pero en cambio se desarrollan muchas enfermedades que atacan la salud de grandes, ricos, mujeres y ninos" (Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:175). 31 "Los incas, senores Principales, indios particulares y la gente antigua de estos reinos, pudieron vivir con salud muchos anos, alcanzando muchos hasta la edad de 150 a 200 anos, porque tuvieron una regla de vivir y criar muy ordenada y metodica. A sus hijos cuando estos eran muchachos no les dejaban comer cosas grasosas, dulces, sebo, miel, aji, sal ni vinagre; no dormian con mujer; no los dejaban beber chicha, y no se sangraban hasta tener 50 anos; en cambio, acostumbraban tomar purgante Bilcaturi cada mes. . . . De este modo, pudieron mantenerse con salud y prolongar sus vidas" (Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:89).

Disease before 1534

29

frequently, but when necessary "they merely opened the vein nearest the place where they felt the pain." 32 In this way bloodletting also restored balance to the biological system. Concepts of balance and reciprocity as desirable properties applied not only to the health of individuals but also to the condition of communities and the universe beyond. Any breach of cultural norms that altered the relations of the human, natural, and spiritual realms had serious implications for society as a whole; and illness or natural disasters were often the direct consequence of such breaches. Thus, imbalances in the natural or supernatural worlds led to outbreaks of disease that manifested themselves as imbalances within the human body. These beliefs also served a more political purpose, however, in that they circumscribed behavior and thus helped to perpetuate the hierarchical structure of peasant societies. Medical historian E. N. Anderson has noted that "[T]he humoral medical theory fits very well into the social order of the ancient peasant civilizations (Mediterranean, Aztec, Chinese, Indian . . . ) in which powerful centralized control is validated through constant invocation of an ideology of social harmony, balance, stasis, and obedience."33 Clearly, the ideology of balance and reciprocity served this same purpose in the Andes, reaching its apogee in the highly centralized imperial structure of the Inca state. Healing, ritual, and meaning Since all illnesses were the result of biological and cosmic imbalances, cures could be effected only by restoring the system to a state of equilibrium; and that required human intervention through the use of medicinal plants, rituals, and offerings to the gods. Because of the complexities of the disease environment and because healing required knowledge of physiology, botany, and cosmology, those who practiced the curing arts often specialized in a particular technique. According to Father Pablo Joseph de Arriaga, a seventeenth-century observer of Inca medical practices, the socayac, "keeper of the heart," used kernels of corn to divine the cause of illness. 34 Arriaga also noted that "many of the sorcerers are ambkamayos," experts in the use of herbal remedies. 35 Some administered hallucinogens to themselves and their patients in order to visualize the cause of an ailment, whereas others spoke with the spirits who inhabited their patients' dreams in order to determine the cause. Still others practiced divination through the use of spiders, butterflies, rocks, guinea 32 33 34 35

Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:120—2. Anderson, "Why Is Humoral Medicine So Popular?", pp. 3 3 1 - 7 . Arriaga, Extirpation of Idolatry, p. 34. Ibid., p. 99.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

pigs, and other objects. 36 According to Guaman Poma, circa (bleeders), and quichicaun (surgeons) also performed important health care functions in native communities throughout the Andes. 37 But not all practitioners used their skills to heal. Arriaga claimed that some possessed special knowledge of poisons, which they used to kill their enemies. 38 People so feared the power of these hampkoc that for many years "only the Inca had these sorcerers and no one else could have them because any Indian who used or possessed venom or poison was killed immediately being stoned along with everyone from his lineage, not leaving any of his relatives except nursing infants." 39 Others killed by "eating the souls" of their victims. One man explained that, after losing his farm he "ate" the son of the man who took his land. "It is certain that when they are angry at each other they avenge themselves by eating each other's children, killing them as described, and they call this eating each other." 40 Still others practiced rituals using frogs and snakes or pieces of string ("hilo forcido hasta el lado izquierdo") to induce illness. 41 Frequently the process of healing involved an act of purification or cleansing, such as washing, sucking, or rubbing the illness out of the body. In other instances, the disease was transferred into another object and then discarded. When they are ill, their sorcerers tell them to throw white corn on the highway so that passersby will carry away their illness. At other times, the sorcerer goes to the top of the nearest hill and makes a point of throwing stones at it with his slingshot, complaining that it has been the cause of an illness, which he begs it to take away. For the same purpose they wash the sick person with chicha and rub him with white corn.42

Determining cause or placing blame was an important component in the healing process because it allowed the victim to vent anger and frustration and to transfer responsibility for a problem to someone or something else. Once cause had been established, appropriate actions could follow. Frequently, the healing ceremony involved the entire community in a night of offerings, dancing, singing, and drinking — "a form of supportive therapy."43 Such public demonstrations of support and car36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:200-1, and Haro Alvear, Shamanismo, pp. 6 - 8 . Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:136. Arriaga, Extirpation, pp. 38—9. "Al principio solo el Inca tenia estos hechiceros y ninguno otro pudo tenerlos, porque todo indio que usaba o tenia veneno o ponzona era muerto inmediatamente, siendo apedreado juntamente con todos los de su generacion, no quedando ninguno de sus parientes, sino los que fuesen ninos de teta." Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:195. Arriaga, Extirpation, p. 39. Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:196. Arriaga, Extirpation, p. 77. "Velan toda la noche, cantan y beben por la salud de los enfermos y lo mismo hacen cuando hay peste" (Guaman Poma, La nueva coronica, 1:204), a n d Bastien, Healers, p. 38.

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ing often lifted the spirits of the sick person and reinforced bonds within the community. Patients' participation in their own treatment was another important aspect of the healing process because it allowed the sick to assert some measure of control over their lives and bodies. "To the degree to which the [healer] is able to convince his clients that the condition has been named (i.e., made meaningful) and is under control, he has reduced the aggravating factors that push the client's psychological coping resources past their limits." 44 During epidemics, it was customary for processions of armed men to march through their communities in a show of force aimed at driving diseases out. 45 But these processions also served a preventive function. Every year during the month of September people throughout the Inca empire celebrated Citua, one of the four most important festivals of the Inca calendar. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, Citua was an occasion for purification, "for it represented the expulsion from the city and the district of all the diseases and other ills and troubles that man can suffer."46 In preparation for the festival, houses were washed and streets were cleaned. 47 After a period of fasting and sexual abstinence, families gathered to bathe and rub their bodies with bread, which absorbed illness and removed it from the body. At the same time in Cuzco, four members of the Inca royal family ran out from the center of the city, driving illness in front of them. The ceremony continued the next night when torches were carried through the city for the same purpose. 48 All of these measures helped Andean peoples to manage the disease environment in which they lived. But the relationship between humans and disease was about to change. With the arrival of Spaniards and the introduction of European infections, a much more devastating disease environment emerged, and indigenous societies proved immunologically unprepared for the destruction that followed. 44 45 46 47 48

Joralemon, "The Role of Hallucinogenic Drugs," p. 420. Guaman Poma, La nueva coronka, 1:205. Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:413. Guaman Poma, La nueva coronka, 1:177. Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:413-7.

Conquest and epidemic disease in the sixteenth century

A hostile disease environment greeted Europeans on their arrival in Africa hampering their efforts at colonization there for several hundred years; but the relatively benign set of infections encountered by the Spanish in the New World did little to hinder their invasion. In fact, the absence of any new, virulent diseases (with the possible exception of syphilis) allowed Europeans to conduct their exploratory and military expeditions free from the threat of biological reprisals. At the same time, the diseases that the Spanish brought with them from the Old World, more than any other factor, aided them in their conquest of Amerindian societies. The inadvertent introduction of smallpox, measles, and influenza to nonimmune populations claimed millions of lives and in so doing weakened the resistance of indigenous society, leaving it vulnerable to penetration by Europeans. Once the period of military conquest had ended, however, epidemic disease worked against Spanish interests by significantly reducing the number of Indians available for tribute and labor. Their most valuable ally had become an enemy, and throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century, disease continued to reduce the profits of empire. The Spanish conquest and the introduction of previously unknown diseases unleashed a series of disasters on Indian Ecuador that weakened the foundations of native communities but ultimately proved incapable of destroying them. The demographic effects of sixteenth-century pandemics are undoubtedly the most obvious, but analysis of these events also reveals social and economic consequences of disease and population loss.

The Spanish conquest of Quito After the capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca in November 1532, Francisco Pizarro dispatched his lieutenant Sebastian de Benalcazar to govern the remote settlement of San Miguel de Piura on Peru's northern coast. From there Benalcazar independently planned and launched the conquest of the

32

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33

northern sector of the Inca empire. 1 During 1533 and 1534, Benalcazar and his band of 200 men fought their way into the highlands of Ecuador and, with the aid of Canari allies, defeated the armies of the Riobambo area. But Benalcazar's independence soon angered Pizarro, who ordered his partner Diego de Almagro to take charge of the conquest of Quito. After meeting Almagro in the Riobamba area, Benalcazar agreed to abandon his unsanctioned campaign and continue under the direction of Pizarro. Early in August 1534, the Spanish founded their first settlement in the region, naming it Santiago de Quito. Almagro remained in Santiago; Benalcazar and his men continued their march. In the highlands north of Riobamba, many communities welcomed the opportunity to rid themselves of Inca rule, receiving the Spanish without hostilities. Benalcazar and his troops were bitterly disappointed, however, when they failed to find the large caches of precious metals they had been led to expect. When the looting of El Quinche turned up only a few silver and gold vessels, Spanish frustration and disappointment erupted into the massacre of local inhabitants - mostly women, children, and the elderly. As news of the Spanish brutality spread, many caciques decided to surrender voluntarily; and, on returning to his headquarters, Benalcazar found several ready to make peace. The Spanish occupation of the northern highlands was not, however, unopposed. Leaders of communities in the southern portion of the Chillos Valley as well as the Atis of Cotopaxi fought against the advancing army of Benalcazar.2 Two of Atahualpa's military commanders, Ruminahui and Quizquiz, also led organized attacks against Spaniards and the Indians suspected of collaborating with them. Angered by the peaceful surrender of local caciques, Ruminahui raided communities in the Pomasqui Valley on the outskirts of Quito, slaughtering some 4,000 inhabitants. 3 As Spanish control over the area tightened, Inca rebels were forced to flee, first to the Yumbos on the western slope of the Andes and finally to Quixos on the eastern slope. From the forest, these loyalists and their followers fought stubbornly against the Spanish for several years. On December 6, 1534, Benalcazar founded the city of San Francisco de Quito. Later that day, a notary drew up a list with names of 202 residents. 4 Six weeks later, Benalcazar ordered all Indian houses within city limits destroyed to make space for the houses of the conquerors. Because many laborers would be needed for construction of the new city, however, 1 2 3 4

Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, pp. 122—9. Salomon, Native Lords, p. 181. Ibid., p. 182. AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 1, f. 50, Dec. 5, 1534.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

most of the natives were resettled nearby in the valley of Guapulo. Concerned that an adequate supply of labor be available to Spaniards throughout the area, the newly formed cabildo (town council) moved quickly to restrict the mobility of the Indian population, decreeing that every Indian would be considered a naturale (native) of the community in which he had resided at the time of the Spaniards' arrival in Riobamba. Those who had relocated since then were ordered to return to their original homes, and all Indians were expected to remain permanently in these settlements. 5 By June the cabildo had awarded each European an area of land "large enough to plant eight fanegas [12.8 bushels] of wheat." 6 These grants encompassed the most fertile land surrounding the city and included property located in Pomasqui, Cumbaya, Cotocollao, Pinta, Chillos, and Guayllabamba. Five years later, in 1540, the cabildo was distributing land as far north as Cayambe and as far south as Riobamba because all of the land close to Quito had already been claimed.7 Not content to remain in Quito, Benalcazar decided to relinquish his governorship in order to concentrate on the conquest of New Granada. In May 1536, Pedro de Puelles, encomendero of Otavalo, replaced him. Many of the original conquerors chose to accompany Benalcazar into New Granada, abandoning their grants of land and their Indians; Puelles quickly redistributed these to his own supporters. 8 Military campaigns followed exploratory expeditions. Less than two years after the founding of the city, the cabildo ordered that no more natives be taken out of the area "because this province has few Indians." 9 This decree was in part a response to a letter from Francisco Pizarro stating his concern that the Indian population was rapidly declining. Between 1534 and 1580, at least twenty-nine major expeditions, including approximately 50,000 Indian men and women, left Quito. Few natives ever returned. Some died in battles; many more died of starvation and disease. Still others were sold into slavery in New Granada. 10 In 1538 Francisco Pizarro appointed his youngest brother Gonzalo governor of Quito. Many who had arrived with Benalcazar and Puelles resented the new governor and his cronies and tried repeatedly to undermine his authority. But Gonzalo Pizarro lived only a short time in Quito; in February 1541, he headed an expedition to conquer Canelos in the Amazon Basin. During his absence, supporters of Diego de Almagro assassinated Francisco Pizarro in Lima. Gonzalo did not learn of his broth5 Estrada, Ycaza, "Migraciones internas," p. 5. 6 AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 1, f. 105, June 15, 1535. 7 Ibid., vol. 2, f. 135, July 24, 1540. 8 Ibid., vol. 1, f. 167, May 28, 1536. 9 Ibid., vol. 1, f. 283, July 24, 1537. 10 Larrain Barros, Demografia, 2:56-7.

Conquest and disease

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er's death until his return to Quito two years later. Hostilities between the youngest Pizarro and representatives of the crown festered; when Blasco Nunez Vela, first viceroy of Peru, arrived, civil war erupted. During a battle on the outskirts of Quito in 1546, Pizarro's troops defeated the royal army and killed the viceroy. The apprehension and execution of Pizarro and his closest supporters two years later left many encomiendas (grants of Indians from the Spanish crown to individuals) vacant in the Quito area. Those who afterward received these grants became the new elite; they and their descendants dominated the province for the remainder of the century.

Epidemics during the sixteenth century Because the first epidemics of smallpox and measles preceded actual contact in many areas of the Andes, most Spaniards never fully recognized the significance of disease in their conquest of the area. Only a few chroniclers, such as Cieza de Leon, Santa Cruz Pachacuti, and Guaman Poma, even mentioned these events. But the first two epidemics claimed the lives of up to three-quarters of the native population, so it is impossible to deny their effect on the initial success of European colonization. Until the second half of the sixteenth century, smallpox in Europe was an endemic and relatively mild childhood infection. According to medical historians Ann Carmichael and Arthur Silverstein, the first virulent epidemic of smallpox occurred in Naples in 1544. Thirty years later, "eight major epidemics of smallpox were reported, with additional descriptions of malignant pustules and high childhood mortality that begin to resemble the Variola major of the next two centuries." 11 How then to account for the lethal nature of smallpox in the Americas as early as 1518 when the first recorded outbreak occurred on the island of Hispaniola? One plausible explanation is that the virulent form of the disease originated in an area of the Old World other than Europe. Smallpox had a long history among human populations in both Africa and Asia; thus, the viral mutation could have taken place in one of these areas, arriving in the Antilles with a slave carrier. If so, this virulent form of the disease could have been introduced into Europe either directly from Africa or from the Americas sometime around 1544, or the virus could have mutated following its introduction to the Caribbean. Or perhaps the disease that claimed so many Indian lives was caused by the same virus that produced a mild childhood illness in Europeans. "If there should exist single genes or gene complexes that predispose the individual to suffer an increased mortality from an otherwise avirulent strain of small11 Carmichael and Silverstein, "Smallpox," p. 159.

36

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

pox, such as appears to exist in slight measure for poliomyelitis and other viral infections, then . . . the relatively inbred Amerindian population . . . might hyper-respond to even the mild European strain of the disease."12 According to this theory, the virus itself remained unchanged until the 1540s, almost thirty years after its introduction to Hispaniola, at which time the mutation could have taken place in either the Old or New World. But if in fact the mutation did occur in the Americas, smallpox is the only disease of Old World origin to return to Europe with renewed virulence. The first major Andean epidemic witnessed by Spaniards began in 1546. 13 (See Table 3.1.) That no description of the outbreak in Quito remains is not surprising since it occurred during the chaotic period of the Gonzalo Pizarro rebellion and the Battle of Inaquito. According to Cieza de Leon, the epidemic, which began south of Cuzco, spread from one end of the viceroyalty to the other, killing "innumerable people." The disease began with a severe headache and high fever, following which the pain shifted to the left ear; most died within two to three days. 14 Some have diagnosed this outbreak as typhus, arguing that it could have been an extension of the cocoliztli (an unidentified disease) epidemic which had swept through New Spain a year earlier.15 That no mention is made of the rash associated with typhus is not unusual because the eruption normally 12 Ibid., pp. 166-7. 13 Two years earlier, in 1546, an epizootic had swept through the region's llama population. The Indians called the infection earache, or llama mange. This disease attacked all four species of llamoids (llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicunas), reducing most flocks by two-thirds, although the wild guanacos and vicunas suffered less "because they frequented colder zones" and "because they did not collect in such numbers as tame animals." Traveling through the Quito region in 1546, Cieza de Leon attributed the decline of the llama population to their wanton slaughter by Spaniards; but the epizootic probably killed many more llamas than did Europeans. This epizootic may have been triggered by the introduction of plague or one of several acute infections of Old World mammals such as anthrax, rinderpest, or sheep pox. That the disease was extremely lethal seems clear from the description by Garcilaso: "It was a dire disease, hitherto unknown. It afflicted the flank and belly and then spread over the whole body, producing scabs two or three fingers high, especially on the belly, which was the part most seriously affected and which came out in cracks two or three fingers deep, such being the depth of the scabs down in the flesh. Blood and matter issued from the sores and in a few days the animal withered and was consumed" (Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries, 1:513-14; Cieza, Incas, p. 68; and Benzoni, La historia, p. 262). 14 "Vino una general pestilencia por todo el reino del Peru, la cual comenzo de mas adelante del Cuzco y cundio toda la tierra; donde murieron gente sin cuento. La enfermedad era, que daba un dolor de cabeza y accidente de calentura muy recio, y luego se pasaba el dolor de la cabeza al oido izquierdo, y agravaba tanto el mal, que no duraban los enfermos sino dos o tres dias" (Cieza, Obras, 1:36). 15 Zinsser, Rats, p. 256; McNeill, Plagues, p. 209; and Dobyns, "An Outline," pp. 499-500. Subsequently Dobyns has written that the 1546 epidemic may have been bubonic plague. Dobyns, Their Number, pp. 264—5.

