Culli

Culli, also called Ilinga, was the language of the Andean highlands of northern Peru. It was the tongue of at least three pre-Inca polities, including Huamachuco, whose famous oracle of the thunder god Catequil at Namanchugo was later wrecked by Atahualpa and Spanish priests.

The Incas conquered the region around 1470 and installed mitmaq settlers, and in 1553 Augustinian missionaries founded the new town of Huamachuco on the Inca settlement. Poorly recorded, Culli survives mainly in word lists, including an eighteenth-century manuscript compiled by Bishop Martínez Compañón, and in loanwords and place names such as Huamachuco, whose chuco means land. Its wider relationships remain undetermined, and Spanish gradually replaced it.