PICTOGRAPHS IN THE ANDES

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Pictographs in the Andes: The Huntington Free Library Quechua Catechism Latin American Indian Literatures Journal vol. 12, no. 1, 1996.

William P. Mitchell and Barbara H. Jaye, Monmouth University

Introduction After the conquest of the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Roman Catholic clergy developed graphic media to help surmount the linguistic barriers between them and their varied flocks. Among the earliest and best known are the Testerian Catechisms of Mexico, most of which were produced in the sixteenth century (Duran 1984, Glass 1975). These books portrayed the catechism, a standard handbook of Roman Catholic doctrine, in pictographic form. Less familiar to scholars are the pictographic catechetical works from the Andes, all of which were collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Huntington Free Library's pictographic catechism discussed and partially reproduced here (referred to in our text as the Huntington Catechism) is an exceptional example of these Andean works. 1 It is not only one of the earliest, most beautiful, and complete of the Andean catechisms, but it helps shed light on two issues concerning their nature and origin. It is, first, a mnemonic aid rather than a written text that reproduces speech and, second, its iconography clearly points to Old World rather than New World origins.

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PICTOGRAPHS IN THE ANDES

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Figure 2. The Sixth Commandment (4R Line 6)

the opening phrase of each doctrine or prayer. These captions or incipits are crucial to identifying the meaning of the pictographs.

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ft~ L~?t Jj!~. Figure 1. The Apostles' Creed (recto)

'The Huntington Catechism The Huntington Catechism consists of twenty-one surviving lined sheets, each 16 by 11 centimeters in size, covered with inked pictographs. The pictographs are usually recognizable, provided one knows the standard text. Captions at the top of each page in European script, generally in Quechua although a few words are in Spanish and Latin, key

Except for one page (3 verso), the pictographs and captions are found on the recto (or right hand side) only. The drawings on 3 verso (the back side of3 recto) and four figures at the bottom of20 recto have been added in pencil by a different, untrained hand. The inked pictographs are ca. 1.1 centimeters in height. The penciled additions are a little larger, ranging from 1.4 to 1.7 centimeters. In neither hand do the incipits nor drawings fit between the notebook lines or follow them closely. Two or three sheets are probably missing from the beginning of the manuscript,because the Sign of the Cross, Paternoster, and Ave Maria in the original hand are absent. These three prayers usually precede the Creed (which begins the Huntington) in colonial and modern catechisms, although the Sign of the Cross is sometimes omitted in other Andean manuscripts. The pencil addition on 3 verso is the Paternoster. The Huntington Catechism is of both aesthetic and ethnographic interest. Gracefully drawn, the work is visually unified (except for the two pages with later 'emendations) by the charming pictographs, a unity that is evidenced in the Apostle's Creed reproduced here in full (see Fig. I). Pictographic groups throughout the manuscript are equally engaging. The dancing figure in a bubbly circle that represents life everlasting at the end of the Creed (Fig. 1, line 6)2 delightfully expresses the joy in that life. The sixth commandment's call for chastity is effectively depicted by an observer's upright hand signifying "do not" to a man whose arms and leg encircle a woman in an unchaste embrace (Fig. 2). A startling illustration of "turn thine eyes of mercy toward us" in the Salve Regina shows Mary as a crowned woman holding an eye in each hand above two kneeling people (Fig. 3), an iconography that seems unique to the Huntington.

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Figure 3. The Salve Regina (3R, Line 3)