Conquest and disease

37

Table 3 . 1 . Epidemics in the north-central highlands of Ecuador, 1524—91 Year

Disease

Mortality

1524-8

Smallpox

"More than 200,000 persons died"; one-third to onehalf died

1531-3

Measles

25%-3O% died

1544-8

"Carache" (possibly plague)

Kills two-thirds of llamoid population

1546

Pneumonic plague or typhus

"Innumerable people died"; possibly 20% perished

1558-9

Smallpox, measles, and influenza

15%-20% died

1585-91

Smallpox, measles, typhus, and influenza

Approximately half the native population perished

Sources Cieza, Obras, 1:219 Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," pp. 494-7 Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 70 Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," pp. 497-9 Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 70 Garcilaso, Royal Commen-

taries, 1:513-4 Cieza, Incas, p. 68 Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," p. 499 Cieza, Obras, 1:36 Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," p. 499-500 Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 70 Newson, "Old World Epidemics," p. 10-12 Macleod, Spanish Central America, p. 119. Relaciones geograficas, 2:205

Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," p. 500 Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 70 See Chapter 3, "Epidemics during the sixteenth century" Lilly Library manuscript Gobernantes del Peru,

11:207, 221, 284-5 Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," p. 501-8 Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 70 See Chapter 3, "Demographic Trends"

appears on the fifth or sixth day; and in this instance, many victims did not survive that long. But if typhus had been endemic in the Andes before the sixteenth century, mortality rates would not have been so high as Cieza's description indicates.

38

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

There are, however, additional reasons for suspecting that a disease other than typhus was responsible: High fever, headache, and sudden death are all characteristic of pneumonic plague, which, if untreated, even today claims close to 100 percent of those infected. Transmission of the plague bacillus is through airborne droplets inhaled into the lungs; thus the disease is spread directly and requires no rodent reservoir, unlike bubonic plague. A simultaneous epizootic among Peru's sheep and llama populations lends further credence to the diagnosis of plague because these animals are also susceptible to the plague bacillus. 16 One year later, Cieza interviewed survivors of the epidemic who told him this apocalyptic tale. Shortly before the epidemic broke out, a large group of Indian women were engaged in salt production at a local spring; a tall man appeared to them, his entrails hanging from his torn abdomen and two children in his arms. He told the women, "I promise you that I am going to kill all the [Indian] women of the Christians and the rest of you as well." 17 Residents of a neighboring village reported seeing the same man on a horse "riding through the mountains like the wind." A few days later, the epidemic began, claiming "the greater part of the people of the province." Because so many women died, Spaniards were left without their concubines and servants and they were shocked and frightened by the experience. Many natives reported seeing the ghosts of those who had died. 18 Cook calculated that if the disease responsible for the 1546 epidemic had been typhus, mortality would have totaled around 20 percent. 19 But the description from Qtiimbaya suggests that more than half perished; such an elevated rate supports the diagnosis of pneumonic plague. This story is significant for more than just its descriptions of demographic decline; it also reveals how the indigenous population explained the disaster. The eviscerated stranger stated that the immoral behavior of Indian women was responsible for the impending epidemic. Less than twenty years after the conquest, distrust and hostility characterized relations between Andean males and females, and native society had placed 16

17 18

19

Newson and MacLeod both believe that the 1545-46 epidemics in New Spain and Peru were attributable to pneumonic plague. Newson, "Old World Epidemics in Early Colonial Ecuador," in The Secret Judgments of God, Cook and Lovell, eds. MacLeod, Spanish Central America, p. 119. Cook cites plague as well as typhus. Demographic Collapse, pp. 68, 71. "Yo os prometo que tengo de matar a todas las mujeres de los cristianos y a todas las mas de vosotros" (Cieza, Obras, 1:36). "Donde a pocos dias la pestilencia y mal de oido dio de tal manera, que la mayor parte de la gente de la provincia falto, y los espanoles se les murieron sus indias de servicio, que pocas o ningunas quedaron; sin lo cual, andaba un espanto, que los mismos espanoles parecian estar asombrados y temerosos" (ibid.). C o o k , Demographic Collapse, p . 7 1 .

Conquest and disease

39

the blame for one of its most serious problems on women. 20 This passage is significant because it may be one of the earliest to reflect native assimilation of the European belief that "women were the vehicle through which the devil operated on earth." As time passed, this notion would become increasingly prevalent and Indians and Spaniards alike would hold women responsible for many conflicts and crises. 21 Twelve years later, in 1558, "a general epidemic of smallpox killed many Indians" in the Quito area. 22 In Peru, witnesses attributed the outbreak to smallpox and measles. Dobyns has suggested that hemorrhagic smallpox may, in fact, have been responsible for this episode. 23 His diagnosis seems unlikely, however, because the hemorrhagic form of the disease is rapidly fatal, and the rash and pustules that led colonial observers to identify the illness as smallpox would not have appeared before death occurred. This epidemic was made worse by the simultaneous appearance of a "severe cough," probably influenza, which claimed the lives of both Spaniards and Indians. In Quito, the coughing illness was "similar to that which often appeared during the summer months," when lack of rainfall facilitated mobility and increased the incidence of contaminated water supplies, thus encouraging the spread of infection. 24 Respiratory ailments, including some cases of influenza, occurred annually during the dry season, but this particular outbreak was probably an extension of the influenza pandemic which began in Europe in 1556. The virus reached Madrid in 1557; from there it could easily have been transported to the New World, where it raged in many regions, including Florida, Mexico, and Guatemala. 25 Recent studies of influenza epidemics indicate that children, the elderly, pregnant women, and individuals suffering from other infections such as smallpox are especially likely to develop severe cases of the disease, which may eventually lead to viral pneumonia and death. 26 In January 1559, less than six months after the outbreak of smallpox 20 21 22

23 24 25 26

For a discussion of Inca gender relations before the Spanish conquest, see Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches, pp. 3-39. Ibid., p. 161. "El ano de 58, hubo general mortandad de viruelas entre los naturales." This description of the 1558 epidemic was written by the anonymous author of "La ciudad de San Francisco de Quito 1573," in Relaciones geogrdfkas, 3:205. Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," p. 500. "Y otras veces mueren algunos espanoles e indios de cadarros fuertes que por la mayor parte dan a las entradas y salidas de los veranos" ("La ciudad de Quito, 1573," 3:205). Dobyns, Their Number, pp. 269—70. Kilbourne, Influenza, pp. 157-228. For a discussion of the complexity of disease patterns during epidemics, see Carmichael, "Infection, Hidden Hunger, and History," pp. 249-64.

40

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

and influenza, two Spanish inspectors conducted a census of the Indian population of Urinchillo, some twenty kilometers south of the city of Quito. Although the officials did not specifically mention the epidemic of the previous year, they noted the presence of a number of enfermos (sick people). Some of these may have been persons still suffering from one or both illnesses. The epidemic may also account for the small population of children between the ages of one and three, many of whom would have succumbed. Disease may also account for the relatively large number of orphans, widows, and widowers. 27 It is estimated that between 15 and 20 percent of the native population died during this combined outbreak of smallpox and influenza. 28 For almost thirty years, residents of the Quito area enjoyed a respite from major epidemics. Even though numerous illnesses remained endemic, the number of cases never warranted mention in either municipal or audiencia records. 29 A generation of natives grew up without exposure to many virulent strains of disease, and it was this generation that was most severely affected by the next wave of infection. In April 1585, an epidemic of "measles and smallpox" began in Cuzco, spreading rapidly west to Huamanga and north to Lima. Indians proved especially susceptible to these two diseases, but a respiratory infection ("catarrh and cough," probably influenza) followed in its wake, killing blacks and whites as well as natives. Approximately one-fifth of Lima's population perished during this initial wave of illness. 30 Just when the epidemic arrived in Quito is not clear, but by February 1587 so many had succumbed that the Indian cofradia (religious brotherhood) of the Holy Cross petitioned the audiencia for funds to be used for the care and burial of sick and dying natives. 31 Several months later, in July, another epidemic, moving in the opposite direction, struck the city. Mortality rates remained persistently high for at least nine months, and, according to one source, 4,000 people, including many children, died during a three-month period. 32 The second epidemic first appeared in 27 A copy of this visita is included among the documents constituting the residencia of Oidorjuan de Salazar Villasante conducted in 1564—65 by Audiencia President Fernando de Santillan. AGI, Justicia 682, Residencia tomada al licenciado Juan de Salazar de Villasante, 1565. 28 Cook, Demographic Collapse, p. 70. 29 According to Hernando Pablos, smallpox and measles were common in Cuenca in 1582. "Relacion que enbio a mandar su magestad se hiziese desta ciudad de Cuenca y toda su provincia," Relaciones geogrdficas 3:266. 30 Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," p. 501. 31 This is the first reference that the author has found to an Indian cofradia in the Quito area. It is significant because it reveals that, at least among urban Indians, some Christian practices had been adopted. AGI, Quito 23, Carta de la cofradia de la vera cruz a la audiencia, February 20, 1587. 32 "Este temblor fue pronostico de la peste general que hubo en estas provincias de tabardillos, viruelas y sarampion. . . . Murio innumerable gente, criollos, hombres y mujeres, ninos e

Conquest and disease

41

Cartagena and probably arrived with the expedition of Sir Francis Drake, which captured and occupied the city from January through February of 1586. 33 Drake's forces reportedly carried with them an infection contracted during a stopover at the Cape Verde Islands in November 1585. The disease, which appeared after they had been at sea for seven or eight days, produced a rash and fever, and during the next three months claimed one-quarter of the ships' crews. 34 Because these two epidemics overlapped in many areas, including Quito, some have assumed that the second was a continuation of the smallpox and measles episode. 35 But Dobyns has argued that typhus appears more likely, given the prolonged period of mortality, suggestive of an insect vector. Also, epidemic louse-borne typhus has an incubation period of one to two weeks. Drake's expedition spent ten days on the Cape Verde island of Santiago, and the disease broke out after the men had been at sea for seven or eight days. Thus, the timing of the epidemic is consistent with the diagnosis of typhus. Little information remains concerning the incidence of disease during 1588, and although mortality rates probably remained higher than during nonepidemic periods, the number of deaths may have been declining. But the situation took a turn for the worse during the spring of 1589, when smallpox and measles appeared with renewed virulence. Writing to the king of Spain in April, Viceroy Fernando de Torres y Portugal, Conde del Villar, described an epidemic of "smallpox and measles" that began in Quito and was spreading south into Peru. Once again, the initial wave of infection was followed by "a pestilential typhus," and the viceroy was urging Spanish officials to use community funds to purchase food and medicine for the Indians. In that letter he also reported that "at the same time in the provinces of Upper Peru another illness of coughing with fever has struck and even though on some days in Potosi more than 10,000 Indians and some Spaniards are sick, until now no notable damage has resulted there or in Cuzco or Huancavelica." 36

33 34 35 36

indios" (Diego Rodriguez Docampo, "Description y relation del estado eclesiastico del obispado de San Francisco de Quito," in Relaciones geogrdficas 3:70; and Madero Moreira, Historia, p. 66). It is also possible that the disease was introduced by slaves coming from the Cape Verde Islands. Dobyns, "Andean Epidemic History," pp. 5 0 3 - 4 . Ibid., p. 504. Ibid., pp. 5 0 3 - 5 "Escrito tengo a Vuestra Magestad la enfermedad que comenco a tocar en la provincia de quito viruelas y sarampion de que comencava a morir alguna gente y particularmente yba haciendo dano en los naturales . . . y a buelta de ella un tabardete pestilencial . . . en las provincias de arriva cassi en un mismo tiempo a tocado otra enfermedad de tose y rromadico con calentura de la cual aunque ubo dfas en potosi enfermaron de ella mas de diez mil indios y algunos espanoles no a hecho hasta aora dano notable ni en el cuzco y guancavelica." "Carta de Virrey Conde del Villar a S.M. con relation de una gran epidemia de viruelas y sarampion que se habia desarrollado en la

42

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

One month later, both epidemics converged on Lima and, although almost everyone became ill, few died. 37 That Creoles and peninsular Spaniards were also affected suggests that the disease that originated in Upper Peru was influenza. During June 1589, mortality rates rose again and the viceroy expressed alarm that in addition to natives and blacks, mulattoes, Creoles, and Europeans of all ages were also dying. 38 The epidemic was especially severe north of Lima in the Trujillo Valley, and it seems likely that this outbreak of influenza continued its northern trajectory into the Quito area during the summer months. 39 In the highlands of the audiencia of Quito this disease lingered, and in 1590 officials still reported many cases. 40 When the epidemics finally subsided the following year they left behind a trail of death and destruction unsurpassed by even the 1546 episode. In 1591 caciques from the eastern lowland provinces of Yaguarsongo and Jaen testified that, after the outbreak of smallpox, only 1,000 Indians remained of a population that had previously numbered 3O,ooo. 41 Although the rate of demographic decline was not so severe in the highlands, approximately 50 percent of the native population perished. 42 The epidemics of 1585—91 were only the last in a series of devastating encounters of native society with disease during the sixteenth century. Beginning with the arrival of smallpox in the 1520s, disease decimated provincia de Quito," April 19, 1589, in Gobernantes del Peru, cartas y papeles, sig/o XVI, Levillier, ed.,

37

11:207-8.

"Y de pocos dias aca a ynfestado esta ciudad aunque con menos furia que en los llanos en la enfermedad de viruelas y dado en rromadizo y dolores de costado de que pocos an escapado de enfermer y vendicto nuestro senor no an muerto muchos." "Carta a S.M. de virrey conde del Villar dando cuenta de como se habia sentido alguna mejoria, en la epidemia que asolaba las provincias de los llanos y valles de Trujillo," May 11, 1589, ibid., pp. 221—2. 38 "Han ydo en mucho crecimiento en esta ciudad donde de an muerto mucha gente de los naturales y negros y mulatos y cada dia mueren muchos y espanoles de los nacidos aca y se ha estendido ya a los de castilla y de todos enferman y mueren en mucho numero de todas edades de las dichas enfermedades y de otros que se tienen por pestilencias con que esta ciudad esta muy aflijida." "Carta del Virrey Conde del Villar a S.M. sobre haberse extendido y agravado la epidemia de viruelas sarampion y romadizo," June 13, 1589, ibid., p. 284. 39 "Por la de XI de mayo di auiso a Vuestra Magestad de la enfermedad de viruelas y sarampion que en este Reyno auia comencado a hacer dano y particular en los valles de truxillo." "Carta del Virrey conde del Villar a S.M. relativa a la epidemia de viruelas y sarampion," June 16, 1589, ibid., p. 285. 40 Paredes Borja, Historia, 1:254. 41 "El mal de las viruelas que ubo en general en aquella provincia del Peru el ano pasado de 1589 . . . no an quedado en aquella valle {de Jaen] y provincia del [Yaguarsongo} y de la conipa mil indios poco mas de todas edades aviendo mas de 30.000 segun era notorio." AGI, Quito 23, Carta de los caciques y indios de la provincia de Yaguarsongo y distrito de Jaen a la audiencia, March 10, 1591. 42 For a discussion of the demographic effect of the epidemics of 1585—91, see "Demographic trends," below.

