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returned to their lands they took something they had learnt of the courtly language, and spoke it with such pride among their own people, as the language of people they felt to be divine, that they caused such envy that the rest would desire and strive to learn it … In this manner, with sweetness and ease, without the particular effort of schoolmasters, they learnt and spoke the lengua general of Cuzco in the domain of little less than 1,300 leagues’ [4,000 kilometres] extent which those kings had won.24

To these apparently benign methods, the Incas had added the harsher one of repopulating some areas with colonies of Quechua-speaking immigrant families, also known as mitmaj, ‘transplants’. These were sent with the aim of diluting and pacifying the original population. There were ten to twelve thousand of them, settled with some finesse:25 ‘They were passed to other villages or provinces of the temper and manner of those from which they issued; because if they were from a cold country they were taken to a cold country, and from hot, to hot … They were given estates in the fields and lands for their labours and a place to make their houses.’26

The spreads of Chibcha, Guaraní, Mapudungun

Ňamandu Ru Ete tenondegua

…

Oámyvyma,

oyvárapy mba’ ekuaágui,

okuaararávyma

ayvu rapytará i

oikuaa ojeupe.

mboapy mba’ ekuaágui,

okuaararávyma,

ayvu rapyta oguerojera,

ogueroyvára Ňande Ru.

Yvy oiko’ eÿre,

pytŭ yma mbytére,

mba’e jekuaa’ eÿre,

ayvu rapytarā i oguerojera,

ogueroyvára

Ňamandu Ru Ete tenondegua.

True Father Ňamandú, the First One…

Standing up straight

from the wisdom in his own godhead

and in virtue of his creating wisdom

conceived the origin of human language

and made it form part of his own godhead.

Before the earth existed

amidst the primordial darkness

before there was knowledge of things

he created what was to be the foundation of human language

and True First Father Ňamandú

made it form part of his own godhead.

Ayvu Rapyta, ‘The Foundation of Human Language’,

Mbyá-Guaraní creation myth27

Gradually we move away from the animals more and more. In the first times, the difference was tiny. All living beings had an Aché body, a person’s body, and behaved as such. The main likeness was the possession of javu, language.

Aché Pyvé, ‘The Beginnings of the Aché’,

Aché-Guaraní creation myth28

Far less is known about the careers of the other languages that had become widespread before the advent of the Spaniards.

The altiplano of Cundinamarca in the northern Andes was largely monolingual in the Chibcha (or Muysca) language when the Spanish arrived in 1536; the area was not politically unified at the time, however, and with at least three major centres at Tunja (Hunza) in the north, Bogotá (Muykyta) in the south, and Sogamoso (Sugamuši), a major religious centre in the northeast, there was also some difference in dialects. The conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (like Cortés, another lawyer at large) had brought interpreters with him from the coast, but, in view of the coastal languages as they are now (for example, Ika, Kogi), it is unlikely that they could have communicated in anything like their own language: more probably, they had some knowledge of Chibcha from traditional trade links between the mountains and the coast. Although there was already a clear social hierarchy among the Chibcha, and military organisation associated with formal campaigns among the different centres (as well as their non-Chibcha-speaking neighbours), there is no evidence that the language had been spread by any political, military or economic influence. More likely, the language had simply been established by the tribes who had settled there. And their ethnic group had clearly been there for some time: closely related languages had evolved a couple of hundred kilometres to the north-east, among the Duit (nowadays extinct), and the Tunebo (also known as Uwa), who still live, and speak their language, on the eastern slopes of the Andes.

Even less is known about the background of Tupí-Guaran