The purpose of the present paper is to present, as thoroughly as possible, the evidence from the early Spanish chroniclers on the system of land tenure which existed in the Andean region during the PreInca period. Since the turn of the century it has been the aim of the republican governments of Peru to improve the legal, economic, and social conditions among the Indian communities throughout the national territory. This movement on the part of the government gave rise to investigations by the academic group of Peru into the social and economic structure of the native tribes.1 One of the earliest of these studies was made by Beautista Saavedra.2 It deals with the system of the ayllu and touches only incidentally on land tenure. His conclusion is that the ayllu is of Aymara and not of Quechua origin. His sources are confined to those of the Inca period; he relies on the chroniclers, among whom are Cieza, Garcilaso, Calancha, and Cobo. Several years later Romulo Cuneo-Vidal 3 published a paper in which he concluded that the concept of the ayllu is an independent development among both the Aymara and the Quechua. Like Saavedra, Cueno-Vidal limits himself to the chroniclers of the Inca period and touches only lightly on land tenure. Ricardo Bustamente Cisneros' work4 is merely a study of the economic conditions of the native communities as they stand today and their present legal position in the Peruvian legislation. One of the most important studies is that of Carlos Valdez de la Torre,5 which deals with land tenure quite extensively, endeavoring to trace its development from the Pre-Inca, through the Inca periods, to the present day. In his chapter on the Pre-Inca period he concludes that land ownership was individual in some localities, which is in agreement with the data left by the chroniclers, Castro and Morejon, Ondegardo, and Santillan, although he does not cite them in evidence. Later writers such as Abelardo Solis,s and Arturo Capdevila 7 based their works on Valdez, and add nothing to his conclusions, nor do they give additional sources of information.