This volume, a description of Andean priests under Inca and early Spanish rule, contains much varied information that is often known but heretofore has been dispersed. According to the author, there existed under the Inca three types of priests. First, there were priests of the Inca state religion, who disappeared with the fall of the Inca. Second, there were priests of the regional deities, who were also maintained by the state, and who had extended their influence by adopting lesser gods as their gods’ sons and daughters. Under the Spaniards, such priests either disappeared or became strictly local priests. Third, there were local priests, healers, and sorcerers, maintained by their clients. They survived the Spanish conquest.
The author does not consider the possibility of a priestly hierarchy under the Spaniards, since the model of Andean religion she uses does not permit it. She analyzes the recruitment of priests, their incomes, and their mutual relationships, with special attention paid to women. Finally, Gareis observes that the state, regional, and local religions were really the same. One also notes that Gareis uses the myth of the war of the gods to explain how the conquest was viewed by local people.
The work is based on exhaustive readings in the Archivo de Indias, and on published sources and studies. Some observations are new, e.g., Gareis’s analysis of the ways the Inca manipulated local and regional deities by converting them into parts of the state religion and intermediaries between the Inca and the local population.
The basic defect of the book is the author’s inability to use Andean information free of intermediaries. She does not use proper names, titles, or prayers as sources of information. Thus, she can state that among the Inca there apparently had been no calling from a god as a condition for becoming a priest. Yet, she does refer to the source that contains the Inca prayer for such an intervention by the deity. The author also constructs a tautology by classifying the priests according to the data on their gods, and the gods according to the data on their priests. Moreover, some statements are obviously erroneous, e.g., the author believes that Pača Kamaq’s cult disappeared because of Lima’s vicinity. Nevertheless the book can be used as a guide to research, sources, and problems concerning Andean priests in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