Conquest and disease

43

Andean communities at irregular intervals from five to twenty-six years. In each case, however, sufficient time elapsed after each episode to allow partial recovery of native communities; when the next wave of disease struck, individuals born since the last epidemic proved especially susceptible. The devastatingly high levels of mortality experienced by Indian communities were not due only to the infections introduced by Europeans. Malnutrition, mistreatment, and endemic diseases, such as amebic dysentery, were widespread and, in conjunction with epidemics of smallpox, measles, and influenza, pushed soaring death tolls even higher. Even more important was the breakdown of communal systems providing basic social services: Frequently entire populations were stricken by disease, leaving no one to tend crops or deliver food and water to the homes of the sick. Healthy individuals often fled in fear, leaving the sick behind to fend for themselves. As a result, many who might otherwise have survived perished from neglect. Hospitals and public health In order to deal with the health-related problems of both natives and Europeans, Spaniards turned to the system of health care with which they were most familiar, establishing laws and institutions modeled on those of sixteenth-century Spain. Responsibility for matters affecting public health rested with the cabildo, and, in Quito, this institution wrote and enforced legislation dealing with disease and sanitation throughout the colonial period. In June 1538, the town council passed an ordinance requiring all residents to collect and dispose of their garbage and to clean the streets in front of their properties. 43 They also banned the raising of pigs within city limits. 44 In February 1540, they prohibited the construction of Indian houses near the ditches that carried water into the city. 45 These measures reflect the European belief that disease originated in poisonous miasmas emanating from bodies of contaminated water or piles of rotting waste: hence the emphasis on protecting the city's water supply and preventing the accumulation of garbage. Compliance was another matter, however, and council members attempted to enforce sanitary legislation only when a public health emergency confronted them. The epidemic of 1546 provided such an opportunity, and, in response to the crisis, local officials established the Hospital of Nuestra Senora de la Antigua. Funding for the first hospital in the northern Andes came from 43 44 45

AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. i, f. 428, June 28, 1538. Ibid., vol. 1, f. 430, July 5, 1538. Ibid., vol. 2, f. 97, February 20, 1540.

44

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

the sale of livestock, and a prominent cabildo member, Pedro de Valverde, served as director. How long the hospital continued to function after 1548 is not clear; but, by 1565, it had ceased to exist, probably because of insolvency.46 One of the first acts of audiencia president Hernando de Santillan was to initiate construction of a new hospital in March 1565. At the same time, Santillan created the Cofradia y Hermandad de la Caridad y Misercordia (Fraternity and Brotherhood of Charity and Mercy), whose members were responsible for raising money and administering the new infirmary. The hospital was intended to serve both men and women, Spaniards and Indians; but within a few years, it too was abandoned because of lack of support. During his tenure as audiencia president, Santillan also initiated the construction of a hospital at the port of Guayaquil. 47 The cabildo tried once again, in 1576, to found an hermandad and hospital for the poor; 48 a description of the city written one year later referred to a hospital de la caridad (charity hospital) that treated both Indians and Spaniards. 49 In this instance, council members anticipated financial troubles and requested a share of the bishopric's tithe to be used for hospital expenses, but church officials refused to surrender any portion of their budget. During the 1580s, Spanish officials established hospitals in Riobamba (1581), Otavalo (1583), Loja (1583), and Ibarra (1612). 50 Even when funds were available, however, administrative corruption often diverted significant amounts of money from hospital budgets. Such a case was revealed in 1585, when the director of Quito's hospital, Francisco de Paredes, refused to leave office at the end of his three-year term. Charges were filed against him by the audiencia, and the Council of the Indies ruled that Paredes was guilty of stealing money from the hospital resulting in "very bad service and little care for the poor." The ruling also noted that similar problems existed in other hospitals throughout the bishopric. 51 The fiscal crisis continued until 1595, when the crown designated a portion of its income from the tithe, the novenoy medio (roughly equivalent to one-ninth), for the hospital in Quito, and during the next five years the institution received 660 pesos toward expenses. 52 But this sum proved inadequate to cover the costs of food, medicine, bedding, and attendants' 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Estrada Ycaza, El hospital, p. 6. Ibid., pp. 3 - 6 . AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 8, f. 193, January 23, 1576. Anonimo, "Descripcion de Quito en 1577," in Museo Historico 56 (May 1978): 56. Estrada, El hospital, p. 10. Astudillo Espinosa, Paginas historicas, p. 57. Estrada, El hospital, pp. 6 - 7 .

Conquest and disease

45

salaries, and although the hospital remained open, the city was unable to afford the permanent services of a licensed doctor. Because conditions were so poor and mortality rates so high, the hospital was feared and avoided, when possible, by Europeans and natives alike. Instead, most Spaniards sought out the services of unlicensed medical practitioners, apothecaries, and barber-surgeons, whereas most Indians, who had little or no contact with European medical practices, continued to rely on their own system of healing. Viceregal administrators were also concerned with matters affecting public health, but only rarely did they interfere with the policies and procedures of local governments. The crisis posed by the epidemics of the late 1580s was so serious, however, that in March 1589 Viceroy Conde del Villar issued a set of specific medical instructions intended to help regional governments mitigate the effects of the disaster.53 On the advice of three Lima physicians, the viceroy ordered local officials throughout the Andes to quarantine all native communities in hopes of preventing the spread of disease. This measure was also intended to prevent a total breakdown of social services by forcing the healthy to remain in their homes and care for the sick. 54 He recommended bleeding and a diet of meat as preventive measures and urged families to limit contact in order to avoid spreading infection among themselves. Those who had no one to care for them were to be brought to hospitals, public houses, and churches where priests, encomenderos, and local officials would provide food and medicine. The instructions also included specific dietary recommendations: The sick should be given no meat of any kind; rather they should be fed a mixture of barley, conserves, raisins, lettuce, squash, and quinoa cooked with oil, vinegar, and sugar. They should also be provided with bread and water mixed with barley and raisins. If the patient recovered, he or she could then eat meat and drink wine and chicha. Physicians also urged patients to stay warm, to avoid sleeping on the ground, and not to drink cold water. The appearance of llagas (sores) in the throat and around the eyes was regarded as a most dangerous development, and the viceroy's advisers recommended a solution of alum or copper sulfate for the throat and a bath of sugar and saffron dissolved in rose or fennel water for the eyes. Finally, the clothing of the dead was to be burned or washed many times in hot water. To what extent local officials and encomenderos complied with these 53

"Virrey Conde del Villar a los medicos y oficiales del Virreinato del Peru," Lima, March 21, 1589. A copy of these instructions can be found in the Latin American Manuscripts Collection, Peru Manuscripts Department, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington. 54 The viceroy's advisers were Doctor Francisco Franco Mendoza, Licenciado Ximenez, and Doctor Enriquez.

46

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

instructions is impossible to say. Because of the considerable expense, it seems unlikely that many of these recommendations were followed. Nevertheless, the urgency and scope of these instructions suggest that the viceregal government regarded the severity of the crisis as unprecedented and reveal the underlying fear that the epidemics posed a long-term threat to Spanish interests throughout the viceroyalty, as indeed they did. Demographic trends The decline of highland Ecuador's native population had begun long before the Spanish arrived in 1534. Opposition to Inca invasion and the subsequent relocation of entire communities reduced the number of inhabitants to approximately 1 million in 1520; and the introduction of smallpox and measles between 1524 and 1533 claimed one-half to twothirds of those. Then, between 1534 and 1559, the Spanish conquest and at least two more major epidemics further reduced the number of survivors to 270,000 (see Table 3.2X55 Beginning in the 1560s, however, in areas such as Otavalo, Quito, and Cuenca, some observed that the number of Indians began to increase. According to Archdeacon Rodriguez de Aguayo, "In the province of Quito, the number of Indians has grown since the conquest, more than in any other area of Peru." 56 But this opinion was not unanimous: A statement by Juan Lopez de Velasco indicated disagreement even among Indians. "The Indians of this region say that some are increasing because of the good treatment they receive; others are doubtful, because of the work in the mines." 57 If, in fact, the number of natives increased between 1560 and 1584, a period with no major epidemics, it did so only in specific highland areas such as Otavalo, Quito, and Cuenca, where the loss of population before the Spanish conquest had been most severe. In the lowlands, and in the southern highlands around Zaruma decline continued during the remainder of the century. Among those most concerned with Ecuador's long-term demographic patterns was Juan Vasquez de Acuna, corregidor (chief magistrate) of Quito. 55 56

57

See Chapter i, "The Native Population before 1534." "En la dicha provincia de Quito han crecido los naturales despues de la conquista en gran numero mas que en otra parte ninguna del Piru" (Rodriguez de Aguayo, "Relacion de la provincia de Quito y distrito de su audiencia por los oficiales de la real hacienda - 1576," Relaciones geogrdficas 3:202). "Los indios de esta comarca dicen unos que van en crecimento por los buenos tratamientos que se les hace; otros lo ponen en duda por el trabajo de las minas" (Juan Lopez de Velasco, Geografia, p. 218).

Conquest and disease

47

Table 3.2. The native population of Ecuador in the sixteenth century Date

Total population/tributaries

Comments/sources

1520

1,080,000/216,000 (5:1)

Based on Matienzo's estimate of 270,000/54,000 in 1559/adjusted according to Santillan's depopulation rate of 4 : 1 AGI, Lima 120, 1561, and Santillan, Relation del origen,

1534

375,000-570,000/75,000-114,000 (5:1)

1559 1572

270,000/54,000 (5 : 1) A) 200,000/50,000 (4 : 1); B) but 42,000-43,000 is more likely (4.7: 1) 112,500/30,000 (3.75: 1)

1590

3:402-3 Based on 3 0 - 5 0 percent mortality as a result of two epidemics See Chapter 3, "Demographic Trends" AGI, Lima 120, 1561 A) AGI, Q17, 1577; B) Lopez de Velasco, Geografia, p. 218 Based on data from "Relation de Zaruma, "Relationes geogrdfkas,

1598

105,000/29,000 (3.62: 1)

3:234—7; Morales Figueroa, "Relaciones de los indios que hay," 5:58-60; and Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," p. 18 AGI, Q32, 1636

Writing to the crown in April 1636, Vasquez outlined the area's demographic history, including estimates for the years 1566, 1598, and 1630. 58 According to his calculations, in 1566 the total and tributary populations of the audiencia (in which he included Popayan, Pasto, Otavalo, Quito, Latacunga, Riobamba, Cuenca, Loja, Bracamoras, Guayaquil, and Macas) numbered 80,000 and 16,000, respectively. But a comparison with data based on the Toldeo visita of the 1570s indicates that Vasquez s estimate included less than half of the indigenous population. Whether he deliberately misrepresented the data is not clear; in any case, his figures must be regarded as inaccurate. The census ordered by Viceroy Francisco de Toldeo in 1570 was intended to increase royal revenues and alleviate labor shortages. A complete set of the individual repartimiento (jurisdiction) totals for the audiencia of Quito has not been discovered, but a 1577 report from the cabildo 58

AGI, Quito 32, Carta de Juan Vasquez de Acufia, corregidor de Quito, al consejo de indias, April 4, 1636.

48

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

of Quito to the Council of the Indies included a list of forty-one repartimientos and concluded: All of these repartimientos were visited by order of Don Francisco de Toledo viceroy of these kingdoms in the last general census. . . . There are in these repartimientos 50,000 Indian tributaries more or less between the ages of 18 and 50 not including the elderly, crippled, and sick who are exempt . . . 200,000 souls/men, women, and children and adults. 59

The Toledan visita conducted in 1572 covered approximately the same geographical territory as the Avedafio visita of 1559, and both included figures for tributaries and total population. A comparison of these data indicates that, during the thirteen years between 1559 and 1572, the number of tributary-aged males dropped from 54,000 to 50,000, a decline of 7 percent. The total population, however, declined by 16 percent, from 270,000 to 200,000. All of these figures are clearly approximations, but the discrepancy between the two rates of decline is significant, suggesting that in 1572 government officials may have inflated the number of tributaries in order to keep revenues high and to prevent a serious drop in the number of males eligible for mita service. The conflict is not that easily resolved, however, Another estimate of the tributary population based on the Toledo visita, but recorded several years later, described "42,000 or 43,000 Indian tributaries in forty-three repartimientos." 60 Comparing these figures to those of 1559 indicates a decline of some 1 1 12,000 adult males, or 20 to 22 percent. This coincides more closely with the decline of the general population during this period and suggests that the estimate of 42-43,000 tributaries is a more accurate reflection of the size of Quito's adult male population in the 1570s. Another audiencia-wide estimate of the Indian population was recorded in 1590 by the anonymous author of the "Relacion de Zaruma." 61 This document was a compilation of potential labor sources for the mineowners of Zaruma, and it included a total of 24,250 tributaries in twenty-seven highland encomiendas. One year later, in 1591, Luis de Morales Figueroa, secretary of the audiencia of Lima, compiled Ecuadorian census materials for Viceroy 59

60

61

"Ai en los dichos repartimientos 50,000 indios tributarios poco mas o menos de edad de 18 hasta 50 sacando los viejos, tullidos y enfermos . . . 200,000 animas/hombres y mujeres y viejos" (AGI, Quito 17, Carta del cabildo de Quito al consejo de indias, January 23, 1577). "Y en toda su jurisdiction ochenta y siete pueblos o parcialidades de indios, en que hay cuarenta y dos o cuarenta y tres mil indios tributarios repartidos en cuarenta y tres repartimientos" (Lopez de Velasco, Geografia, p. 218). "Relacion del distrito del cerro de Zaruma y distancias a la ciudad de Quito, Loja y Cuenca y indios de aquella provincia y repartimientos de ellos y otras cosas de aquella provincia" (Relaciones geogrdficas, 3:234-7).

Conquest and disease

49

Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza. Basing his calculations on the Toledo visitas of the 1570s, Morales updated these figures whenever possible and arrived at an estimate of 29,386 tributaries in the highlands of Ecuador in 1591. 6 2 But if we compare only those areas also included in the "Relacion de Zaruma," the number declines to 25,852, a total only slightly greater than that offered in the 1590 document. 63 Tyrer has suggested adjusting these figures upward by 25 percent to 30,000, in order to take into account the large number of indios vagamundos (tributaries no longer living in their native communities) who would not have been included in these censuses.64 This estimate agrees closely with the figure of 29,000 tributaries offered by Vasquez for 1598. Although the "Relacion de Zaruma" does not include an estimate of the total Indian population, both Vasquez and Morales included such figures in their reports. According to Morales, in 1591 there were 112,500 Indians of all ages in the highlands of the audiencia; Vasquez offered an estimate of 105,000. These figures agree quite closely and indicate that the ratio of tributaries to total population had declined from over 4:1 in 1572 to approximately 3.7:1 by the end of the century. Comparison of the tributary population of 1590—1 with that of 1572 reveals a precipitous drop of slightly more than 50 percent. 65 A similar comparison of the figures for total population shows a drop of approximately 45 percent. Such a dramatic loss of population can only be attributed to the epidemics that raged through the audiencia between 1585 and 1591. Further proof of that can be found in censuses of tributary populations in the corregimientos of Ibarra, Otavalo, and Chimbo conducted in 1582 (see Table 3.3X 66 Comparing these figures to those for 1590-1, we find that the number of adult males had declined by 43 percent in Ibarra, 18 percent in Otavalo, and 41 percent in Chimbo in only eight years. Al62

63

64 65

66

Luis de Morales Figueroa, "Relacion de los indios que hay al presente en estos reinos y provincias del Peru," in Torres de Mendoza, Coleccion de documentos ineditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista, y organization de las antiguas posestones espanolas de America y Oceania, 6:58-60. The total number of tributaries arrived at by Morales Figueroa (29,386) included the districts of Loja (2,849) and Zamora (685), which were not included in the "Relacion de Zaruma." Therefore, in order to make these two censuses more comparable, I subtracted these two from the total. Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," p. 18. Unlike the visitas of 15 59 and 1572, neither of the documents from the 1590s appears to include the number of tributaries in the lowland provinces of Yumbos, Quixos, or Macas; but the native population in these areas had declined so dramatically by the end of the century that few remained. Ponce de Leon, "Relacion de Otavalo" (Relaciones geogrdficas 3:233-40); de Cantos, "Relacion para la real audiencia de los repartimientos y numero de indios y encomenderos que hay en el corregimiento de Chimbo" (Relaciones geogrdficas 3:254-60).

5 I 7°7IOO

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Table 6.1. Epidemics in the north-central highlands, Place

Time 1700 1708 1709 1713 1724-6 1728-9 1746 1751 1759-60 1763-4 1769 1777 1779 1780-3 1783 1785-6

Quito Quito and surrounding area Quito and surrounding area Quito Quito Quito and surrounding area Throughout the audiencia Quito Quito and surrounding area Quito and surrounding area Quito Quito Quito Quito and surrounding area Quito Quito and surrounding area

Description

IJOO—86.

