Huaman

'Huaman (or Waman, pronounced and spelled Guaman in some areas) is today surname original to the Andes mountains of South America with mystical and historically significant connotations. The term also appears in many modern place names in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Peruvian examples include Huamanga, a city in Ayacucho; Santiago de Huaman in Piura and the Inca fortress temple Sacsayhuaman located above the city of Cuzco The archaeologist Edward P. Lanning in "Peru before the Incas" (1967), called one regional cultural style dating to the immediately pre-Inca Late Intermediate Period (circa 1000 CE - 1476 CE) "Huaman Hualqui" -- although there is no oral history of what the small regional state that produced the style called itself.

In the Quechua language, the basic meaning of Huaman identifies a divine bird associated with the raptor hawk, "Buteo polyosoma''.

Huaman was a rank in the Inca army and state organization. The military rank of Huaman was the equivalent of a "captain" and an Apu Huaman was the equivalent of a general. Officers in these ranks wore special insignia on the battlefield and tunics with bold red, black and white areas imitating the plumage of the rufous hawk. After the Incas conquered or annexed a (non-Inca) polity or relocated populations as mitimae colonies, the Inca state often placed men who had served at the rank of Huaman (captain) in the army as local rulers ("curacas") of units of 100, 500 or one thousand households and men who had been Apu Huaman military commanders were often appointed as co-regents of royal Inca governors to rule provinces ideally composed of a hunu of ten thousand households. An Apu Huaman co-regent served as the Inca provincial governor's "segunda persona" assistant and alternative. These ranks were not restricted to ethnic Incas; individuals from other ethnic groups or polities could and did achieve the ranks of Huaman and 'Apu Huaman'. The native Andean chronicler, Guaman Poma de Ayala, discusses how his own grandfather was appointed to the rank of Apu Huaman in the army led by Tupac Yupanqui and was later appointed as the co-regent of his original homeland, reorganized as the Inca province of Huanuco in the central Andean highlands of what is today Peru. In civil administration, one "huamanga" -- a population of 1000 married couple households-- was a basic unit of governance and labor tribute assigned to a leader often identified by the title, Huaman. Accountants (quipucamayocuna) kept track of population counts on quipu cord strings and the state rearranged governmental units to adjust to population changes. The Inca state often allocated land to the local rulers placed or endorsed as curacas and often built them houses in the Inca style in administrative enclaves within the major towns of the groups they governed.

In histories of the Inca era Spaniards composed from oral recitations, a number of pre-contact Incas were identified with "names" incorporating the term Huaman to indicate their rank and duties. Examples include

Tarco Huaman Inca, son of Inca Mayta Capac, a cousin of Capac Yupanqui and a grandson of Lloque Yupanqui; Huaman Achachi, a brother of the Sapa (supreme) Inca, Tupac Yupanqui, and Huaman Taysi Inca, a son of Inca Rocca, among others. With their royal kinship connections, these gentlemen probably served as captains of the elite Inca shock troops known as "orejones": for their gold ear spools: the noble knights of the empire whose initiation as young men was capped with hawk feathers.

Sixteenth century Spanish colonial overlords of the Vice Royalty of Peru from Francisco Pizarro through Vaca de Castro granted Spaniards who served the Crown in conquests and rebellions the right to extract tribute from conquered Andean peoples. Each early encomienda or "reparto" grants of native Andean tributaries was loosely based on this pre-Hispanic administrative system: denominated in units of 1000 tributaries expressed as the "subjects" of a specific "curaca" or "lord" .

Although sixteenth century Spanish priests prohibited Andeans people from being baptizing with the names of birds to suppress native religious ideology, the rank of "Huaman" remained prestigious so many individuals who had earned the title "Huaman" managed to take this pre-Columbian honorific as their surname and passed it on to their descendants as their "family" name.

In 1570, a colonial litigant named Don Antonio Huaman Cucho, in Huamanga declared he "owned" extensive land as a descendent and heir of an Inca-era Huaman.

Today people who bear the surname of a hawk have flown to every continent, proud of their heritage.




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