Tallan

The Tallanes were related peoples of the desert coast of northern Peru, in the Piura and Chira river valleys, whose name derives from the taclla, the Andean foot-plough. Drawn together from highland, forest and sea-borne migrants between about 100 BC and AD 700, they lived in independent, interdependent chiefdoms with their own dialects.

The Chimú overran them after conquering Lambayeque in 1375, but the Tallanes kept their chiefs and customs under tribute until the Inca Túpac Yupanqui incorporated them around 1470. They revolted about 1510 and Huayna Cápac crushed them with mass executions at the mouth of the Chira; in the Inca civil war their support for Huáscar brought reprisals.

The Spaniards arrived in 1532 and soon gathered them into reductions. Their Tallana tongue was recorded by Bishop Martínez Compañón in a word list of 1783.