The accession history of the Huntington Catechism is dim, but the 3 manuscript was probably acquired by the library in the 1930s or 1940s. Page 17 recto of the manuscript contains a stamp that was readable in 1978 as "Republica de Chile," but that is now illegible by either natural or ultraviolet light. The manuscript cannot be precisely dated, but the paper, binding, handwriting, and details of clothing in the pictographs point to the mid-nineteenth century, approximatel y the period in which we find the first clear descriptions of Andean pictographic catechisms. There is no provenance information, but it is likely that the Quechua in the incipits is that spoken in the Lake Titicaca area (Teofilo Altamirano, Personal Communication, 14 February 1996), situating the Huntington in the same 4 region as the other Andean pictographic catechisms. The lined paper used in the catechism, which looks like ordinary Andean school-notebook paper, clearly indicates a date no earlier than the nineteenth century. It is machine-made with pale-green lines 0.8 of a centimeter apart. There are no chain lines or visible watermarks. These pages were originally bound in leather, a format that suggests the book may have been manufactured as a ledger, a widely-used medium for the production of nineteenth and early twentieth century Native American arts. The manuscript has been rebound in three stitched gatherings but the original cover has been preserved separately. This cover is a rough-tanned leather of which the fur, although in a fragile condition caused by age and slight insect damage, is still present. It is approximately 16.5 by 12 centimeters, a measurement which is not exact because of wrinkling, but the hand-cut leather was probably never squared. Leather bindings were common in nineteenth-century ledgers, although usually smoothly finished and machine cut. The hand-cutting of the binding, therefore, suggests some personal care in the manufacture. Before rebinding, the manuscript had been stitched with white and blue thread.

PICTOGRAPHS IN THE ANDES

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Figure 4. 1be Sacrament of Baptism (2R, Line I)

The captions similarly point to the last century, because they are written with black ink in a neat nineteenth-century hand. The style of clothing depicted in the pictographs narrows the time to the mid-century: the capes, jackets, pants, and the bicorne (Fig. 1, lines 1 and 2) and high-crowned wideawake (Fig. 1, lines 3-6) hats worn by the men were common in Europe from about 1840 to 1850 and may have arrived in the Andes as early as 1845 (David Fleming, personal communication 26 April 1992). We have no knowledge of authorship. However, because the drawings depict the clergy primarily in diocesan clothing, it is unlikely that the manuscript was produced under the auspices of any of the monastic orders. These orders were very jealous and competitive (Marfa Benavides, Personal Communication, 27 September 1993) and it is likely that they would have provided more evidence of authorship, although one of the hats depicted (a biretta or bonete) was worn by both diocesan clergy and the Jesuits (Fig. 4).

The Text of the Huntington Catechism The official history of approved New World Catechisms begins with the basic proselytic texts established by the Third Lima Provincial Council in 1582-1583 and published in 1584 and 1585. These were (in their sixteenth-century spellings): Doctrina Christiana, Conjessionario, and Tercer Catecismo (Barnes 1992a; Castillo Arroyo 1966:45, n. 1). Pereiia (1985) provides a photographic facsimile of all these sixteenth-century texts, known in this composite form to English-speaking scholars as the Third Lima Catechism. Fray Luis Jer6nimo de Ort~ probably worked on

6 LATIN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURES JOURNAL the Third Lima Catechism (Cook 1992, Tord 1992). In 1598, he published the Symbolo Catholico Indiano that provided additional Quechua and Aymara translations of the Catechism, as well as much cosmological and historical material, and gave instructions for the teaching of the catechism to the natives (Heras 1992:10, Or~ 1992 [1598:400 ft]). Through the twentieth century the Third Lima Catechism and the Symbolo Catholico Indiano (which closely follows the Third Lima Catechism) have remained the standard works for Catholic clergy working with indigenous peoples in South America. We have used the Third Lima Catechism wherever possible to interpret the Huntington and to provide our Quechua texts. 5

PICTOGRAPHS IN THE ANDES

TABLE I: THE DIFFERING ORDER OF THE HUN11NGTON AND mlRD UMA CA TECHISMS

Ur, Hu"lin,ton Cal«lrism

Such variations in standard catechisms have complicated our identification of the texts in the Huntington manuscript. As already mentioned, the Huntington lacks the Sign of the Cross and the Ave Maria, while the Paternoster has been added in a different hand. Table 1 illustrates the difference in order between the Huntington and Third Lima Catechism. The pictographs in the Huntington, moreover, do not always follow the standard Quechua and Spanish catechisms exactly. For example, in the Credo (Fig. 1, line 2) the catechism in Quechua, Spanish, and English clearly specifies Jesus Christ as the Son of God the Father, but the pictographic grouping depicts a child with a woman, portraying Jesus, therefore, as the son of Mary. Our greatest problems in interpretation, however, resulted from the fact that the grouping of catechetical questions and responses in the Huntington on pages 9R through 17R does not coincide with those in any of the standard catechetical texts that we

TIl. TId" IJmq Cateclrum

I R: The Apostle's Cre