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The Inca Empire The city of Machu Picchu

         The Inca Empire made extensive use of the Quichua language.  As the official language of the empire, it served as a valuable unifying factor in an empire with very little unity of any other kind.  Every tribe who had been conquered or assimilated by the Inca, regardless of tradition of culture, was united under the same language.  In the Inca Empire, Quichua was used for any trading or administrative task (Peru 14).  This helped to make the rapidly expanding Inca Empire more stable.  The Inca allowed a culture to practice whatever religion or cultural traditions they had traditionally practiced (Peru 14).  Most of the cultures of conquered or assimilated tribes were relatively similar.  They all generally believed in the power of nature and sacred objects which they called huacas.  A huaca was any object, such as a rock, that a people declared to be sacred (Peru 14).
 The Quichua language changed as a result of its contact with other tribes.  There was no written Quichua language, so it was easily modified (Peru 14).  As a result, there are many different customs and religious practices of indigenous people associated with indigenous culture.   By the time the Spanish arrived the sixteenth century, the number of Quichua speaking people in South America was approximately twenty million (Peru 14).

        For the Inca, Quichua was an instrument that ensured that their way of life was allowed to thrive for a long period of time in the Andean region. This created a means of unity throughout a divided area. Without the Quichua language, the Inca would not have been able to conduct trade as efficiently or transfer populations, which was vital to the survival and expansion of the Inca Empire (Von Hagen 45).

        The arrival of the Spanish presented an obstacle for the survival of Quichua speaking cultures. The Spanish were intent on teaching the indigenous Christianity.  They began to suppress indigenous culture and religion.  However, the amount of indigenous people who spoke the language made it necessary that the missionaries teach the Bible in both Spanish and Quichua (Peru 15).  As a result, the Quichua were able to identify with each other because of their language and differentiated themselves from non-speakers.  This helped to create a Quichua identity among the indigenous people. As a result of rapid Inca expansionism and the unity created by having a common language when the Spanish arrived, Quichua survives and is spoken by as much as 47% of Peru today (Von Hagen 45).

Works Consulted

"Peru:  The Resilience of Quechuan Culture...And Tongue," UNESCO Sources No. 104
     (9/1998): 14-15.

Von Hagen, Victor Wolfgang.  Realm of the Incas.  New York: New American Library,
          1961.