Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (12 page)

The sun was, naturally, the most important of all since without it crops would not grow, and life, generally, was intolerable. Its favour must be sought. As the sun went farther and farther north and the shadows lengthened in the month of June,
it was natural to fear that the sun would continue its flight to the north and might leave them eventually to freeze and starve. Consequently the priests of the sun, able, on the twenty-first or twenty-second of June, to stop its flight and tie it to a stone pillar in one of their temples, were regarded with veneration. When the shadows ceased to lengthen and became shorter, until the sun was once more overhead and his kingdom firmly established, there would naturally be great rejoicing. The period of the summer solstice was one of joy just as that of the winter solstice was one of fear. It is probable that the priests of the sun, whose lives depended on their being successful in appearing to control his actions, had learned to read the length of the shadows cast by the huge sundials called
intihuatana
, or ‘the place to which the sun is tied’.

One naturally expects to find these sacred stones within the enclosure of the sanctuary or temple where the sun was worshipped and where the Chosen Women were taught to become his handmaidens. There they learned to be useful wives for priests and nobles who could depend on them to weave beautiful garments, cook toothsome dishes, and brew excellent
chicha
with which the heart of man might be made glad and his spirit raised from the heaviness caused by toil or fear.

One of the most important spots in the Andes would be the ruins of a sanctuary with its temples of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, its
intihuatana
, its supply of good fresh water for
chicha
, its palaces for nobles and priests, and its dormitories for the women who had been chosen to be Virgins of the Sun. Such a sanctuary had been encountered by Pizarro and the conquistadors when they entered Cuzco. We found one somewhere else. It was constructed with the utmost care by the most skilful architects and masons in the most inaccessible parts of the Andes.

T
he more one studies the remarkable civilization which the Spaniards found when they conquered Peru, the more one wishes that the Incas and their predecessors had learned the art of writing or at least of carving hieroglyphics and had left behind them inscriptions which, in the course of time, might have been deciphered and translated to tell us something of their history. Students of art and architecture assure us that the period of time needed for the evolution of the ability and skill shown by the Incas in creating objects of beauty must have been as long as that required by the artistic Egyptians and Greeks.

The historic chronicle of Egypt and the classic lands of the Mediterranean was fortunately confided to tablets, inscriptions, and manuscripts. It was carved in stone or on clay and written on papyrus or vellum. So we know something positively of the centuries their evolution took. Students of ancient Peru on the other hand have no such kindly aids on which to base their investigations. We must piece together contradictory traditions which were first written down at the time of the Spanish Conquest, hundreds of years after the events. We must rely on fragments of cloth and pottery, ruins of temples and terraces, such material as can be obtained from graves, and a study of what we know was achieved in agriculture, horticulture, and animal industry. From all this material we must put together what will be at best a very fragmentary story, on the details of which no two experts ever will agree!

The best that one can do is patiently to study the evidence
offered by the climate, the physical geography, and the anthropology of the region and use it to construct a reasonable account which is at least not capable of being destroyed by incontrovertible evidence. Anyone who has read the stories which have come down to us from the early Spanish conquerors and their descendants like Garcilasso Inca de la Vega, or the Christian missionaries, priests, monks, and Jesuits, who learned the language of the Incas and made reports on what they saw and found as well as what they heard, knows that their statements are frequently so contradictory and conflicting that they can hardly ever be said to be incontrovertible. Where the Spanish chronicles run counter to the known habits of the highlanders and the physical evidence gained by exploration, excavation, and observation they may be regarded as less likely to be true than statements not so contradicted.

The first comprehensive account in English of the civilization of the Incas is that of the heroic historian William H. Prescott, who overcame the handicaps of his partial blindness and inability to travel by a patient accumulation of all the books and manuscripts dealing with Peru which he could secure. His vivid stories of the conquest of both Peru and Mexico must ever remain delightful classics to charm generations of readers. Of necessity his account of the conquest of Peru was based largely on Garcilasso Inca de la Vega, born in Cuzco in the year 1539, the son of an Inca princess. Unfortunately for the accuracy of his famous book,
Royal Commentaries
, Garcilasso left Peru when only a boy in his teens, never returned to the land of his birth, lived most of his life in Spain, and did not write his celebrated chronicles of the Incas until he was an old man.

