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In the 1530s, a handful of Spaniards conquered an immense Andean empire. Thirty years later, some Andean subjects of what was by then an immense Spanish empire resolved not to worship the Spaniards' God. Their resistance was associated with a Quechua ritual phrase, "Taki Onqoy," usually translated literally as "disease of the dance."1 This movement was suppressed rapidly by Spanish authority and left no traces except in a few Spanish documents.
Before the 1960s, historians gave the Taki Onqoy only passing attention.2 But in 1964, a brief article in a Peruvian journal touched off at least three decades of close study and interpretation. The sudden interest arose partly from the discovery and publication of new sources. But the fundamental stimulus was a massive surge of interest among South Americans and foreigners in this era in indigenous Andean culture. For the first time, many Spanish-speaking Peruvians, Bolivians, and Ecuadorians began to trace their national identity not to the Spanish conquerors but to the Andean conquered.
The new interest in Andean culture prompted historical questions that had not been asked before with such insistence. Did Andean peoples resist the new order? Had any authentic Andean identity survived and held its own? Since the mid-1960s, the Taki Onqoy has fascinated historians because it suggested answers to these questions.
Today the Taki Onqoy offers students of history another kind of opportunity: a case study in the historiographical process. As a historical problem, the Taki Onqoy is significant, self-contained, and extremely limited in its sources. Thus it is not an epic canvas but a miniature scene in which the brushstrokes may be clearly discerned. A study of the available sources and the use to which they have been put may offer insights into how historians select and interpret evidence and what is at stake.
Sources
A generation after the conquest, Spanish priest Cristobal de Molina preached in Quechua in front of the cathedral steps in Cuzco. Around 1574 he wrote the Relacion de las fabulas y ritos de los incas, a treatise on the old Andean religion.3 The work catalogued the indigenous huacas-the countless divinities, large and small, embodied in the Andean landscape. At the end of the book, Molina brought his story up to date: "It was ten years...