Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (15 page)

Anxious to see something of the world, only known to him by rumour, Sayri Tupac even went to Lima, travelling in regal state, carried in a litter by faithful retainers and accompanied by some 300 Indians. He was kindly received by the Viceroy and sent back to Cuzco, where for a time he lodged in one of the old Inca palaces. His cousin, Garcilasso, says that he himself as a young boy went to see Sayri Tupac, found him playing games, and was invited to stay and enjoy a few cups of excellent
chicha
.

The Viceroy, carrying out his original plan, now ordered that Sayri Tupac should publicly receive the sacred red fringe of Inca sovereignty, embrace Christianity, be married to a princess of the blood royal, and take up his abode as planned, in beautiful Yucay. Here, Sayri Tupac’s fondness for comfort and luxury was readily gratified. He was surrounded by devoted retainers, who took delight in attending to the wants of the wearer of the sacred red fringe. He was seemingly well contented with his lot and neither ambitious nor restless. Of course he might have served as the focus for an uprising against the Spaniards but so far as we know there is no evidence that he wished to do so. Nevertheless he only lived in Yucay for about two years. The Viceroy said he died of disease. The nobles of Vitcos believed he was poisoned. At all events in 1560 his half brother, Titu Cusi, the favourite, if illegitimate, son of Manco, immediately assumed the throne, not at Cuzco or Yucay but in the wilds of Vilcabamba.

Thanks to Titu Cusi’s own narrative, already referred to in the account of his father’s life and violent death, and to Father Calancha’s chronicle, we know more about Titu Cusi than about any of his brothers or his father.

It will be remembered that he had lived for some years as a little boy in Cuzco but had managed to escape from his captors and was with his father Manco, living in Vitcos, at the time of the fatal game of quoits or bowls which resulted so badly for the Spanish refugees as well as for the Inca.

We do not know where he was at the time of Sayri Tupac’s death but we are told that as soon as he heard of it he fled into the inaccessible valleys of the Cordillera Vilcabamba, put his younger brother Tupac Amaru ‘into the House of the Sun with the Chosen Virgins and their Matrons’ and assumed the throne of the now greatly shrunken Inca Empire. Titu Cusi was then about thirty years old.

Captain Baltasar de Ocampo, a contemporary Spanish soldier who went to the Vilcabamba valley after gold a few years later, prepared an account of the Province. In it he says that Tupac Amaru ‘was the natural and legitimate Lord of these lands … but the elder brother by his management and cunning kept him secluded and imprisoned on account of his want of experience, usurping the government for himself’. However, he also says that to place him with the Virgins of the Sun was ‘a most ancient custom among all the rulers of these kingdoms before the arrival of the Spaniards’.

A great sanctuary, well provided with temples, baths, and trained handmaidens must have been an ideal place for the young man. He probably spent most of the next ten years among its temples and palaces. Since its whereabouts were unknown to the Spaniards it would also have been a favourite residence for Titu Cusi himself, where he would have been well taken care of by the Chosen Women. His mother seems to have stayed there also. But it was necessary for him to spend a good part of his time with his councillors and his army at Vitcos.

One of his first visitors at Vitcos was Don Diego Rodriguez de Figueroa, who, acting under the Viceroy’s orders, attempted to convert Titu Cusi to Christianity and persuade him to leave Vilcabamba. Fortunately Rodriguez wrote a full account of his trip. His narrative is entertaining and shows clearly the precautions which Titu Cusi took to keep out strangers. Unlike so many of our sources of knowledge of the Incas it was not written from hearsay or long after the event. It is therefore worth quoting at some length.

Rodriguez, according to Sir Clements Markham’s translation, wrote as follows:

‘I left Cuzco on the 8th of April 1565, after having received letters from Judge Matienzo to the Inca Titu Cusi Yupanqui, with leave to make an entrance, after having offered my services to go by that route. I went to sleep at Ollantaytambo, where they gave me seven Indian carriers to show me the way.’ He then went over the Pass of Panticalla and down the Lucumayo river to an ancient suspension bridge.