During his years in Europe Garcilasso had undoubtedly suffered frequently from remarks made by his contemporaries, who were inclined to be contemptuous of the descendant of the brown-skinned ‘heathen’ of the Andes. He had presumably frequently repeated stories of his mother’s people, their achievements, their civilization, and their ancestry. He knew what pleased and astonished his European auditors, what seemed to them admirable and altogether worthy of praise. He knew what
shocked them. It was, therefore, quite natural that in the course of the thirty or forty years of his life in Spain, before he began writing his book, he should come to believe that his mother’s people were much more like Europeans than they really were. He wanted Europeans to admire his maternal ancestors and he wrote his book accordingly. Consequently there are many pages in his book and many statements in Prescott’s account, based on Garcilasso, which have a decidedly European atmosphere.

Another writer, an ecclesiastical lawyer of the seventeenth century, who has recently begun to come into his own, wrote a different sort of book. His name was Fernando Montesinos. In 1629, the century following the conquest, he appears to have gone to Peru as an adviser of a viceroy, the Count of Chinchon, whose name is remembered because his wife was cured of malaria by the use of one of the very few specifics in the world, a most important discovery of the Incas, a bark which they called
kina
and which we call quinine, or ‘Peruvian bark’. Since the Count of Chinchon was instrumental in the introduction of this extraordinary medicine into Europe, the plant from which its bark is taken was called after him,
cinchona
.

The Viceroy’s secretary, Montesinos, was well educated and appears to have been devoted to historical research. He travelled extensively in Peru and published several books. He wrote a history of the Incas,
Memorias Antiguas Historiales del Peru
, which was spoiled by the introduction in which, as might be expected of an orthodox ecclesiastic, he contended that Peru was peopled under the leadership of Ophir, the great-grandson of Noah! Notwithstanding his clerical prejudices his work appears to be of great value. The late Sir Clements Markham, foremost English student of Inca history, was inclined to place considerable credence on the statements of Montesinos. From the wise old men whom he was able to consult in Inca Land he secured a very long story of pre-Inca kings, called Amautas, who seem to have been responsible for many of the achievements which we naturally ascribe to the Incas because we use that term to cover the culture and the civilization found in the Peruvian highlands. Montesinos says that ‘the fifty-third of the
Kings of Peru’ was named Huilcanota or Vilcanota.
Huilca
is the name of a plant from which the aborigines obtained a narcotic snuff whose effects were startlingly intoxicating and produced visions. Whether he was the first to discover the virtue which lay in the seeds from which they made their powerful snuff we have no means of knowing.

However, he did give his name to the pass now called La Raya which is on the watershed between the Amazon basin and Lake Titicaca; at least the pass was called Vilcanota by the Incas. Montesinos was of the opinion that the king was named after the pass because of a great victory he had there. His capital was at Cuzco where he learned from the reports of his provincial governors that great hordes of people, barbarians, were coming up from the plains of Argentina and invading the Bolivian plateau and the basin of Lake Titicaca. King Vilcanota sent out spies to get details of the enemy forces. Learning that they were in two large armies, he assembled a powerful army himself and took up his stand in the high, snowy pass of La Raya and fortified it. Montesinos says, there ‘he gave battle to the first army, which he conquered easily on account of its being in disorder. The second army, hearing the news, came very confusedly to aid their fellows, and it also was conquered. The King entered Cuzco triumphant, bearing before him the vanquished, naked, and with their hands tied. From this event the ancients call this king Huilcanota.’

Montesinos says that this King Vilcanota was successful in pacifying his kingdom, had a very long reign, and left many sons. One of them, named Tupac Yupanqui, ‘rich in all the virtues’, also had many sons and was a wise ruler. He had the good will of friends and neighbours with whom he exchanged gifts. He taught his sons the art of government and surrounded them with experienced counsellors. His great-grandson, Huaman Tacco, was the sixty-first Amauta. In his day there were bad omens, comets, and earthquakes. His heir and successor was called Pachacuti VI.

