Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (2.1972/1975)

CHAQUITACLLA
THE NATIVE FOOTPLOUGH AND ITS PERSISTENCE
IN CENTRAL ANDEAN AGRICULTURE
By
Daniel W. Gacle and Roberto Rios

The most advanced agricultural tool known in
the New World before the coming of the
Europeans was the Andean footplough.1 Also
known as the chaquitaclla or simply taclla, it
evolved from the digging stick and combined
three advantages: metal point, curved handle,
and footrest. No other indigenous tool utilized
the pressure of the foot in digging up the sod
which made it different from all farming im-
plements known elsewhere in the Americas in
pre-Columbian times (Donkin 1970, 514).2 This
relatively simple instrument has persisted long
after more sophisticated technology was in-
troduced into the Central Andes, and its endur-
ing presence demonstrates that more advanced
innovations do not necessarily displace primi-
tive forms that under certain conditions may be
more efficient.3
Culture History
The taclla was only one of three technolo-
gical inventions to have been made by the Inca
civilization, and thus was a late achievement in
the culture history of Western South America
(Lanning 1967, 165). Similar tools also oc-
curred in the Hebrides Island and in China,
although no evidence yet exists to suggest other
than independent invention in these three pla-
ces (Kramer 1966, 37). Dated specimens are
rare, and a precise understanding of the evolu-
tion of the taclla from the dibble will depend
on future archaeological evidence. It is prob-
able, nevertheless, that agricultural peoples liv-

ing on the Peruvian coast long before the In-
cas contributed to the idea of the taclla. A
copper-shod digging stick known by the Mo-
chica culture (ca. 500 A. D.) may have been
a forerunner of the taclla (Bushnell 1957, 83).
A pottery representation of the taclla from the
Chimu culture (1300 A. D.) on the coast veri-
fies its development by at least that time
(Horkheimer 1960). However, the friable soils
of the coastal desert were easily turned without
the taclla, and the incentive to develop such
a tool probably came from the adjacent High-
lands. Historic distribution and the current
diversity of forms point to the mountainous
region of Southern Peru as its likely place of
origin (fig. 1). With the expansion of the Inca
Empire, the taclla was carried north to Ecua-
dor and south to Bolivia where early colonial
writings confirmed its presence (Jimenez de la
Espada 1965, II, 227; Vazquez de Espinosa
1942, 660). It probably never occurred in
Southern Chile, either before or after the
Conquest by the Spaniards.4
Land fallow is the key to understanding the
past and present use of the taclla. In areas
where plots were fertilized, irrigated, and farm-
ed continuously, a small mattock, raucana or
liucana, was the important digging tool (fig. 2).
However, where land was periodically rested,
the taclla was indispensable for breaking up
the compacted earth. While the taclla has had
a close identification with the potato, abo-
riginal distribution of potato cultivation at the