priests. The very first to undertake the task was a Dominican friar named Domingo de Santo Tomas. His name occurs several times in the story of the conquest. He was an indefatigable inquirer and traveller, even studying the difficult Mochica language and founding a monastery in the coast region of the Chimu. Santo Tomas eventually became Bishop of La Plata.
This worthy Dominican was the first to construct a grammar of the Runa-simi, or general language of Peru, which was published at Valladolid in 1560. A second edition appeared at Lima in 1586.[1] Santo Tomas, in his title-page, calls the Runa-simi 'the general language of the Indians of the kingdom of Peru,' and gives it the name of Quichua. But he does not inform his readers of the reason for giving it that name.
The Quichuas formed a group of ayllus or village communities in the valley of the Pachachaca. We know the area which this group occupied with a fair amount of exactness, because places, the positions of which are fixed, are mentioned by Sarmiento and others, in relating the course of the Incas' conquests, as being in the territory of the Quichuas. This Quichua province is small as compared with the area over which the general language was spoken, nor was it of much importance. It is, therefore, an inappropriate name for the general language of the Incas. It can only be supposed that the name was given by Santo Tomas because it was in the Quichua province that he studied the language.[2] Some name was needed, and that first given by Santo Tomas was adopted by subsequent grammarians. The Jesuits, who came to Peru some thirty years after the Dominicans, devoted themselves to the study of the languages. Diego Gonzalez