Source

"Fiebres" "Catarros"

L C, 00117 L C, 00119

"Viruelas y diferentes achaques" "Achaques de agudos" "Pestilencia y achaques" "Sarampion"

L C, 00119

"Viruelas" "Viruelas" "Viruelas y peste de japon" "Epidemia de peste" "Esquilencia y disenteria" "Varias enfermedades" "Mai de pujos" "Disenteria y otros enfermedades" "Viruelas" "Sarampion"

L Cf 00119 L C, 00122 and 123

AGI, Q172 Herrera y Enriquez, "Apunte," 2:143 AJC, 01229 Toribio, "Apuntes," p. 81 GL,a 2,5,8 L C, 00129 L C, 00130 L C, 00131 L C, 00132 L C, 00132 AJC, 01229 L C, 00133

a

GL — Gazeta de Lima

No outbreak of disease serious enough to warrant inclusion in cabildo minutes occurred for eight years, although endemic infections continued. In May 1708, an epidemic of catarros (coughs) attacked, men, women, and children, Spaniards and natives alike. Some people contracted the disease more than once and many died from it. 2 That this respiratory illness afflicted everyone suggests that it was influenza. Further support for this diagnosis comes from Europe, where "the first influenza epidemic of the eighteenth century took place in 1708—09." 3 The influenza virus 2 Ibid., vol. 00119, fv. 45-6, May n , 1708. 3 Patterson, Pandemic Influenza, p. 13. Patterson claims that this outbreak "was apparently restricted to western Europe," suggesting that the two incidents were unrelated. But because of the paucity of documents for this period, it is entirely possible that these two epidemics were part of a worldwide occurrence, originating with the same virus.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

could easily have been transmitted from the Old World to the New aboard one of the many ships crossing the Atlantic. A year later, the cabildo reported drought and an outbreak of viruelas. Urban mortality rates climbed, and the epidemic spread throughout the region. Council members linked the continuation of the drought to the appearance of "other infections." (Unfortunately, they failed to describe these.) 4 This was followed in April 1713, by "achaques de agudos (an epidemic of dysentery) that killed many persons." 5 According to city council records, there were no significant incidents of disease during the next nine years. But the 1720s proved to be particularly difficult for residents of Quito. Wheat rust, introduced into the region during the 1690s, returned and, as food supplies dwindled, famine threatened. To make matters worse, in some areas years of overexploitation had left previously fertile soil sterile, and many wheat farmers close to Quito and provincial capitals were forced out of business because of declining production and profits. 6 Haciendas rented for one-half of their seventeenth-century rates and novenos yielded only half of their previous amount. 7 Between 1724 and 1726, one or more unnamed diseases afflicted highland residents. In August 1724, the cabildo reported that "many people had died as a result of the pestilence that has been introduced." 8 A year later, the epidemic continued; and in February 1726, the council still noted the presence of achaques. 9 Whether all three descriptions refer to the same infection is not clear. Sarampion appeared in the city during the spring of 1728, and although the disease continued to spread throughout the highlands during 1729, few deaths resulted, according to the president of the audiencia. 10 If sarampion was becoming endemic to the area, reaching epidemic proportions only occasionally, then many persons, especially in the city of Quito and in provincial capitals, would have already been exposed to the virus, which explains the low mortality rate. According to Spanish naval officers Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, who visited Quito during the late 1730s, syphilis was so common "that few persons are free of it, tho' its effects are much more violent in some 4 AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00119, fv. 128-9, September 19, 1709. 5 "Ay epidemia de achaques de agudos, que sean muerto muchas personas" (ibid., f. 98, April 29, 1713). 6 Ibid., vol. 00122, fv. 117-18, September 27, 1723. 7 Herrera y Enriquez, Apunte, 1:311. 8 "Que mueren muchos con la peste que sea introducido" (AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00112, f. 164, August 26, 1724). 9 Ibid., vol. 00123, f. 30, September 19, 1725, and f. 100, February 11, 1726. 10 AGI, Quito 172, presidente de la real audiencia al consejo de indias, May 25, 1730.

Demographic stagnation

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than in others." Espejo also commented on the "universal" nature of the malady and claimed that many individuals, both male and female, died of the disease. 11 Juan and Ulloa also noted the presence of "a distemper unknown in Europe . . . called peste; and its symptoms are convulsions in every part of the body, a continual endeavor to bite, delirium, {and} vomiting blood." They added that the disease was common throughout South America and that most individuals contracted it at sometime during their lives; having survived an attack, the victim acquired lifetime immunity. This disease may have been a form of hemorrhagic fever endemic in the Andean area. 12 Records reveal no indication that the influenza pandemic that began in Russia in 1729 and struck Peru during 1732 ever arrived in Quito. 1 3 It seems unlikely that officials would have failed to record such a serious incident, and outbreaks of influenza often skip over circumscribed areas. The same pandemic never reached South Carolina, although it was reported along the northern and central coast of the United States. 14 It was not until 1746 that another epidemic hit the region. This can be traced to an outbreak of viruelas that appeared in Lima late in 1744. 15 A few cases were reported in the audiencia of Quito that same year, but the disease did not reach epidemic levels until two years later, in July 1746. 16 Eventually this epidemic made its way into the Amazon Basin, where it claimed the lives of many natives. 17 Five years later, in 1751, another outbreak of viruelas occurred in the city, but, according to Espejo, "it appeared not to be especially malignant." 18 In November 1758, an epidemic of viruelas began in Lima, arriving in Quito in October 1759. By the spring of 1760, the epidemic had reached Popayan. As viruelas continued to move north, another disease, peste de japon (Japan disease), broke out in Bogota, spreading south to Quito and then to Lima. This outbreak of influenza may have been related to an epidemic that began in North America in 1757—8, or it may have been a wave of the pandemic that struck Europe and North America in 1761-2. The fact that observers associated this particular incident with Japan suggests that the disease had arrived in South America from the east. In any case, morbidity in Europe was reportedly high, while mortality re11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo, Reflexiones sobre el contagio transmision de las viruelas, pp. 110-18. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 1:294—5. Patterson, Pandemic Influenza, pp. 14—17. Ibid., p. 14. Gazeta de Lima, no. 8, November-December 1744. Herrera y Enriquez, Apunte, 2:143. Toribio, "Apuntes," p. 80. AJC, vol. 01229, Eugenio Espejo, "Sobre viruelas," 1784, f. 39.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

mained low. 19 This description agrees with accounts from the city of Quito. 2 0 A far more lethal disease spread throughout the audiencia in 1763. Between February and April, many natives became ill; by October 1764, many had died. In Quito, cabildo members expressed concern that the price of sugar, an important ingredient in many medicines, was too high (twenty-four reales per arroba [eleven kilos]); so they lowered the price (to eighteen to twenty reales). But the Jesuits, who controlled the local sugar supply, opposed the ruling; by a month later, they had persuaded officials to restore the previous price. 21 As mortality rates increased during 1764, the cabildo did what little it could to mitigate the crisis. Their first step was to inspect the licenses of all doctors and surgeons to protect the public from untrained individuals. The audiencia initiated the second measure, ordering all medical practitioners in the city to report to the hospital to perform an autopsy on a victim of the epidemic in the hope of determining the cause of death. The audiencia further instructed all doctors and surgeons to continue performing autopsies until they discovered the nature of the disease and how best to treat it. 2 2 Four days later, Francisco de Borja y Larraspuro, the official in charge of convoking the operations, returned to request that the cabildo appoint a protomedico because the doctors did not want to perform the surgeries, and they needed one physician to take charge. The council appointed Doctor Joseph Gaude, "professor of medicine," to conduct the proceedings. Within a few days, several postmortems had been done, but the doctors claimed they had learned nothing new, and the epidemic continued. 23 Espejo agreed that the "pestilential fever was new in this country" and he described it as mal de manchas or peste de los indios because "it infected only Indians and some mestizos." His use of the word manchas (bruises or spots) suggests some form of smallpox, measles, or typhus. Indeed, following his description of mal de manchas, he added that an especially virulent form of viruelas was a component of this epidemic. Espejo traced the origins of the outbreak to the Jesuit estate of Tanlagua and claimed that it had spread outward from there. He also charged that as many people died from the "inexperience of those who have the temerity to call themselves physicians" as from the fever.24 19 Patterson, Pandemic Influenza, pp. 19-20. 20 Toribio, "Apuntes," p. 81, and Gazeta de Lima, no. 2, January—March 1759; no. 5, JuneAugust 1759; no. 8, November 1759—January 1760; and no. 10, March—May 1760. 21 AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00129, fy- 42~3» February 25, 1763. 22 Ibid., fv. 34—5, October 9, 1764. 23 Ibid., f. 117, October 13, 1764, and f. n o , October 18, 1764. 24 "En esta provincia se vio el ano pasado de 1764, por este mismo tiempo, la que se llamo mal de manchas, o peste de los indios . . . infestando tan solamente a los indios y algunos mestizos,

Demographic stagnation

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Between 1769 and 1783, the cabildo noted several serious outbreaks of disease. In March 1769, an epidemic of esquilencia (scarlet fever) and disenteria ravaged the city. 25 In February and March 1777, the council reported that the city was infested with "various diseases." 26 In October 1779, many residents died of ma I de pujos (dysentery).27 During the next three years, disenteria de sangre (bloody dysentery) and other illnesses spread throughout the highlands, claiming many lives. 28 But the most devastating epidemic of the eighteenth century arrived in August 1785. As sarampion began to spread throughout the city, complaints reached the cabildo that pharmacies, even that of the hospital, were open only from 11 A.M. until 3 P.M. The public complained also that the price of medicine was too high. In response, cabildo members met with druggists and hospital administrators, ordering them to stay open around the clock and to lower their prices or face severe penalties. 29 When it became clear that this outbreak was particularly virulent, the cabildo convened an extraordinary session to address the problem of providing medical assistance to poor neighborhoods. Complaints had reached the council that doctors treated only those who could pay and furthermore were overcharging for their services. After deliberation, the council ordered all four licensed physicians in the city to spend three hours each day without pay visiting patients in the neighborhoods to which they would be assigned. To ensure compliance, four council members would also visit these districts daily. The cabildo went on to establish four reales as the maximum fee doctors could charge customers. Two druggists agreed to supply medicine free on receipt of a doctor's prescription. In return, the cabildo promised to reimburse the apothecaries for one-half their expenses at the end of the emergency. 30 The council decided, also, to meet each Friday with the doctors to discuss the course of the epidemic. 31 During one of these Friday meetings, they agreed to distribute 500 pesos of city funds among the poor. 32 Throughout the city, residents fell ill. In September and October, the two worst months of the epidemic, at least 2,400 people, both children and adults, died. 33 In the parishes of Santa Barbara, San Roque, and La

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

que perecieron sin consuelo, tanto por la malignidad de la fiebre cuanto por la impericia de los que entonces se llamaban temerariamente profesores de Medicina. Pero esta calentura pestilencial, era nueva en este pais" (Espejo, Reflexiones sobre las viruelas, pp. 54, 64). AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00130, f. 23, March 29, 1769. Ibid., vol. 00131, f. 15, February 14, 1777, and f. 17, March 7, 1777. Ibid., vol. 00132, fv. 132-3, October 14, 1779. Ibid., fv. 177, August 11, 1780; f. 186, October 20, 1780; f. 232, October 23, 1781. Ibid., vol. 00133, f. 180, September 6, 1785. Ibid., f. 181-2, September 8, 1785. Ibid., f. 183, September 27, 1785, and f. 184, October 1, 1785. Ibid., fv. 184-5, October 7, 1785. Arcos, La medicina, p. 142.

106

Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

Catedral, priests recorded 362 deaths between August 23 and October 4. But, according to the clerics of these three urban districts, the totals did not accurately reflect mortality rates, because many victims were buried in other cemeteries throughout the city and in outlying areas. 34 To the south, in Latacunga, at least 417 Spaniards and 2,333 natives died between September 1785 and March 1786. 35 The population of Ambato was also hit hard. Ramon Puente, administrator of the obraje and hacienda of San Ildefonso, testified that so many natives fell ill that he was forced to close the operation from October 15, 1785, until March 30, 1786. Extended closings of obrajes had not occurred since the epidemics of the 1690s. Puente also stated that when workers finally began to return to their jobs they became even sicker than before and production shut down once again. In the town of Pelileo, ninety adult males, approximately 8 percent of the tributary population, and 225 women and children had died by April 1786; according to Puente, many more continued to perish. 36 The situation resembled that of the 1690s in at least two respects: First, besides the epidemic, natural disasters (in this case, heavy rains and freezing temperatures) threatened food supplies, increasing the difficulties of native communities. Second, so many workers were sick or dying that a serious labor shortage had developed, and few were available to harvest what crops had survived the rains. Puente predicted that labor shortages would continue for a long time because of the deaths of so many young boys. The epidemic of sarampion continued on into New Granada; by 1788, it had reached Bogota. The following year, this epidemic, or possibly an unrelated outbreak, moved south from Bogota, through the audiencia and on into Peru. Epidemic disease remained a serious problem at the end of the eighteenth century, but, increasingly, mortality was limited to infants, children, and those already weakened by other illnesses. Sarampion, viruelas, and other infections introduced by Europeans had been present in the Andes for almost three centuries, and numerous encounters with the native population had encouraged the gradual development of immunities. In a treatise on the history of viruelas written in 1784, Espejo noted that, following the conquest, epidemics of viruelas were introduced 34

35

36

AJC, vol. 00029, Antonio Gomez Laso de la Vega, Cura de Santa Barbara a la audiencia; Juan Fausto Gomez, Cura de La Catedral a la audiencia; Thadeo Romo, Cura de San Roque a la audiencia, September 30 and October 4, 1785. Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," p. 61. Among Spaniards, 125 adults and 292 children perished, and 710 adult natives and 1,623 children died. According to Tyrer, 6 percent of Latacunga's native population died during this epidemic. ANHQ, Haciendas 20, folder 119, Cuentas ajustadas del obraje y haciendas de San Ildefonso al Administrator Don Ramon Puente desde 30 de marzo de 1780 hasta 31 de enero de 1787, June 30, 1786, f. 60-7.

Demographic stagnation

107

directly from Spain and other parts of Europe every twenty years. Later, the interval decreased to every twelve years; and "since 1764, it has returned to infect this city every two years." According to the author, an epidemic in 1783 killed "many children" and following that incident, [viruelas] "has become almost endemic; because until today it has not ceased, invading here and there in the neighborhoods of the city as well as in surrounding towns." 37 Earlier records describing low rates of mortality during epidemics of sarampion also suggest that the disease was becoming endemic, only occasionally flaring to epidemic proportions. What triggered these major incidents cannot be determined in many cases; perhaps a particularly virulent strain of disease organism was introduced, or perhaps a previously unknown infection appeared, as in 1763— 4. Certainly in 1708 and 1760, influenza was responsible for many deaths. In at least four instances, cabildo records clearly attribute the arrival of epidemics to areas outside of the audiencia. In 1724, council members described a peste as having been introduced, although they offered no information on its possible origin. But entries about the viruelas epidemics of 1744-6 and 1758-60 clearly trace those outbreaks to the city of Lima; while peste de japon, which also appeared in 1760, arrived from Bogota. Like most eighteenth-century cities, Quito was an unhealthy place even in the best of times. Poor hygiene and the absence of public sanitation policies favored the spread of numerous endemic infections, including tuberculosis, syphilis, and dysentery. Except for respiratory illnesses, which increased during the cool, rainy season (from January through May), and fevers, which appeared most frequently during the dry season (from June through September), outbreaks of disease such as smallpox, measles, and typhus could occur in any month of the year. During the eighteenth century, epidemics passed through the city of Quito on the average of every six years. But, although disease was a constant presence, after 1700, even the most severe outbreaks did not result in the devastat37

"Sean los que fuesen los corpusculos tenues, pero pestilentes de la Viruela, nuestra experiencia nos esta diciendo, que estos nos vinieron de la Espana y de otras regiones de la Europa. En los tiempos anteriores en que el ramo de comercio activo, que hacia esta con la America, especialmente a sus mares del Sur, no era tan frecuente; del mismo modo era mas rara la epidemia de Viruelas. Conforme la negociacion europea se fue aumentando y haciendose mas comun, tambien las Viruelas se hicieron mas familiares. En tiempo de los que llamaban galeones, que venian a los puertos de Cartagena, Panama, Portovelo y Callao, padecfamos las Viruelas de veinte en veinte anos. Despues de doce en doce. . . . Desde entonces [1764] volvio a los dos anos a infestarse esta ciudad. Se destruyo su pestilencia enteramente hasta el ano proximo pasado de mil setecientos ochenta y tres, en que siendo general el contagio con muerte de muchos ninos, se nos ha vuelto domestica o casi endemica; porque no se aparta hasta hoy, invadiendo ya aqui, ya alii, en los barrios de esta ciudad, como tambien en los pueblos del contorno de la provincia" (Espejo, Reflexiones sobre las viruelas, p. 40—1).

