A thousand years ago, so legends tell, the Cara Indian nation founded cities on the Pacific along the northern coast of Ecuador. Gradually the Cara penetrated beyond the edges of the steaming jungle and invaded the highland valleys. By language the Cara can be related to the Chibcha-speaking peoples of Colombia and Central America, but historians say that they arrived on the Ecuadoran coast from the sea, and little is known of their prehistory. They migrated inland along various river valleys until they reached the high Andean plateaus where they conquered an ancient people called the Quiots. They then spread rapidly northward over the highlands of northern Ecuador. Here their wanderings ceased, and they settled beneath the snowcapped volcanoes of the central cordilleras (mountain ranges) of Ecuador.
The Cara were excellent agriculturalists who used tools made from bones, stone, and wood. They cultivated great expanses of land and raised corn, beans, quinoa (a cereal native to the Andes), chocho beans, and very tiny sour cherries. They also hunted deer, rabbits, and birds. Their economy and agricultural methods were so sound that their pattern of planting and harvesting in harmony with nature's cycles survives even today. This has allowed the Indians to endure conquest by the Incas and Spanish and emerge into our modern era with their basic traditions intact.
Skilled at weaving, they wove mantles of cotton which they wrapped around their bodies, fastening them at the shoulder with copper or silver pins and girdling them at the waist with brightly colored belts.
The houses that the Cara built were basically the same as the typical Indian house in Ecuador today--square buildings made of wattle and mud cement, with high-pointed thatched roofs.
In 1455, the Incas, rulers of Peru and Bolivia, began expanding northward. After sixteen years of bloody struggle, the Cara--the last of the independent tribes of ancient Ecuador--fell to Incan might. The last Cara leader died in battle near the famous Indian market town of Otavalo, and his daughter was taken in marriage by the Inca conqueror, Huayna Capac Atahualpa. The last ruling emperor of the Incas is believed to be descended from his marriage.
The Incas introduced their religion, temples, and monasteries, their priests and virgins of the sun, along with their many fiestas and liturgies, into the region. Incan sun worship became the official religion. But they allowed the local Indian groups to worship some of their own gods, so the actual Incan influence extended mainly into the material realm as opposed to the religious. Indeed the Incan rulers, though they were in control of the Cotopaxi Valley region for little more than half a century, were so impressed by the Cara's agricultural expertise that they adopted many of their methods and reorganized their whole society accordingly.
The conquered people were organized into self-sufficient groups who worked both their own lands and those of their conquerors, for in practice all land belonged to the emperor. They sent their sons to serve in the Incan army and worked on the magnificent system of roads that the Incans developed in the territory. In turn, the emperor supplied food and clothing in case of famine or disaster. In general, a benign and benevolent system was established in the whole Incan empire. Some of the other
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