FAMILY POSSESSIONS AMONG THE INCA PEOPLE

A family did not have many possessions. The housewife needed only a few simple cooking utensils for the meals she cooked – some blackened pots, a clay plate or two and clay spoons. She used the large gourds or clay pots she had made to store her water, corn, beans dried potatoes and peppers.

The hut had not furniture. Everyone sat on mats on the earth floor. As the thatching of the roof dried, it shed dust and bits of dried vegetation into the room, so the house was never completely clean and free of dust. Bits of thatching were forever getting lodged in the Indians’ clothing and in their long hair.

With so few articles of housekeeping, the Inca People hut was almost bare. The walls had wooden pegs in them, on which the family hung any clothing they took off at night. Niches built into the walls served as shelves for household goods, tools, yarn, spindles, musical instruments, toys and neatly folded festive clothing.

Outside the hut pens and corals for llamas and Alpacas, a few ducks and guinea pigs. These animals were the responsibility of the housewife and the children who were too young to in the fields. Because space was so precious, related households used the same corral for their few animals and shared the small pens.

The Inca people lived and worked outdoors most of the time. During the day it was pleasant and warm outside. The woman of the house sat on a mat working on her simple loom, spinning wool, or combing the wool for spinning. She boiled vegetable dyes in a pot in the cooking shed, soaked the wool in a large pot besides her, then washed it and laid it out to dry in the sun.