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

ing degree of mortality that had occurred during the sixteenth century and again during the 1690s. 38 Cabildo records describe the disease environment as it had evolved by the eighteenth century and also reveal changes in European perceptions of disease. During this period, virtually every reference to a specific outbreak was labeled an epidemic, whereas during the seventeenth century the word was applied only to the most serious incidents. The definition had changed as the point of reference of medical personnel and officials had changed. No longer were the pandemics of the sixteenth century the standard by which outbreaks of disease were judged; increasingly, doctors and colonial officials termed any sizable outbreak an epidemic. European medicine and public health Although Spanish America remained far from the center of Enlightenment-inspired reforms in education and medicine, many of the new ideas and attitudes did cross the Atlantic. As a result, during the eighteenth century, local officials and medical authorities assumed a more active role in dealing with Quito's public health problems. Cabildo records for the city show that, during the 1700s, the entries concerning health-related issues were twenty times the number of entries for the previous two centuries combined. The Bourbon government also encouraged the dissemination of knowledge through the circulation of new medical texts. The writings of Espejo are full of references to the works of Booerhave, Lister, Malpigi, and others, proving that, even in a backwater such as the audiencia of Quito, physicians were familiar with current medical theories. However, although a few of Quito's educated elite had access to the latest European medical literature, little had been actually done to improve public health. At the end of the eighteenth century, the audiencia still did not have a permanent protomedico, even though Espejo and others argued that the presence of such an office would improve the standards of the medical profession and help to eradicate communicable diseases. 39 Officials and doctors agreed that a lack of funds was still their biggest obstacle. It remained a constant problem for the audiencia's hospitals. The Bethlemite order had taken charge of the city's hospital at the beginning of the century. According to cabildo members, the Bethlemites were dedicated and hardworking and did an excellent job with limited re38

39

Although cabildo minutes still present an incomplete history of encounters between the human population and disease, eighteenth-century records are much more complete than those for the earlier period. Espejo, Reflexiones sobre las viruelas, pp. 1 5 8 - 6 3 .

Demographic stagnation

109

40

sources. The order, on the other hand, felt these resources to be too limited; in 1729, they requested permission to charge one tomin from each native in the corregimiento. Two months later, the council denied the request, without explanation. 41 If financing the hospital in the capital of the audiencia proved difficult, the situation in provincial capitals was even worse. As late as the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Riobamba area had no functioning hospital, and the one that was planned was intended to serve over 100,000 people. 42 Obviously, even the best facilities and staff would be inadequate for such a large population. Nonetheless, local officials took seriously the need to provide a sizable endowment for the new institution. In an attempt to secure a steady source of income, the cabildo of Riobamba ordered all tributaries to contribute one-half real per year toward operating expenses. Another portion of the budget was to be derived from church funds, specifically tithes and novenos. In addition, a bequest of 10,500 pesos from Don Juan Bauptista Dominguez was to be invested and the annual return slated for the hospital. The institution also owned two haciendas that would provide much of the food for patients. The hospital's endowment appeared generous, but it was still insufficient to meet the needs of such a large population. A report on the Indian hospital in the southern city of Cuenca, in 1736, reveals what conditions were like for many residents of these institutions. Officials observed that the hospital building was dilapidated; the sick lay uncared for in one damp room. On August 11, two patients, Juan Gonzalez and Gertrudiz, both natives, described their experiences in the hospital. They charged that the paid staff did little to care for patients. Domingo Gonzalez, alcalde ordinario (town councilman) of Cuenca and administrator of the hospital, provided food — a plate of greens and potatoes with a little meat. A priest of San Juan de Dios "who claimed to be a doctor" prescribed medicines. Patients brought their own beds because the hospital did not provide them. Furthermore, Juan explained, they suffered from the cold and humidity and lacked proper clothing and adequate medicines. 43 The audiencia established a hospital in the port city Guayaquil during the sixteenth century. Because of Guayaquil's importance as a center for commerce and shipping as well as military defense, this hospital routinely cared for soldiers and sailors. As a result, it appears to have received regular funding throughout most of the colonial period. According to a 40 41

AGI, Quito 139, Ramo 7, Cartas del cabildo de Quito, August 24, 1723. AM, Libros de cabtldos, vol. 00123, f. 154, November 22, 1729; fv. 155-6, November 23, 1729; fv. 157-8, November 29, 1729; and vol. 00124, &• 9> January 27, 1730. 42 AGI, Quito 273, Hospitales, Riobamba, 1771-97. 43 ANHQ, Hospitales 2, Cuenca, July 29, 1736.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

report on the hospital of San Juan de Dios, in January 1781 the hospital treated a total oi ninety-two persons. The document described the majority of patients as pobres (poor people); the rest were sailors, soldiers, local residents (presumably not poor), and local tax officials. Of these, fiftythree had been "cured" and discharged; two had died; and the rest remained in the hospital. 44 During the eighteenth century, Quito had only one hospital, a fact some considered a "disgrace" for a city of its size. 45 The building was in the center of the city — an unfortunate location, according to Espejo, who wrote that local residents were thereby exposed to the "corrupt vapors" emanating from within. The physician was also highly critical of hospital administrators and of the conditions that most patients endured, charging that many involved in hospital affairs were motivated solely by greed and that "they earned a lot of money from the poor." Therefore, it did not surprise him that many sick persons "would rather suffer a life of pain than go to the hospital because they saw it as a place of prolonged torture and certain death." 46 The hospital also cared for those persons diagnosed as leprosos (lepers). For some time, city officials and physicians had debated the merits of segregating these individuals from the rest of the hospital population, but no action had been taken. Rather than establish a new hospital to deal only with leprosy, in October 1785 the viceroy of New Granada ordered all twenty-two lepers transferred to the Hospital of Lazarinos in Cartagena. After examining each of the patients, Doctor Bernardo Delgado concluded that only five individuals were capable of making the arduous journey. Not surprisingly, those five were most upset by the prospect of being uprooted and transferred hundreds of miles from their homeland. They told Delgado that they were terrified of the trip, especially the voyage from Guayaquil, and that if the doctor tried to force them to go, they would flee into the most remote areas of the highlands. 47 Whether the five were ever transferred is not clear, but in April 1789, the cabildo met to discuss funding the move. 48 What is most significant about this episode is that, for the first time, fiscal considerations motivated the viceregal administration to consider centralizing and consolidating health care for a particular segment of the population of New Granada. In spite of local officials' taking a more active interest in public health, little had been done to improve unsanitary conditions throughout the city. 44 45 46 47 48

ANHQ, Hospitales 3, Guayaquil, April 21, 1780. Espejo, Reflexiones sobre las viruelas, p. 94. "Que los enfermos, mas bien quieren arrastrar una vida dolorosa, que ir al hospital, porque le ven a este como el lugar de su dilatado suplico y de su muerte cierta" (ibid., p. 98). ANHQ, Hospitales 4, Quito, October 10, 1785. AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00134, f. 103, April 15, 1789.

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Inadequate and contaminated water supplies were a frequent problem, as was the dumping of garbage on city streets. 49 In 1743, the audiencia and Doctor Joseph Sisiu directed the cabildo to publish a ban ordering residents and property owners to clean city streets and prohibiting shopkeepers from disposing of garbage in public places where it "rotted and corrupted the air, leading to the epidemic currently claiming many lives." The audiencia also directed council members to inspect all mills, bakeries, and shops to find contaminated wheat and barley flour and to throw all confiscated materials into rivers and ravines. 50 It is not clear that these measures were ever enforced; but they were only temporary and at best would have had little effect on the chronically unhealthy conditions in Quito. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the situation still had not improved. According to Espejo, the most serious problem was the disposal of human waste and garbage on city streets. He argued that local authorities should heavily fine residents who dumped their refuse in public places and that the city should begin releasing water to wash the streets regularly. 51 He was especially critical of the monasteries of La Concepcion, Santa Clara, and Santa Catalina, which he claimed "were full of garbage and all types of filth." He urged the directors of these institutions to inspect the premises weekly to ensure that all waste was properly disposed of.52 Another public health problem was the sale of contaminated alcohol: In January 1714, the council reported that many slaves and Indians had died from drinking tainted liquor. Trying to prevent further mortality, the cabildo reiterated its ban on the illegal manufacture of aguardiente (cane alcohol); but unlicensed production of alcohol was so widespread and profitable that the ban proved unenforceable.53 By 1744, the illegal production of aguardiente had become such a problem that sugar, its key ingredient, was in short supply. Public drunkenness was leading to serious disturbances, and many individuals, especially Indians, died from alcohol poisoning. In response, the cabildo imposed a fifty-peso fine on anyone caught manufacturing aguardiente without a license and ordered the destruction of all confiscated liquor. 54 Espejo considered the problem of excessive alcohol consumption one of the most serious public health issues facing the audiencia. He was especially critical of those who fortified their preparations with "narcotic 49 50 51 52 53 54

Ibid., vol. 00121, f. 72, February 26, 1717; and vol. 00134, f- 10, January 16, 1787. Ibid., vol. 00126, fv. 41-2, July 1, 1743. Espejo, Reflexiones sobre las viruelas, pp. 7 1 - 4 . Ibid., p. 93. AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00120, f. 132, January 25, 1714. Ibid., vol. 00126, f. 5 4 - 5 , January 10, 1744.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

herbs." He claimed that such drinks made people "crazy" and that, "although these spirits are not drunk in large quantities . . . they have produced inflammations of the liver, tumors on the spleen, and dropsy."55 Concern for the health of the native population was not the only factor motivating governmental action, however. Both the audiencia and the cabildo expressed their displeasure over the large amounts of revenue lost to the estanco de aguardiente (the office that collected the alcohol tax) because of the sale of alcohol on the black market. According to one estimate, over 20,000 bottles of aguardiente were sold legally in the city each year. 56 The number of bottles sold illegally must have been several times greater. Most of the public health situations confronting local officials and physicians during the eighteenth century were the same as those faced by their predecessors. Epidemics, endemic diseases, and poor sanitation remained facts of life throughout the audiencia. What had changed, however, were the attitudes and responses of those in charge of dealing with such issues. After 1750, the audiencia and cabildo were increasingly active in dealing with matters affecting public health. Mandating autopsies, forcing doctors to treat the poor free of charge, subsidizing the dispensation of medicines to the sick, and distributing city funds to the indigent were all policies without precedent in the audiencia. The idea of charity certainly was not new in Spanish America; traditionally, the church and wealthy individuals had assumed responsibility for collecting and distributing whatever resources were available to aid the poor. But after 1750, the colonial government became increasingly involved with such concerns, implementing new policies that required not only commitments of time and energy but financial resources as well. Of course, compared to relief efforts in the colonies' wealthiest and most important center, Mexico City, the funds available were meager. However, even in New Spain, "the capacity of Mexico City to assist its sick—poor during any given epidemic was closely related to its economic prosperity at that particular time." 57 Therefore, in the dire economic situation in the highlands of Quito during the eighteenth century, little was available to aid the region's thousands of poor residents. To understand the origins of the changes in attitude that did occur, it is necessary to look beyond charity and a renewed sense of responsibility for the poor and sick to the policies and objectives of the Bourbon government. In the eighteenth century, the Spanish crown implemented many new policies designed to strengthen political control and increase reve55

56 57

"Todos estos licores aunque no se beban en mayor cantidad, he visto, que han producido las inflamaciones del higado, mortales disinterias, tumores en el bazo y caquexias o verdaderamente hidropesias, imposibles de curarse" (Espejo, Reflexioms sobre las viruelas, pp. 83-4). AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00126, fv. 149-50, May 23, 1746, and f. 151, June 22, 1746. Donald Cooper, Epidemic Disease, p. 190.

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nues. Spain desperately needed financial support at a time when colonial governments faced growing opposition and unrest from all sectors of society. To address both of these problems, governments began taking control of policies and programs previously outside their jurisdictions. This drive for control manifested itself in many areas, from the implementation of new trade and tax laws to the regulation of hospitals and the care of the indigent. This emerging interest in public health focused attention on the effects of disease. It was commonly recognized that during epidemics, poor neighborhoods had higher mortality rates than others; many believed that poverty predisposed individuals to illness. Nevertheless, the elite also believed that the poor were somehow responsible for their economic plight and thus for their sickness. In Mexico City, officials argued that the sick-poor should voluntarily commit themselves to hospitals to help prevent the spread of disease — even though they knew that the poor regarded such institutions as places of certain death. 58 Increasingly, public health policies came to focus on one social class, the poor. Legislation aimed at controlling and isolating the sick-poor in Europe had developed out of the plague epidemics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 59 By the sixteenth century, hospitals were also being used as poorhouses where the indigent were housed, often against their will, and forced to labor on public projects in exchange for food and shelter. 60 While local governments in Spanish America never had the funds necessary for such expensive welfare policies, many members of the elite favored similar measures. Espejo argued that the audiencia needed more hospitals because "they are the asylums for the poor and abandoned." 61 Even Mexico City was unable to subsidize the types of public welfare programs prevalent in many European cities. But, in spite of its inability to finance such stringent measures of control, the policies adopted by the audiencia and cabildo of Quito reflected their desire to exercise some restraint over the masses of poor, especially in urban areas. The reasons for their concern will become clear in the last section of this chapter. Demographic stagnation and economic depression Any attempt to assess the effect of disease on demographic trends in the highlands of Ecuador during the eighteenth century must begin with the 58 59 60 61

Ibid., pp. 7 5 - 9 . See Carmichael, Plague and the Poor, pp. 121-6. Natalie Zemon Davis, "Poor Relief," pp. 215—75. "Son los asilos donde va a salvar su vida la gente pobre y desamparada de parientes y benefactores" (Espejo, Reflexiones sobre las viruelas, p. 94).

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

epidemics and natural disasters of the 1690s. Because of the great mortality from these events, in 1700, the number of Indians in the northcentral sierra had been reduced by half; as a result, the region entered a period of demographic stagnation and economic depression from which it would not fully recover until the present century (see Tables 6.2 and 6.3). During the halcyon days of the mid-seventeenth century, some 50,000 people lived in the city of Quito and its immediate vicinity.62 Of that number, only 5 percent were whites; natives, mestizos, and mulattoes composed the remainder. Although there are no data on the population of the city for the years immediately after the 1690s, the deaths of one-half of all inhabitants must have reduced the number to approximately 25,000. The collapse of the regional economy, particularly the closing of numerous urban obrajes, pushed many survivors out to seek work in rural areas. Data from the second half of the eighteenth century support the idea that the rate of decline was especially severe in urban areas and suggest that the city population may have fallen as low as 20,000. Throughout the highland region, the degree of demographic decline was equally severe. According to a report submitted to the audiencia by Manuel Navarette de Vera, between 1690 and 1700 tribute collections fell by almost 50 percent. 63 Fortunately, more detailed information about the decline can be found in separate accounts for each of the highland provinces. In addition to recording the amount of tribute collected, these documents include the number of adult males actually paying the tax. If it is assumed that many continued to avoid tax collectors, and the total figure is adjusted upward by 25 percent to account for that factor, the number of tributary-aged males in the north-central highlands in 1710 was approximately 44,500. A comparison with the data from the 1670s shows a decline of 37 percent. 64 Constant complaints from both hacendados (landowners) and obraje owners about severe labor shortages support these low estimates. Between deaths and absenteeism, the number of tributaries in most highland juris62

In 1650, Rodriguez Docampo estimated the population of the city at 25,000, excluding Indians. Because Indians constituted at least one-half of the urban population, the total population probably numbered around 50,000. Docampo, "Description y relation del estado eclesiastico del Obispado de San Francisco de Quito," Relaciones geografkas 3:6. Also see Phelan, Kingdom, p. 49. 63 AGI, Quito 143, Manuel Navarette de Vera a la audiencia, May 9, 1716. Navarette based his claims on the treasury accounts compiled by Diego Suarez de Figueroa in 1704. These records indicate that out of a total of 560,209 pesos owed by corregidors in the seven highland provinces, only 285,252 pesos were ever collected. 64 Most of the information concerning tribute collections during the first decade of the eighteenth century are located in ANHQ, Tributos 5 and Presidencia de Quito 19. The total for Riobamba was offered by local caciques in their report concerning the prevalence of forced labor following the disasters of the 1690s. AGI, Quito 128, Caciques de Riobamba a la audiencia, November 13, 1711, fv. 338-9.

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Table 6.2. The native population of the north-central highlands, 1670-1825 Date

Total population

Tributaries

Sources

1670 1710

300,000 [150,000]

71,000 44,500

1740

[200,000]

1780

217,000

1825

197,000

See Chapter 4, nn. 80, 81 [Based on 50 percent mortality as a result of the epidemics and natural disasters of the 1690s]; ANHQ, Tributos 5 and Presidencia de Quito 19 Based on Minchom's estimate of a 25%-3O% increase in the city of Quito, 1700-40. Minchom, "Demographic Change," p. 468 Based on the Villalengua census, AGI, Quito 381 or 412 Based on Minchom s figures for the 1825 census and calculating that Indians constituted 70% of the total

Table 6.3. The native population of the north-central highlands, Date

Population

1520 1598 1670 1780 1825

1,080,000" 105-112,000 300,000 217,000 197,000

1520-1825

Sources See Chapter 1, "The native population before 1534" See Chapter 3, "Demographic trends" See Chapter 4, nn. 80, 81 AGI, Quito 381 or 412 Minchom, "Demographic Change," p. 465

*These figures include native population of the entire audiencia.

dictions had declined by 30-50 percent or more. Officials in the village of Lican, Riobamba, reported that 38 percent of the adult male population was gone. Tribute rolls in the neighboring towns of Cubijies, San Andres, and Puni showed declines of 72, 42, and 27 percent, respectively. (These figures include both dead and absent males.) 65 In the north, the labor shortage appeared to be even more critical. In 1697, the corregidor of Otavalo wrote, "the population used to be 3,000 Indians resulting in tribute collections of 16,000 pesos but now it has been reduced to only 100 Indians." 66 Although this report may have exaggerated the degree of 65

ANHQ, Presidencia de Quito, tomos 16 and 17, Caciques de Riobamba a la audiencia, November 13, 1706, and October 21, 1707. 66 "El qual habiendo sido su poblacion de 3,000 indios y satisfaciendose entonces de tributos en el 16,000 pesos havia quedado reducido a solos 100 indios" (AGI, Quito 15, Corregidor de Otavalo a la audiencia, Otavalo, 1697).

