The Peruvians

This is a concise but comprehensive history of Peru and its people dating back to 1100. From the intro: "Confusion of Names.-Great confusion exists in regard to the names of the races and tribes occupying the western world at the time of its discovery, conquest and colonization by Europeans. It was due to an error that the native races of America came to be called Indians in the first place, and after the error was discovered it was thought unnecessary to devise another name by which to designate the red race. This but illustrates the first difficulty that confronts us in an attempt to write accurately and intelligibly, albeit briefly and concisely, of the people who are the subject of this book. We have called them in the title to the book, "The Peruvians," which is our English form of the Spanish "Peruanos." The latter means the natives of Peru. Looking at a modem map of South America, however, we may observe that the country, now called Peru, is bounded on the south by Chile, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the east by Brazil, and on the north by Ecuador, and has an area of about 450,000 square miles. The people of whom we are writing occupied in the early years of the Sixteenth Century a country which knew no such boundaries. It was not until the early part of the Nineteenth Century that the states of Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile were definitively partitioned off from a country which has retained the name of Peru. The Piruas.-Previous to the Eleventh Century of the Christian era, there existed a people in the highlands of the Andes, in the vicinity of what is now the boundary between Peru and Bolivia, who departed, leaving behind them the evidences of their having been somewhat advanced in civilization. They were the Hatun Runas, or, as they are also called, the Piruas. Not unlikely the name of Peru was remotely derived from the Piruas. However that may be, Biru was the name of a chief in the territory south of the Isthmus of Panama. His country was visited by two Spanish explorers in 1515. For ten years thereafter the "land of Biru" or "Peru" was the most southerly land on the Pacific coast known to the Spaniards, and was much talked of among Spanish adventurers as a land supposed to be full of gold. As it was a long time after this that the name Peru was restricted to a single South American state, embracing but a small portion of territory which formerly went by that name, it seems quite as proper that we should call the people of whom we are writing, "Peruvians," as that we should designate them as Indians in the first place, or seek any other name to confer upon them."