Pachacuti was neither wise nor strong. Unfortunately in his time the barbarian migrations began again, ‘great armies of
very fierce people’ from the east and south. ‘Full of dismay and melancholy’ on account of the earthquakes, comets, and other bad omens and the sombre prognostications of the wizards and soothsayers, he offered sacrifices to his gods and tried to make what preparations he could by fortifying camps and strong points. Learning from his spies that hordes of warriors were again marching north through the basin of Lake Titicaca he became panicky, scattered his forces, sent some captains to the Bolivian plateau, sent others to defend various passes, and went himself with the main body of his army to the pass of La Raya which his famous ancestor Vilcanota had once fortified. There he built a fortress, the remains of which can still be seen.

Instead of waiting behind his walls and terraces for the enemy to attack at a disadvantage, he sallied out, against the advice of his captains, and gave battle. His troops were armed with slings, clubs, and spears. The enemy had bows and arrows. The contest was terrific. Carried aloft on a golden litter, Pachacuti did his best to encourage his troops. Unfortunately he was an easy mark for an enemy archer. Fatally wounded by an arrow, his death caused consternation among his troops. Losing courage, the soldiers fled to a fortress with the body of their king.

Then, secretly, at night they carried it away to a place of safety called Tampu-tocco, ‘a place of temporary abode where there were windows’ or ‘Window Tavern’. Here they were joined by the remnants of Pachacuti’s army.

After this debacle, says Montesinos, ‘the Provinces of the Kingdom, learning of the death of the king, all rose up in rebellion, and the people of Tampu-tocco had many dissensions among themselves as to the choosing of a king.

‘Thus was the government of the Peruvian monarchy lost and destroyed. It did not come to its own for four hundred years, and the knowledge of letters was lost. In each province they elected their own king, and he to whom it was given to be the heir of Pachacuti was Titu Huaman Quicho, a very young boy. The loyal men were few, and could not bear comparison with the other peoples. They went to Tampu-tocco, and there they raised him up to be their king, because, on account of the revolts, none
could live in Cuzco, all being in turmoil. And, as men came little by little to live at Tampu-tocco under the protection of the king, Cuzco became almost deserted, and only the ministers of the temple remained there.

‘The faithful vassals were happy in Tampu-tocco with the boy king, for there, according to the legends of the amautas, is the very celebrated cave where the Incas had their origin, and they affirm as a certainty that there have never been seen there earthquakes, pestilence, nor earth-tremors. And if evil fortune should pursue the boy king, they could hide him in the cave as in a holy place. The king came of age, and lived with much moderation for many years. He called himself king of Tampu-tocco, not of Cuzco, although on certain days he went to worship in the temple (at Cuzco). He left as his heir Cozque Huaman Titu, who lived twenty-five years. Of him and his successors nothing of note is related until the return to Cuzco.’

Montesinos gives the name and length of reign of quite a number of the Kings of Tampu-tocco covering a period of some four hundred years. Then came the reign of one called Pachacuti VII who began to recover some of the cities and provinces which had been lost at the time of the barbarian invasion.

‘As the people obeyed him with so little certainty, and as they were so greatly corrupted in the matter of religion and customs, he took steps to conquer them, because he said that if those people communicated with his they would corrupt them with the great vices to which they had given themselves up like ungovernable beasts. Therefore he tactfully sent messengers in all directions, asking the chiefs to put a stop to superstition and to the adoration of the many gods and animals which they adored; and the outcome of this was but a slight mending of their ways and the slaying of the ambassadors. The king dissembled for the time being and made great sacrifices and appeals to Illatici Huira Cocha. One reply was that the cause of the pestilence had been the letters, and that no one ought to use them nor resuscitate them for, from their employment great harm would come. Therefore Tupac Cauri commanded by law, that under the pain of death, no one should traffic in
quilcas
, which were
the parchments and leaves of trees on which they used to write, nor should use any sort of letters. They observed this oracular command with so much care that after this loss the Peruvians never used letters. And, because in later times a learned amauta invented some characters, they burnt him alive, and so, from this time forth, they used threads and
quipos
.’