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decline (a decrease of 97 percent seems too extreme), it nevertheless indicates the severity of the crisis. As the full extent of the destruction became apparent, officials confronted the fact that the disasters would have long-term as well as immediate demographic consequences. The existing tributary population had been seriously depleted, and in the future, the number of tributaries would remain low owing to the deaths of approximately one-half of all children and young adults. Although birthrates probably rose quickly after 1695, t n e small number of persons left to reproduce would continue to slow recovery for at least a generation. Some twenty years after the crisis, an increase in the number of young adults could be expected. This, in turn, would lead to further increases in population as these individuals married and reproduced. But in 1700, recovery was a long way off. In response to the labor shortage, obraje owners and hacendados increased pressure on Indian communities to supply more workers. Caciques complained that tribute rolls had not been updated since the 1600s and that, following the epidemics, Spaniards continued to demand the same number of workers as had been assigned to them decades before.67 Although many caciques petitioned the audiencia for new censuses that would more accurately reflect the demographic reality of their communities, Quito's elite succeeded in blocking such proposals on the grounds that the audiencia could ill afford the expense of such a massive undertaking. 6 8 For more than two decades following the disasters, tensions escalated between native communities and landowners over the labor issue. In 1699 a cacique from Pillaro, Ambato, reported that only nine tributaries and five boys remained in his parcialidad (neighborhood unit within a native community), and of those, eight had been conscripted into the local repartimiento. He added that, because there were so few males, those who remained were forced to work constantly, without rest; as a result, he anticipated that several would eventually flee.69 In Puni, Riobamba, in 1705, a count of the tributary population revealed 111 adult males, thirty-five of whom were absent. According to their cacique, of the remaining seventy-five tributaries, he was legally obligated to supply seventeen gananes (mita Indians), but hacendados had already claimed fifty-six.70 After a census of tributaries in the province of Chimbo in 1657, officials had assigned local landowners 600 mitayos; but in spite of the loss of population, in 1711, more than 1,200 men were drafted. 71 67 68

Ibid., Quito 128, fv. 336. AM, Libros de cabildos, vol. 00118, fv. 158-9, November 16, 1707, ». il f. 175-80, December 16, 1707. 69 ANHQ, Indigenas 24, Cacique de Pillaro a la audiencia, 1699. 70 Ibid., Indigenas 29, Cacique de Puni a la audiencia, July 10, 1705. 71 AGI, Quito 128, fv. 336.

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Throughout the corregimiento of Riobamba, caciques reported only 4,200 tributaries (down from 14,000 in the 1670s); of those, the repartimiento claimed more than 2,3oo. 7 2 Such abuses continued for many years. In 1723, the protector of Indians from the corregimiento of Quito reported that landowners continued to demand the same number of repartimiento Indians that they had been assigned in 1659, in spite of the fact that the native population was "less than half of what it had been at the time of the census. 73 The situation in the manufacturing sector was the same: owners resorted to increasingly harsh tactics to secure workers. In some instances, desperate obraje managers even seized hacienda Indians. According to the corregidor of Otavalo, Sebastian Manrrique, natives were regularly placed in prison "for no other offense except that they were born Indians"; from there they were taken to work in obrajes until they escaped or died. 74 Indeed, confrontations over forced labor in obrajes had become so serious that as early as December 31, 1704, a royal cedula banned obraje mitas altogether. But stiff resistance from owners and administrators delayed enforcement of the ruling for ten years; and by 1714, when the ban finally took effect, most community obrajes had already closed down. But although competition for native workers had declined, those obrajes that remained in operation continued to report severe labor shortages. In 1733, the audiencia president Joseph Araujo reported that owners frequently locked workers up at night in order to keep them from running away.75 The shortage of labor was only one of several problems confronting the struggling textile industry. The decline of mining production in Upper Peru during the seventeenth century had prompted many Peruvian entrepreneurs to turn to textile manufacturing as an alternative form of investment. Beginning in the 1680s, numerous obrajes opened in Lima and Upper Peru, weakening the market for Quito's cloth, which was increasingly uncompetitive because of higher transportation costs. To make matters worse, by the first decade of the eighteenth century, large quantities of European cloth began flooding markets throughout the viceroyalty, further reducing demand for Quito's product. Increased competition reduced prices by 40 to 50 percent between 1700 and 1750; and, as profits shrank, textile production in the highlands of Ecuador declined sharply.76 According to cabildo member Miguel de Jijon y Leon, by 1752 72 Ibid., fv. 338. 73 Ibid., Quito 129, Protector de indios, Francisco Ramirez de Arellano a la audiencia, December 2, 1723, fV. 473. 74 Ibid., Quito 142, Corregidor de Otavalo a la audiencia, June 11, 1702. 75 Ibid., Quito 145, Joseph Araujo al consejo de indias, August 9, 1733. 76 Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," pp. 184-226; and Washburne, "The Bourbon Reforms," p. 3.

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the number of bales of cloth exported to Peru had declined from 12,000 to only 3,ooo. 77 Throughout this period, urban obrajes and chorillos (small operations with fewer than twenty workers) experienced the greatest rate of decline. Because Quito's entire business community depended on revenues generated by the textile industry, by the 1720s, wholesale and retail merchants had also suffered significant losses: "because of the lack of silver the number of businesses in the city has declined from more than 400 to only 70 or 80; and of these, 10 or 12 are unable to sell their cloth and other goods." Real estate prices in the city also plummeted, and buildings sold for a half or a third of their previous value. 78 The rapid decline of Quito's commercial sector illustrates the severity of the depression. To protect the interests of the city's white merchant elite by limiting competition from unlicensed vendors, the cabildo voted on June 26, 1724, to prohibit Indians, blacks, mestizos, and mulattoes from selling goods in public places. The council also expressed concern over Quito's flourishing black market trade in European cloth, flour, and wine. 79 According to Juan and Ulloa, Quito's merchants purchased smuggled goods along the coast of Cartagena, then shipped them back to Quito. At the same time, they made legitimate purchases that were also transported south into the audiencia. Much of this merchandise, both legal and contraband, could then be sold in Lima, where demand was greater and prices higher. Juan and Ulloa reported that warehouses in Quito were full of contraband, and no secret was made of the extent of the smuggling. 80 Smuggled goods also entered the sierra from other places. Ships from Acapulco carrying oriental silks frequently unloaded their wares at the small ports of Atacames, Puerto Viejo, Manta, or Santa Elena before going on to Guayaquil, their official destination. Accomplices then shipped the silk to Guayaquil, Quito, or Lima for sale on the black market. A few individuals obviously profited from the contraband trade, but the overall effect of such dealings was to reduce even further the available market for Quito's legitimate merchants. 81 Long-term economic depression had a decidedly negative effect on the standard of living of highland elites. Traditionally, the fortunes of Quito's leading citizens had been derived from some aspect of the textile trade or hacienda agriculture. As those sectors contracted, the incomes of prominent families shrank, and many were eventually forced into bankruptcy. 82 77 AGI, Quito 139, Miguel de Jijon y Leon al consejo de indias, August i, 1752. 78 Herrera and Enriquez, Apunte, 1:307-8. 79 Ibid., 1:327. 80 Juan and Ulloa, Discourse, pp. 45—52. 81 Juan and Ulloa, Discourse, p. 271. 82 AJC, Vol. 00001, Presidente de la audiencia al consejo de indias, November 21, 1800; and Washburne, "Creoles," p. 4.

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Describing the city of Quito as they saw it in 1736, Juan and Ulloa later wrote, "Quito . . . was formerly in a much more flourishing condition than at present; the number of its inhabitants being considerably decreased, particularly the Indians, whole streets of whose huts are now forsaken, and in ruins." 83 The authors then went on to estimate the city's total population at 50,000—60,000. 84 These figures are grossly inflated, however; by the 1730s, the highland population had experienced only moderate demographic recovery. In fact, the epidemics and food shortages of the 1720s had slowed population growth, and the disastrous state of the city's economy continued to discourage immigration. It therefore seems likely that the figures given by Juan and Ulloa represent double the actual number of inhabitants. Nevertheless, the naval officers were correct in noting that the native population had undergone the steepest decline and now constituted only one-third of all urban residents. Data about the population of the city of Quito for the first half of the eighteenth century are scarce, but on the basis of information in several parish registers, historian Martin Minchom has calculated that, by the 1740s, some 30,000 persons lived in the city of Quito. 8 5 Given that the city's population numbered only 20,000-25,000 in 1700, Minchom's estimate posits an increase of 25 to 30 percent over a forty-year period. But even though this represents a significant rate of growth, the number of urban dwellers remained well below the estimated population of 50,000 in 1650. Although there were frequent outbreaks of disease during the first half of the century, in general mortality rates remained low. As a result, the native population of the north-central highlands experienced a period of modest recovery, especially during the 1730s and 1750s. 86 Unfortunately, no census figures have yet been found to reveal the size of that population at mid-century, but if the rate of increase was similar to that registered in the city of Quito between 1700 and 1740, the total number of Indians living in the north-central sierra region may have approached 200,000. With the arrival of the mysterious epidemic of 1763—4, however, this brief recovery came to an end. To date, the only estimate of mortality comes from several communities in Ambato, where at least 513 tributaries (approximately 15 percent of the adult male population) died during the outbreak. 87 Although cabildo records do not contain estimates of 83 Juan and Ulloa, Voyage, 1:263-5. 84 Ibid., 1:276. 85 Minchom, "Demographic Change," pp. 459-80. 86 Minchom's analysis of births and deaths in the urban parishes of El Sagrario, Santa Barbara, and San Bias indicates a rise in mortality rates during the late 1720s, probably in response to agricultural shortfalls and disease. He notes similar increases during the mid-1740s and mid-1760s, both in response to epidemics (ibid., pp. 470-1). 87 Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," p. 61.

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urban mortality, the amount of time devoted to discussions of the crisis and the unprecedented steps taken to diagnose the illness indicate the serious threat from the epidemic. For the remainder of the eighteenth century, many incidents of disease, particularly the epidemic of 1785, and continued economic depression reinforced the downturn. The late 1770s proved to be a turning point in the demographic history of the audiencia, for it was during this period that royal officials conducted the first modern censuses of the area. Although inaccuracies and discrepancies can be found even in these carefully organized documents, the data they contain are unparalleled in providing historians with a broad view of late-eighteenth-century population trends. 88 Between 1776 and 1781, two separate sets of census data were compiled by colonial authorities: the first constituted part of the viceroyalty-wide count ordered in 1776 and carried out between 1779 and 1781; the second was a census of the audiencia conducted by Visitor Juan Josef de Villalengua in the late 1770s. 89 According to the data compiled during 1779—81, the total population of the north-central highlands numbered some 282,000 persons (see Table 6.4). The totals of the Villalengua count are slightly higher, however — approximately 300,000 in the area between Ibarra and Riobamba. 90 Of these, slightly over 70 percent were natives (217,000), while whites and mestizos made up 25 percent, and free blacks and slaves, 5 percent. When compared to the 1740 estimate of 200,000, these figures indicate that overall the Indian population had experienced a modest growth of only 8 percent during 40 years. Not all areas of the highlands registered population increases during this period. According to Minchom and geographer Rosemary Bromley, the last quarter of the eighteenth century was marked by urban recession. During 1740-80, the population of the city of Quito contracted from 30,000 to 25,000, a drop of almost 17 percent (see Table 6.5). At the same time, the number of persons residing in the provincial capitals of Riobamba and Latacunga declined by 5 and 32 percent, respectively. According to Bromley, the earthquake and floods of 1757 accounted for the especially sharp decline in Latacunga. 91 88

For a discussion of the problems inherent in these documents, see Minchom, "Demographic Change," pp. 459-61. 89 Copies of the Villalengua census are located in AGI, Quito 381 and 412. Various copies of the data for 1779-81 are located in the AGI and ANHQ. See, e.g., ANHQ, Empadronamientos 5 (Latacunga) and 15 (Otavalo) and AGI, Quito 240-1 and 377. 90 In addition to Minchom, a number of scholars have published their findings about these two censuses. See Paz y Mino, La poblacion del Ecuador, pp. 24—39; Tyrer, "Demographic and Economic History," p. 79; and Washburne, "Bourbon Reforms," p. 2. Rosemary Bromley has also worked extensively with these documents. 91 Bromley, "Functions and Development" p. 38.

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Table 6.4. The population of north-central Ecuador, 1778-81 Place Ibarra Otavalo Quito Latacunga Ambato Riobamba Chimbo Total

General census 16,593 32,240 59,485 49,935 42,373 66,726 14,456 281,808

Villalengua census 23,871 37,897 66,733 49,018 41,337 66,827 15,704 301,387

These documents also reveal important changes taking place in the racial composition of the highland population (see Table 6.5; see also Table 6.3). During the last quarter of the sixteenth century, some thousand Spaniards, many with families, had taken up residence in the city of Quito. The nonnative population of the audiencia also included 2,000 mestizos and "many mulattos." 92 Even if these figures underestimate the number of castas (people of mixed race) and Europeans, both groups were tiny in comparison to the Indian majority. Throughout the seventeenth century, the Spanish population remained small, while the number of mestizos and mulattoes increased significantly. Nevertheless, natives continued to compose at least one-half of all urban residents. But this situation changed dramatically after the disasters of the 1690s. As a result, in 1737, the corregidor of Quito, Nicolas Ponce de Leon complained about "the imponderable number of mestizos . . . who by adopting Spanish dress are able to avoid tribute payments." The corregidor favored legislation that would prohibit "Spaniards, mestizos, or others of mixed race" from living in Indian communities. 93 But such a law would have proved impossible to enforce, and for the remainder of the colonial period the number of persons who identified themselves as mestizos continued to climb. By 1780, Indians made up only 25 to 30 percent of Quito's urban population, down significantly from the mid-seventeenth century. A similar trend was underway in the urban parishes of Latacunga, Ambato, and Riobamba, where the white and mestizo sectors of the population had grown to 52, 38, and 55 percent of the total population, respectively. 94 92 Cabildo de Quito, "Descripcion de Quito," pp. 45-70. 93 AGI, Quito 138, Corregidor de Quito a la audiencia, January 9, 1737. 94 See Bromley, "Urban-Rural Demographic Contrasts," p. 286.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador Table 6.5. Population of the city of Quito,

Date

Population

1650

50,000

1700

20-25,000

1740 1780 1830

30,000 25,000 21,700

1650-1830

Sources Docampo, "Descripcion," p. 6, and Phelan, Kingdom, p.49 Based on 50% mortality as a result of epidemics and natural disasters of the 1690s Minchom, "Demographic Change," p. 468 Minchom, "Demographic Change," p. 468 AM, vol. 00064, Padron 1831

Although the percentage of whites in rural areas was considerably lower (18 percent in Riobamba, 20 percent in Latacunga), except in Ambato (32 percent), even there the number of Indians was declining in relation to whites. Several factors account for the "whitening" of the highland population: First, whites were experiencing a higher rate of natural increase than Indians; second, the mestizo population, which had been expanding steadily throughout the colonial period, was now increasing rapidly; and third, a growing number of Indians were choosing to live and dress as mestizos in order to avoid tribute and mita obligations. 95 The depressed economy of the audiencia also triggered changes in migration patterns after the 1690s. During their heyday in the midseventeenth century, the central highland provinces, especially Quito and Riobamba, had been favored destinations for thousands of Indian migrants. But the decline of the obraje economy and subsequent long-term depression had reversed this trend; during the eighteenth century, migrants moved away from the central region in all directions. Thus, during this period, the population of the southern highlands around Cuenca and Loja grew, as did the coastal population of Guayaquil and the northern province of Ibarra. 96 Another significant change in migration patterns was the frequency with which individuals and even entire Indian communities fled to uncontrolled lowland areas along the eastern and western slopes of the Andes. Juan and Ulloa reported that the entire native population of Pimanpiro, Ibarra, some 5,000 persons, had abandoned their village and moved to "heathen settlements" on the Cordillera Occidental. Occasionally a few of the renegades would appear in the town of Mira to trade. According to the two Spaniards, "in less than two hours, an Indian could flee from Mira into the mountains." 97 In the south-central area around Riobamba, many 95 96

Bromley, "Change," 412-13. Minchom, "Demographic Change," p. 476; and Michael T. Hamerly, "Social and Economic History." 97 Juan and Ulloa, Discourse, pp. 109, 169.

