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EXTINCTION OF THE CHIMU PEOPLE
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inevitable, but the people were infuriated. They burnt down his house, and he perished in the flames. His son Cuzco Chumpi submitted, and was baptised with the name of Pedro. We hear also of his son, Don Martin Farro Chumpi. Pizarro rested at La Mamada in the valley of Jequetepeque, and marched thence up the mountains to Caxamarca, which place he reached on November 15, 1532. In 1535 the conqueror was again in these coast valleys. He founded the city of Truxillo, named after his old home in Spain, close to the city of the Chimu in 8° 6′ S., and Balboa tells us that Pizarro was much struck by the grandeur and beauty of the edifices constructed by the ancient kings. But he came as a fell destroyer. The cruelty of the Spaniards extinguished the ancient Chimu civilisation before even a few years had passed. Cieza de Leon tells us of the rapid depopulation of the valleys, and in his time vast tracts were becoming waste for want of people to cultivate the land. The census of the Piura valley alone, made by order of Dr. Loaysa, the first Archbishop of Lima, showed a population of 193,000 Indians. In 1785 it was 44,497, and these chiefly negroes. The race is now practically extinct. The brilliant conceptions, the masterly execution, the untiring industry, the wealth and magnificence, all passed away and are forgotten.[1]

  1. 1 The chief of Mansiche, baptised in 1550 with the name of Don Antonio Chayhuac, is said to have been a descendant of the Chimu. His descendants were living in Lima in the middle of the eighteenth
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