With the assistance he now obtained from his
Peruvian kindred, he acquired a familiarity with the history of
the great Inca race, and of their national institutions, to an
extent that no person could have possessed, unless educated in
the midst of them, speaking the same language, and with the same
Indian blood flowing in his veins. Garcilasso, in short, was the
representative of the conquered race; and we might expect to find
the lights and shadows of the picture disposed under his pencil,
so as to produce an effect very different from that which they
had hitherto exhibited under the hands of the Conquerors.
Such, to a certain extent, is the fact; and this circumstance
affords a means of comparison which would alone render his works
of great value in arriving at just historic conclusions. But
Garcilasso wrote late in life, after the story had been often
told by Castilian writers. He naturally deferred much to men,
some of whom enjoyed high credit on the score both of their
scholarship and their social position. His object, he professes,
was not so much to add any thing new of his own, as to correct
their errors and the misconceptions into which they had been
brought by their ignorance of the Indian languages and the usages
of his people. He does, in fact, however, go far beyond this;
and the stores of information which he has collected have made
his work a large repository, whence later laborers in the same
field have drawn copious materials.
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