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Indians had reportedly fled east to the remote settlement of Guamboya. 98 The censuses of 1776-81 were soon followed by the outbreak of sarampion in August 1785. Although this epidemic was not so bad as those of the 1690s, it claimed thousands of lives throughout the audiencia. In the city of Quito, the deaths of 2,400 persons meant the loss of approximately 10 percent of the population. In the town of Pelileo, Ambato, 8 percent of all tributaries perished. Reports from other areas of the highlands suggest that mortality rates averaged 5 to 10 percent. According to Bromley, in Latacunga officials recorded 2,750 deaths: 61 per 1,000 Indians and 36 per 1,000 whites. She added that most of the fatalities were children." Several years later, the most destructive natural disaster of the eighteenth century further reduced the population of the south-central region (see Table 6.6). On February 4, 1797, a severe earthquake claimed over 12,000 lives in the corregimientos of Riobamba, Latacunga, Ambato, and Chimbo. 100 After this, looting broke out in many areas; and in the village of San Miguel, Chimbo, Indians seized the opportunity to rebel against local authorities. Officials in Riobamba complained that, with the white population reduced to an eighth of its former size, Indians were becoming increasingly insolent and that famine was imminent because most of the harvest had been destroyed in the disaster. It was not until March 17, almost six weeks after the earthquake, that officials were able to restore order in the stricken area. Thus, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the native population of highland Ecuador was only slightly larger than it had been in 1700. But Quito's troubles were not yet over. Political unrest and escalating violence associated with the coming of the wars for independence disrupted all sectors of highland society, leading to lower birthrates and a significant increase in the number of deaths. This is borne out by the results of a census conducted in 1825, which demonstrates that the native population of the north-central highlands had declined by almost 10 percent since the 1780s. 101 Comparison of the 1825 census with that of Villalengua indicates that decline was most severe in the corregimiento of Riobamba, which lost 23 percent of its total population. At least part of that loss was due to the earthquake of 1797, which had been centered in that province. The corregimientos of Otavalo, Quito, Ambato, and Chimbo registered declines of 12, 5, 9, and 4 percent, respectively. In this same period, the 98 Ibid., pp. 111-12. 99 Bromley, "Disasters," p. 105. 100 AGI, Quito 403, Testimonios 2, 3, 4, and 5; Corregidores de Riobamba, Ambato, Latacunga, and Chimbo a la audiencia, March 1797. 101 See Minchom, "Demographic Change," p. 7.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador Table 6.6. Total dead following the earthquake 0/1797 Riobamba Ambato Latacunga Chimbo Total

6,303 5,908 234 57 12,505

population of Ibarra increased 7 percent, and that of Latacunga by 14 percent. 102 The data reveal that demographic depression was most severe in urban areas. For example, the urban populations of Latacunga, Ambato, and Riobamba declined by 35, 50, and 67 percent. 103 And according to a census of the city of Quito conducted in 1830, the population was only 21,674, down 13 percent since the 1780s. 104 With the notable exceptions of Ibarra and Latacunga, demographic decline characterized the Ecuadorian highlands as they entered a new era of political independence.

Native medicine and political resistance Much of this study has concentrated on the social and political implications of disease. These become especially clear for the eighteenth century, when the continued practice of ancient medical and religious traditions aided native society in its struggle to survive in spite of increasingly severe economic and political repression. Several factors in the first half of the eighteenth century combined to make life more difficult for individual natives and for their communities. The serious labor shortage resulting from the disasters of the 1690s led officials, obrajeros, and landowners to adopt ever more exploitive tactics in their desperate search for workers. Their refusal to amend tax lists further exacerbated the problem and greatly increased the burden of tribute and mita obligations on the remaining Indian population. At the same time, the transformation of these obligations into personal rather than communal responsibilities fragmented group interests and isolated individuals. 102

103 104

Comparison of the figures for Ibarra from the 1825 census to those collected between 1779 and 1781 indicates that the population had increased by 54 percent. Unfortunately, there is no way to determine which of the two late-eighteenth-century censuses more accurately reflects Ibarra's demographic situation. However, it appears certain that, after two centuries of decline, this northernmost province was finally experiencing population growth. The expansion of the local plantation economy probably accounted for this development. I can find no plausible explanation for the increase registered in the corregimiento of Latacunga. Bromley, "Functions and Development," p. 36. AM, vol. 00064, Padron 1831.

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The rapidly increasing number of persons of mixed blood, many of whom lived in or close to Indian communities, further undermined unity within native society. Their presence and that of significant numbers of forasteros heightened tensions and intracommunal conflicts over the distribution of scarce economic resources and political power. As the composition of these communities became increasingly diverse, native residents struggled to maintain their identity as distinct and separate from the rest of colonial society. Political repression escalated, as the reform-minded Bourbon government attempted to secure greater control over all society, including the "republic of Indians," which, until then, had enjoyed a limited autonomy. In response, opposition to colonial authority increased significantly throughout the Andes after 1700. 105 In many areas, Indian resistance took the form of violent protests against specific officials and policies. Even in the highlands of Ecuador, where such resistance to Spanish rule had been notably absent during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at least ten uprisings occurred between 1730 and 1803. 1 0 6 In each instance the cause of rebellion was rooted in the economic concerns of local Indian residents and involved land, labor, and tribute. As the level of oppression increased throughout the century, Indian society drew upon both pre-Columbian and colonial traditions to sustain itself. Especially in areas away from European centers of development, many villages were able to retain control over communal lands, enabling residents to maintain at least limited economic independence. In addition, individuals and communities continued the now long-established practice of utilizing the Spanish legal system to oppose both political and economic encroachments. And one important way that native society preserved its unity and identity was through continued reliance on preconquest religious beliefs and ceremonies, including healing rituals. Because of Quito's peripheral position within the viceroyalty, it existed outside "the main path of extirpation"; therefore, native traditions remained stronger here than in areas of Peru and Upper Peru that had borne the full brunt of Spain's attempts to eliminate Indian religion. 107 Hence, the memories to which Bishop Pena Montenegro was so violently opposed remained more vivid here than in many other regions and may have played a more central role in Indian resistance. As Bourbon policies designed to expand governmental influence met 105 106 107

Stern refers to the period from 1742 to 1782 as "the age of Andean insurrection" because of the many rebellions that took place throughout the region. See Stern, Resistance, p. 34. Moreno Yanez, Sublevaciones. Salomon uses this phrase when referring to the Arequipa area, but it seems equally applicable to Quito. Salomon, "Ancestor Cults and Resistance to the State in Arequipa, ca. 1748-1754," in Stern, Resistance, p. 159.

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increasingly violent opposition, colonial authorities restricted even further the independence of Indian communities. One of the best ways to do this was to circumscribe the judicial powers of indigenous leaders. But stripping caciques of their traditional authority was not in itself sufficient to ensure Spanish dominance, and "[T]he resultant failure to govern the highlands effectively provided the degree of isolation necessary for intraindigenous political process to continue." 108 Bourbon policies thus created a vacuum in the native power structure, which was rilled by the only other group of individuals with a preexisting base for mobilizing popular support — healers and shamans. Once again the veil of secrecy that worked so well to protect native traditions from the prying of colonial officials makes it difficult to ascertain just what was happening to the political structure of native communities in the eighteenth century. However, using records of judicial proceedings against four individuals accused of practicing sorcery, anthropologist Frank Salomon has been able to reveal the politicization of the role of healer throughout this period. In each instance, the individual charged had used his knowledge of the supernatural to intimidate both Indians and Europeans, thus gaining considerable power within his community. Ultimately such aggressive tactics could backfire, turning kin and neighbors against the culprit, as in three of the four trials examined by Salomon. But these were certainly the exception. In most instances, the political relationship between a healer-shaman and his community went unheeded by Spanish officials. In 1705, witnesses in the southern highlands near Zaruma testified that their cacique and shaman, Juan Arevalo, had, for many years, used his supernatural powers to threaten and terrorize local residents and boasted of his responsibility for the deaths of some eighteen people and many cattle. In one case, an informant charged that his wife and children had died of bloody fluxes as a result of Arevalo's witchcraft. Others reported incidents where the "victim, following a verbal threat, would find himself 'drying up' in the extremities and neck, and finally throughout his body, until he became emaciated and died." 109 Arevalo reportedly inflicted these illnesses through "disease bundles" that he buried in or near the homes of his enemies; several of these were eventually discovered and introduced as evidence at his t r i a l . n o According to Salomon, these documents reveal an ongoing struggle between the areas traditional agri108 Frank Salomon, "Shamanism and Politics," p. 426. 109 Salomon, "Fury of Andres Arevalo," p. 88. n o The use of "disease bundles" preceded Europeans in the New World and continues to the present. The bundles commonly contain a toad, strands of hair or a piece of cloth from the intended victim, and an "agent of harm such as needles piercing the surrogate, thorns, poisons or noxious filth," bound up together in a package. Ibid., p. 89.

Demographic stagnation

127

cultural society, represented by Arevalo, and a new economic order based on cattle raising; many of his victims were ranchers or native residents who had sided with the newcomers. And although Arevalo's influence was clearly on the wane, his trial records reveal the increasingly political role that many native healers were assuming in rural communities. A similar situation was reported in the northern highlands near Pasto in 1727. n i Witnesses testified that the shaman Lorenzo Buesaquillo was involved in a number of disputes with neighbors and kin and had intimidated his enemies with threats of sickness and death. During his trial, Buesaquillo was charged with the deaths of four persons, including a Spanish official. Another victim was a neighbor who had punished the shaman's children for stealing food; two were former drinking companions. Salomon argues that the underlying tension between Buesaquillo and his neighbors probably stemmed from "agricultural insufficiency," the result of shrinking communal landholdings. Even before the trial began, the shaman and his family had been forced to move to the outskirts of the village. The case against Buesaquillo demonstrates the way that "witchcraft . . . could have served as a trigger mechanism for palliating economic or ecological stress by distributing land users away from the most stressed areas." 112 Another example of the increasingly political role of indigenous healers is an investigation centered in Otavalo in 1703. 1 1 3 Don Salbador Ango, cacique of Otavalo, had sought the services of Juan Roza Pinto, a shaman. Ango requested that Roza use his magical powers to influence the outcome of a lawsuit then before the audiencia. When the intended victim, a Spaniard, became ill but did not die, Ango hired two other shamans whose efforts at supernatural assassination proved equally unsuccessful. Infuriated, Ango sought revenge by reporting Roza to authorities in Quito. When the case finally came to trail, the victim's wife testified that, to counter the spell cast by Roza, she too had retained the services of an Indian healer. Testimony later revealed that Roza was a mestizo; for that reason, his case was eventually turned over to the Office of the Inquisition. Although the records do not indicate what happened to Roza after the change of jurisdiction, his case demonstrates that all sectors of colonial society - Indians, Europeans, and mestizos - attributed great power to those skilled in the magical arts and that all groups attempted to harness that power to influence political events. Whereas the foregoing focuses on shamans whose personal and political fortunes were waning, a case originating on the coast in the late eigh111 Salomon, "Shamanism and Politics," pp. 415—17. 112 Ibid., p. 417. 113 Ibid., pp. 422-4.

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Native society and disease in colonial Ecuador

teenth century reveals that some shamans were powerful enough to wield political authority even against governmental persecution. Sebastian Carlos Gavino was elected alcalde of his community in the parish of Punta Santa Elena in 1786. l l 4 Having served as a legal adviser to Indians involved in litigations against the crown, Carlos was considered a troublemaker by Spanish officials; after the election, he was arrested and charged with criminal sorcery. During his trial, informants revealed that the shaman was exercising power from jail, summoning witnesses to the prison and threatening them with acts of magical aggression to influence their testimony. Following the death of one of Carlos s chief accusers and the transfer of another, the case against him was dropped; presumably he was then free to consolidate his political position. The four men described in these documents had inherited the knowledge, passed down through memories, of generations of Andean healershamans. As such, they represented Spanish failures to extirpate traditional beliefs and practices from the hearts and minds of the Indians of Quito. It is certainly true that, for every healer who was apprehended by colonial authorities, many more were not. Although those who served as repositories for the ancient wisdom occasionally engendered controversy and divisions within their own communities; more often, their presence provided a sense of historical continuity and stability that served as a rallying point from which the community could draw its strength. The survival of the old ways gave Indian communities a measure of control over their lives and environment independent of the Spanish sphere of influence. And, as is so often the case, secrecy strengthened communal bonds. According to historian Inga Clendinnen, writing on the Maya under colonial rule, "in a society where knowledge was power the concealment of the highly significant in the apparently mundane must have been intensely gratifying to those who held the secret key to understanding." 115 The fact that, in the eyes of colonial officials, everyone who knew the secrecy was guilty, whether actively participating in the rituals or not, could only serve to unify native society further. Fear is a powerful weapon: Throughout the colonial period, both Indians and Europeans attempted to exploit the other's fears to gain the advantage. For several centuries, we have known much more about European use of that weapon because it was far more obvious. Spanish settlers and officials terrorized native populations economically and politically from 1492 on. Only recently has it been revealed that Indians had recourse to the same arsenal, although their uses of it were much more surreptitious. Especially during the eighteenth century, Europeans feared native uprisings; they also feared the Indians' ability to manipulate what 114 115

Ibid., pp. 420-2. Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests, p. 159.

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129

they considered to be supernatural powers. This fear of rebellion and magic enabled native society to wield some degree of control over their relations with their colonizers. By exploiting European fears, Indians were able to remain separate and apart from the rest of society in spite of numerous attempts by colonial governments to absorb both them and their resources.

Conclusion

In several respects, the history of Indian peoples under Spanish colonial rule is strikingly similar throughout the New World. Wherever Europeans went they brought disease, and in their wake followed demographic disaster. Along with disease, the Spanish also introduced institutions and practices designed to subjugate native populations and to lay the foundation for a new colonial order. Thus, Indians from central Mexico to the southern highlands of Peru and beyond shared the experience of being brutally exploited under encomienda and repartimiento. Later, they would witness the emergence of latifundia, and many generations would toil on haciendas while others would continue to labor in mines or obrajes. Whatever the task, wherever it was performed, the lives of Spain's Indian subjects were always difficult and too often full of suffering and deprivation. This book has examined the relation between indigenous populations in the north-central highlands of Ecuador and disease, especially infections introduced by Europeans during the sixteenth century. During the preconquest period, the unique characteristics that would later substantially influence the colonial experiences of the region's indigenous inhabitants first became apparent. They had had their own distinct economic and political institutions and had only recently been absorbed into the Inca state. That these societies were only partly assimilated into the Inca imperial system in 1534 meant that their experiences under Spanish rule would differ from those of their more fully integrated southern neighbors. The introduction of Old World infections had transformed the complex, but relatively benign, disease environment of the northern Andes to one of extreme virulence by the middle of the sixteenth century. Pandemics of smallpox, measles, and plague cleared a path for advancing Spanish armies. As a result, within less than sixty years disease, violence, and exploitation had claimed three-fourths of the native population. And whereas the number of indigenous peoples dropped precipitously throughout the Americas, the rate of decline and the length of time over which that decline occurred varied greatly from one area to 130

Conclusion

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another. In highland Ecuador, the wars of the Inca invasion had consumed many lives and much material wealth in the northern Andes. Those losses, combined with the mortality and destruction resulting from the civil war between partisans of Huascar and of Atahualpa, further disrupted local communities. These events explain, at least in part, the unprecedented increase of native populations between 1560 and 1580 in the provinces of Otavalo, Quito, and Cuenca, where losses before 1534 had been most severe. The epidemics of the 1580s devastated native inhabitants throughout the viceroyalty of Peru. But it seems likely that mortality was particularly high in the audiencia of Quito where, because of limited population recovery after 1560, an exceptionally large generation of individuals had grown up without exposure to smallpox and measles. When those diseases appeared in 1585, thousands of infants, children, and young adults perished. However, what seems most striking about the history of Quito's Indian peoples during the sixteenth century is that, in spite of the destruction from the Spanish conquest and pandemics of Old World diseases, native society survived and quickly adapted to life under colonial rule. In fact, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, demographic increase was already under way in the highlands of Ecuador. The rapid recovery of Quito's Indian population is an example of biological and social adaptation; it also demonstrates how much the relationship between native peoples and disease varied from one area to another. Just to the south in Peru and Upper Peru, and far to the north in Mexico and Guatemala, the decline of native populations continued well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And, although social and economic factors obviously exerted great influence over demographic trends in all areas, health and disease patterns were also central. In highland Ecuador, rapid recovery was due to a high rate of natural increase and to immigration, both influenced by such social and economic conditions as the absence of a mining mita and Quito's abundant natural resources. European and Indian societies were distinctly different in many ways, but their concepts about maintaining health and preventing or curing illness were remarkably similar. In both, humoral balance was the key to good health; problems resulted from imbalances, and the role of the healer was to control illness and restore equilibrium through the use of specific ceremonies and herbal remedies. But colonialism dictated that both rulers and subjects perceive differences rather than similarities, and so it was with medical traditions. Throughout the colonial period, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish officials attempted to destroy all practices associated with native religious traditions, including healing rituals. Their failure to do so is a testament to the resilience of

