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Jose Gabriel was carefully educated at Lima; and he returned to the mountains, after having in vain solicited from the court of Spain the title of Marquis d'Oropesa, which belongs to the family of the Inca Sayri-Tupac. His spirit of vengeance drove him to excite the highland Indians, irritated against the corregidor Arriaga, to insurrection. The people acknowledged him as a descendant of their true sovereigns, and as one of the children of the sun. The young man took advantage of the popular enthusiasm which he had excited by the symbols of the ancient grandeur of the empire of Cusco; he frequently bound round his forehead the imperial fillet of the Incas; and he artfully mingled christian ideas with the memorials of the worship of the sun.

In the commencement of his campaigns he protected ecclesiastics and Americans of all colours. As he only broke out against Europeans, he made a party even among the Mestizoes and the Creoles; but the Indians, distrusting the sincerity of their new allies, soon began a war of extermination against every one not of their own race. Jose Gabriel Tupac-Amaru, of whom I possess letters in which he styles himself Inca of Peru, was not so cruel as his brother Diego, and especially his nephew Andres Condorcanqui, who, at the age of 17, displayed great talents, but a sanguinary character. This insurrection, which appears to me very little known in Europe, lasted

nearly two years. I shall give more minute information with regard to it in the historical account of my travels. Tupac-Amaru had made himself master of the provinces of Quispicanchi, Tinta, Lampa, Azangara, Caravaja, and Chumbivilcas, when the Spaniards made him and his family prisoners. They were all quartered in the city of Cusco.

The respect with which the pretended Inca had inspired the natives was so great, that, notwithstanding their fear of the Spaniards, and though they were surrounded by the soldiers of the victorious army, they prostrated themselves at the sight of the last of the children of the sun, as he passed along the streets to the place of execution. The brother of Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, known by the name of Diego Christobal Tupac-Amaru, was executed long after the termination of this revolutionary movement of the Peruvian Indians. When the chief fell into the hands of the Spaniards, Diego surrendered himself voluntarily, to profit by the pardon promised him in the name of the king. A formal convention was signed between him and the Spanish general, on the 26th January 1782, at the Indian village of Siquani, situated in the province of Tinta. He lived tranquilly in his family, till through an insidious and distrustful policy he was arrested on pretext of a new conspiracy.

The horrors exercised by the natives of Peru

towards the whites in 1781 and 1782 in the Cordillera of the Andes were repeated in part, twenty years after, in the trifling insurrections which took place in the plain of Riobamba. It is therefore of the greatest importance, even for the security of the European families established for ages in the continent of the new world, that they should interest themselves in the Indians, and rescue them from their present barbarous, abject, and miserable condition.

CHAPTER VII.

Whites, Creoles, and Europeans.-Their civilization.-Inequality of their fortunes.-Negros.-Mixed casts.-Proportion between the sexes.-Longevity according to the difference of races.-Sociability.

AMONGST the inhabitants of pure origin the whites would occupy the second place, considering them only in the relation of number. They are divided into whites born in Europe, and descendants of Europeans born in the Spanish colonies of America or in the Asiatic islands. The former bear the name of Chapetones or Gachupines, and the second that of Criollos. The natives of the Canary islands, who go under the general denomina tion of Isleños (islanders), and who are the gerans of the plantations, are considered as Europeans. The Spanish laws allow the same rights to all whites; but those who have the execution of the laws endeavour to destroy an equality which shocks the European pride. The government, suspicious of the Creoles, bestows the great places exclusively on the natives of Old Spain, For some years back they have disposed at Madrid even of the most trifling employments in the administration of the customs and the tobacco revenue. At an epoch when every

thing tended to a uniform relaxation in the springs of the state, the system of venality made an alarming progress. For the most part it was by no means a suspicious and distrustful policy, it was pecuniary interest alone which bestowed all employments on Europeans. The result has been a jealousy and perpetual hatred between the Chapetons and the Creoles. The most miserable European, without education, and without intellectual cultivation, thinks himself superior to the whites born in the new continent. He knows that, protected by his countrymen, and fa- ' voured by chances common enough in a country where fortunes are as rapidly acquired as they are lost, he may one day reach places to which the access is almost interdicted to the natives, even to those of them distinguished for their talents, knowledge, and moral qualities. The natives prefer the denomination of Americans to that of Creoles. Since the peace of Versailles, and, in particular, since the year 1789, we frequently hear proudly declared, “I am not a Spaniard, I am an American!" words which betray the workings of a long resentment. In the eye of law every white Creole is a Spaniard; but the abuse of the laws, the false measures of the colonial government, the example of the United States of America, and the influence of the opinions of the age, have relaxed the ties which formerly united more closely the Spanish Creoles to the European Spaniards. A wise ad

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