Chincha

The Chincha were a coastal people of the oasis valleys of southwestern Peru, whose kingdom flourished from 900 to 1450 on ground shaped earlier by Paracas, Nazca and Wari. Their name means ocelot in Quechua; they worshipped a jaguar god and claimed feline ancestors.

From the eleventh century they built adobe pyramids and palaces at their capital La Centinela and made their valley the busiest commercial centre on the Peruvian coast. A Spanish chronicle records thirty thousand households: llama caravans carried goods to Cusco and the Collao, while sailing balsa rafts travelled far along the Pacific, perhaps to Central America.

Around 1480 the kingdom was absorbed into Tawantinsuyu, whose Inca rulers gave the name Chinchaysuyu to their northern quarter. Spaniards reached the valley in 1534, but disease and disorder cut its population by an estimated ninety-nine percent within eighty-five years, and Chincha never recovered.