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Indian communities which refused to surrender their memories even under constant pressures. Nevertheless, Quito's Indian communities did undergo significant changes during the colonial period. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish policy of relocating entire populations obliterated many communities and created new ones. As early as 1559, records show fundamental changes in the structure and size of Indian households. The process of social and demographic transformation accelerated during the seventeenth century, as violent opposition to European control ended in many areas. It did not mean, however, that Indians passively acquiesced to the emerging system of social and economic relations. On the surface, cooperation replaced confrontation; but other, more subtle forms of resistance lay buried beneath layers of tension and resentment. Migration proved the most attractive strategy for many because it significantly reduced tribute and labor obligations. By 1675 more than half of Quito's native inhabitants had left their communities of origin. And although caciques and encomenderos opposed the uncontrolled movement of population, Spanish officials, perceiving potential fiscal benefits for the crown, eventually sanctioned mass migration through the creation of ayllus de vagamundos. Quito's modest economic boom during the seventeenth century encouraged Indians to seek improved living and working conditions, and many ended up on haciendas beyond the reach of greedy tribute collectors. With mobility came changes in marriage patterns and household structure. Many Indian males delayed marriage until their middle or late twenties, and some never married at all. In addition, the number of persons marrying someone from outside their ayllu or community of origin rose rapidly. At the same time, the number of extended families declined, and polygamy all but disappeared. But in spite of the remarkable demographic recovery and resilience of Ecuador's highland Indian population during the seventeenth century, native families remained small, and 25 to 50 percent of all couples were reportedly childless. Although disease remained a constant problem throughout this time, epidemics were less frequent and mortality less severe than in the previous century. But this biological adaptation was violently disrupted during the 1690s when epidemics of smallpox, measles, typhus, and diphtheria reduced the native inhabitants by approximately half. In the years that followed, serious labor shortages and increased competition from both European and Peruvian textiles triggered a profound economic depression throughout the audiencia of Quito. During the remainder of the colonial period, disease and natural calamities hampered population recovery. More important, economic depression reinforced demographic stagnation. Lack of economic opportunities discouraged both natural increase and

Conclusion

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immigration, and by the 1780s the number of Indians in the northcentral highlands still had not reached that of the 1670s. Again, Quito's demographic trends contrasted sharply with those of central Mexico and other areas of the viceroyalty of Peru, where natives significantly increased during the eighteenth century. As many areas of the Spanish empire entered an era of unprecedented economic growth, the textile and agricultural sectors of the economy of highland Ecuador languished. This study argues that, to understand the colonial history of Ecuador's Indian peoples, it is necessary to integrate their social and political history with their biological experiences. Perhaps because they appear so obvious, the biological effects of imperialism have often been ignored. But the influence of colonialism on the biology of native peoples was complex and ultimately affected them in a multitude of ways, ranging from dietary habits and immunological responses to reproductive behavior. Such basic considerations as health, illness, nutrition, and sexuality determined both quality and duration of every life and therefore cannot be separated from political economy and governance. This is especially true in colonial societies, where access to food and other resources is rigidly controlled and often withheld by small elites. In colonial Spanish America, illness was not only physiological; it was also political. Thus, the introduction of Old World infections does not fully explain the dramatic decline of native populations. Rather, the combination of epidemic diseases and the simultaneous loss of control over social and economic resources led to the death of millions. Too often, poverty and neglect claimed the lives of many who might otherwise have survived.

Glossary

achaques - an attack (of illness) agudos - dysentery aguardiente - cane alcohol alcalde or dinario — a town councilman alfombrilla - measles ambicamayo - a native herbalist and healer arroba - a measure of weight equal to 11 kilos audiencia - a jurisdictional and administrative unit of the Spanish empire; also, a court of appeals ausente — an absentee Indian ayllu — an extended family unit of native Andean society bilcaturi — a purge derived from the leaves of lupins botica - a licensed pharmacy cabildo - a town council cacique — a leader of an Indian community canafistula - an herbal remedy derived from the seedpods of the native American drumstick tree earache — a disease that attacked all four species of llamoids in 1546 cartas cuentas de tributos — tribute accounts

castas - castes or people of mixed racial ancestry catarro — a cough chicha — corn beer chorillo — a small urban textile factory chucchu - a chill (trembling) circa — a native phlebotamist Citua — an Inca festival of purification cocoliztli — an unidentified disease that struck New Spain in 1545 cofradia - a religious fraternity or brotherhood corregidor - a chief magistrate coto - a goiter disenteria — dysentery encomienda — a grant of Indians from the Spanish crown to an individual; the 134

Glossary

135

recipient, or encomendero, had the right to receive tribute and labor from the Indians enfermedad — an illness enfermo — a sick person esquilencia - scarlet fever fanega - a unit of dry measure equal to 1.6 bushels fiebre — a fever

forastero — an Indian who no longer resided in his or her native community garrottllo - diphtheria hampico - a curer who used poisons huaca - a traditional Andean god or sacred place kamayuj - a group of natives residing in foreign communities and performing agricultural labor in exchange for exotic products that they sent to their home settlements leproso - a leper llaga - a sore llajtalllajtakuna - Indian village(s) mal del valle — dysentery medico — a licensed doctor mindald — an individual specializing in long-distance trade mita — a system of draft labor mitayo — an Indian serving in the mita mitimae — populations relocated throughout the Inca empire naturales — natives

noveno y medio - the Spanish crown's share of the tithe numeration — a census obraje — a textile factory originario — a native inhabitant paperas — m u m p s

paramo — cool, humid highland regions of Ecuador (3,360—4,600 m) parcialidad - a neighborhood unit within a native community pariente — a relative pestelpestilencia — an unidentified disease or epidemic pobre — a poor person polvtllo — wheat rust protector de naturales - protector of Indians: a position within local Spanish bureaucracy protomedicato - & board empowered to examine and license doctors, surgeons, and other medical practitioners protomedico — a medical examiner puna - cold, dry highland regions of Peru and Bolivia (4,000-4,800 m) quichicuan - a native surgeon repartimiento — a rotating labor draft; also used to describe a jurisdiction

136

Glossary

residencia — a review conducted at the end of an official's term runampicuc — a healer who used his skills for evil purposes rupa — a fever (burning) sarampion — measles socayac — "keeper of the heart" who used kernels of corn to divine the cause of illness sonco — a heart tabardetel tabardillo — typhus tambo — an Inca way station tianguez — an Indian market tola — a raised earthern platform on which caciques often built their houses uicza allichac hampicamayoc — a midwife vagamundo — an Indian who no longer resided in his or her native community verrugas — a disease native to northern South America characterized by fever, pain, and tumorlike nodules viruelas — smallpox visita - a visit or census yanacona — an Indian who no longer retained ties to his or her ayllu yuyos — unripened fruit or herbs

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Index

adaptation: biological and social, 1-3, 56, 131

cartas cuentas de tributos, see tribute

aguardiente, see alcohol

Chagas' disease, 20, 25 charity, 40, 44, 112 cholera, 19 chucchu (chill), 13, 27 Cieza de Leon, Pedro de, 13, 14, 15, 16, 36— 7, 38 Citua, 31 Cobo, Bernabe, 13 conquest: Inca, 4-11, 13; Spanish, 32-5 cost of living (Quito), 77, 79

Aguayo, Rodriguez de (archdeacon), 46 Alcedo, Antonio de, 15 alcohol: illegal manufacture of, 111 —12; medical problems caused by, 75, 111-12 alfombrilla, see measles

Almagro, Diego de, 33, 34 ambicamayos, 29, 74

amebiasis, 20 Arriaga, Pablo Joseph de, 29-30, 74, 75 Atahualpa, 11, 13, 23, 32, 33, 131 audiencia: regulation of hospitals, 70, 109; responses to natural disasters, 66, 95, 99; see also public health, legislation ausentes, see forasteros

autopsies, 104, 112 Avedano, Pedro de (visitor), 17, 18, 48 bartonellosis, 20—1, 25 Benalcazar, Sebastian de, 32-3, 34 Bethlemites, 70, 108 blastomycosis, see infections bleeding, see phlebotomy Borja y Aragon, Francisco de (viceroy), 71 boticas, see pharmacies

Bourbon reforms, 108, 112-13, 125-6 cabtldo of Quito: census data, 47-8; legislation, 34, 93, 118; and native relocation, 50—1; regulation of medical profession, 70, 100, 104, 105; see also public health, legislation caciques: and censuses, 52, 82, 83, 97, 116, 117; Inca conquest of, 10; loss of authority, 126, 132; responsibilities of, 7; Spanish conquest of, 33 Canaris, 7 , 9 , n , 13, 33

cotos, see goiters

depression: economic, 114-24 diet and disease, 28, 45, 71 diphtheria, 60, 61, 93, 132 disease environment: before 1534, 19-25, 29, 31; transformation of, 31, 32, 56; seventeenth century, 58, 64, 130; eighteenth century, 108 dysentery: sixteenth century, 60, 61, 63; in the 1690s, 93; eighteenth century, 102, 105, 107 encomiendas, 35

endemicity of disease: before 1534, 20-5; sixteenth century, 37, 43; seventeenth century, 58, 60, 61, 87; eighteenth century, 1 0 1 , 1 0 7 , 112

epidemics: breakdown of social services, 43, 45> 99; changing patterns of, 57-60; documentation on, 60; sixteenth century, 35— 8, 39, 40-3, 45, 46, 49, 51, 57, 62, 71, 75, 92, 130, 131; seventeenth century, 57, 60-1, 62, 67, 78, 89-94, 132; eighteenth century, 100-7, I I 2 > Ir3> 11920,

123

epizootic, 36m 3

149

150

Index

Espejo, Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y: on diseases of eighteenth century, 103, 104, 106; on hospitals, n o , 113; on medical problems caused by alcohol, i n ; writings of, 108

kamayuj, 8

esquilencia, see scarlet fever

labor shortages: eighteenth century, 114, 116, 117, 124, 132 leishmaniasis, 20, 25 lepers, n o

ethnohistory: before 1534, 7—n, 130

leprosos, see lepers

famine, 66, 92, 94, 102, 123 fasting, 74 fear: use of by Indians and Europeans, 128—9 fertility: effects of disease on, 55—6; and family size, 52, 55, 86-7 forasteros: censuses of, 83, 84, 85; and conflict, 125; migration, 79, 82; reforms of Palata, 90 garrotillo, see diphtheria giardiasis, 20 goiters, 62 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe: on disease before 1534, 13—14, 22—3, 27—31 ptcoc, 3 0

healers: as leaders of resistance, 126—9 health and illness: concepts of before 1534 (native), 25—9; controversy over, 25-6; concept of balance in, 26, 28, 29, 72—3, 74, 131; divine retribution, 73, 74; hot and cold categories in, 26, 27; humoral classification in, 25—6, 72; native concepts of, changing, 38—9, 72-6, 131; as related to politics, 133 herpes viruses, 23, 25 hospitals: administration of, 70, 108—9; conditions in, 109—10; as poorhouses, 113; sixteenth century, 43—5 Huascar, n , 13, 22, 131 Huayna Capac, 9, n , 13 Hurtado de Mendoza, Andres (viceroy), 17 imperialism: biological effects of, 1—3, 133 infections: helminthic, 23; respiratory, 23—4, 39, 60, 61, 107 influenza, 19; epidemics, 39, 40-3, 101, 103, 107; introduction of, 32; mortality, 39— 40, 42, 50 Japan disease, 103, 107 Juan, Jorge, 102—3, 118—19, 122

leptospirosis, 22 Lopez de Velasco, Juan, 16, 46 mal de manchas, 104 mal del valle, see dysentery malaria, 63 malnutrition, 43, 66 marriage patterns: changes in native, 51, 53, 87, 88, 132 Matienzo de Peralta, Juan (oidor), 18 measles, 23, 73; introduction of, 13-14, 19, 32, 35; mortality, 18, 40, 46, 50, 57, 92, 93, 130; sixteenth century, 39, 4 0 - 3 , 130, 131; seventeenth century, 57, 60, 61, 62, 71, 87, 91, 93, 98, 132; eighteenth century, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 123 medical practices: European, 45, 66—72; native before 1534, 29—31; restrictions on native, 75—6, 131; survival of native, 73, 74, 124, 125, 128 migration: sixteenth century, 56; seventeenth century, 78, 79, 82, 83, 86, 88, 131-2; eighteenth century, 100, 122, 133 mindales, 8 mita: Inca, 11; Spanish, 56, 77, 78, 79, 82, 89, 90, 116, 124

mitimae, 9 Morales Figueroa, Luis de, 48—9 mumps, 62 natural disasters: seventeenth century, 64—6, 67; of the 1690s, 89, 91, 93, 94, 98; eighteenth century, 100, 106, 114, 123 northern Andes: climate, 6, 8; physical geography, 5—6 noveno, see tithe

Oroya fever, 21 Pachacuti Inca, 8, 9, 22 Palata, Duque de (viceroy): reforms of, 89-91 paper as, see mumps Pena Montenegro (bishop), 75—6, 125

Index peste de japon, see Japan disease

pharmacies, 67, 70, 105 phlebotomy, 28-9, 45, 71, 72, 75 physicians: demand for, 62, 67, 68, 69, 74; salaries of, 68, 69, 91 pinta, 21 Pizarro, Francisco, 5, 32, 33, 34 Pizarro, Gonzalo, 34—5, 36 plague: bubonic, 14, 19; pneumonic, 38, 130 pneumonia, see infections population: estimates of, 12—18, 48—9, 79, 80—1,

114, 119, 120

population change: and absenteeism, 82—8; before 1534, 14-15; sixteenth century, 34, 42, 46-56, 57, 130-1, 132; seventeenth century, 76-88, 95—9; eighteenth century, 100, 113—24, 133

population data, 13, 46-9, 79—81, 95-8, 114, 120 protomedkato, 67, 68, 69 protomedko, 67, 104, 108

public health: funding, 66—7, 68, 108—9, 112; legislation, 43-6, 62, 67, 104, 108, no—11, 112, 113; and the poor, 69, 112-13; threats to, 64, 112, 113 Puelles, Pedro de, 34 Puruha, 7, 9 Qollahuaya, 27 quarantine, 45, 62-3, 71, 72, 92 Quito: foundation of city, 33-4 rebellions, see resistance Relation de Zaruma, 48, 49 relapsing fever, 22, 25 relocation: of individuals, 51; of native communities, 50—1, 82, 132 resistance: and memories, 76, 125, 128; and secrecy, 76, 128; survival of, 76, 132; eighteenth century, 100, 123, 125 rupa (fever), 13, 27 Sancho Paz Ponce de Leon, Juan, 1 5 , 8 1 Santa Cruz Pachacuti, Juan, 13 Santillan, Hernando de (audiencia president), 15, 17, 18, 44 sarampion, see measles scarlet fever, 105 seasonality of disease, 2 7 - 8 , 39, 63, 107

shaman, see healers smallpox, 23, 73; increased virulence of, 356; introduction of, 13-14, 19, 32, 35, 55; mortality, 18, 40, 42, 46, 50, 57, 92, 93; sixteenth century, 39, 40-3, 130, 131; seventeenth century, 57, 60, 62, 63, 87, 90, 91, 93, 98, 132; eighteenth century, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107 socayac, 29

sorcery, 76, 126—9 syphilis: origins of, 21-2, 32; eighteenth century, 102-3, IO 7 tabardete, see typhus tabardillo, see typhus

textile industry: decline of, 94, 106, 114, 117, 118, 122, 132 tithe, 44, 70, 109 Toldeo, Francisco de (viceroy), 47-8 Topa Inca, 9 Torres y Portugal, Fernando de (viceroy), 4 1 2, 45> 7i toxoplasmosis, 20 tribute: Incas, n ; records, 80; Spanish, 52, 56, 66, 90, 92, 114, 124 tuberculosis, see infections typhoid fever, 20 typhus: mortality, 50, 58, 92; origins of, 20, 22—3, 25; sixteenth century, 36-8, 41; seventeenth century, 60, 61, 64, 92, 93, 132; eighteenth century, 104, 107 Ulloa, Antonio de, 1 0 2 - 3 , 118-19, 122 uta, see leishmaniasis Vasquez de Acuna, Juan, 46—7, 49, 79—80 Vega, Garcilaso de la, 13, 2 0 - 1 , 27, 31 verrugas, see bartonellosis Villalengua, Juan Josef de (visitor), 120 viruelas, see smallpox wheat rust, 93, 102 witchcraft, see sorcery yanaconas, 5 1 , 83 yaws, 21 zoonoses, 19-20

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