‘On the 5th day of May ten [Inca] captains came to the bridge, richly dressed with diadems of plumes, and lances in their hands which they brandished, and wearing masks on their faces. They came to the passage of the bridge where I was, and asked me if I was the man who had the audacity to want to come and speak to the Inca. I said yes. They replied that I could not fail to be much afraid, and if I felt fear I could not come, because the Inca was a great enemy of cowards. To this I answered that if he was an elephant or a giant I might be afraid, but as he was a man like myself I had no fear, but I would offer him respect. If he would let me enter under his word, I would do so, for I knew that he would keep it.’ Apparently he did not like the bridge or they were afraid to let him use it, because he says that, ‘On the 6th day of May I crossed the river in a basket travelling along a cable, and seven Indians came with me. The ten Indians of the Inca helped me to cross, and accompanied me. That night I slept at the foot of a snowy mountain.

‘I set out on the 12th of May and went on to Vitcos where the seven Spaniards killed the Inca, and their heads are exposed. The Indians told me that those Spaniards had killed him to raise the land, and that they determined to kill him while playing at
la herradura
[horse-shoe quoits]. One Mendez did it with four or five stabs behind him until he killed him; and to Titu Cusi, the Inca who is now, they would have done the same, but he escaped down some rocks, which they showed me. If they had wanted to kill some Indians they could have done so, but their object was to kill the Inca. Then many Indians and captains assembled, who seized the Spaniards and killed them.’

It will be noticed that this version differs from the one told by Garcilasso and by Titu Cusi himself. They made it sound more
like an accident in a quarrel. Since the regicides were renegades and outlaws, it was perhaps natural that Rodriguez as an official of the vice-regal government, should have felt no compunction in accusing them of treachery to their host.

Rodriguez continues: ‘On the 13th of May I sent two of my Indians to the Inca with some refreshments of raisins, figs, and other things. The Inca received them well, and gave them two baskets of peanuts which they were to take to me, with a message that next day he would arrive, so that we should see each other soon, and that I need not travel further.

‘On the 14th of May the Indians of Bambacona had made me a large house on a strong height surrounded by entrenchments. Below were the houses of the inhabitants. The road by which he was to come was very clean and passed over a great plain. The three hundred Indians with their lances, and others from the surrounding country, had made a great theatre for the Inca, of red clay. They were awaiting his arrival, and wished me to go out to meet him. They told me that the people of the village would wait on the plain, and that they would show me a place where they had brought two loads of straw, half a stone’s throw from the rest of the people. They told me to wait there, and see the entry of the Inca, and not to move until the Inca sent for me.

‘Many lances were drawn up on a hill, and messengers arrived to say that the Inca was coming. Presently the escort of the Inca began to appear.’ Rodriguez now does us the great service of describing as accurately as he can, the formal dress deemed appropriate for the Emperors of Peru in the days of Inca power and majesty. ‘The Inca came in front of all, with a head-dress of plumes of many colours, a silver plate on his breast, a golden shield in one hand, and a lance all of gold. He wore garters of feathers and fastened to them were small wooden bells. On his head was a diadem and another around the neck. In one hand he had a gilded dagger, and he came in a mask of several colours.’ From this description, the Spanish artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drew their pictures of Inca Emperors they had never seen. Copies may be seen in Cuzco.

‘Arriving on the plateau where the places of the people were,
and his seat was set up, and mine, he gazed where the sun was, making a sort of reverence with his hand, which they call
mucha
(a kiss), and then went to his seat. There came with him a
mestizo
with a shield and sword, and in a Spanish dress, a very old cloak. Presently he turned his eyes in the direction where I was, and I took off my hat. The Indians did not notice this. I held up an image of Our Lady which I carried in my bosom, and though the Indians saw it, they took no notice. Then two
orejones
[big-ears, nobles] came near the Inca with two halberds, dressed in diadems of plumes with much adornment of gold and silver. These made obeisance and reverence to the sun and then to the Inca. All the rest were standing near his seat, encircling him in good order. Presently the governor came, named Yamqui Mayta, with sixty or seventy attendants with their silver plates, lances, belts of gold and silver, the same dresses as were worn by all who came with the Inca. Then came the Master of the Camp with the same gaily dressed following; and all made obeisance first to the sun and then to the Inca, saying, “Child of the Sun thou art the child of the day.” Then they took up their position round the Inca. Then another captain entered, named Vilcapari Guaman, with about thirty Indians bearing lances adorned with feathers of many colours. Then twenty men with axes, making reverence to the sun like the rest. All wore masks of different colours, which they put before their faces. Next a little Indian entered who, after making reverences to the sun and the Inca, came towards me, brandishing a lance, and raising it with great audacity. He then began to cry out in Spanish “Get out! get out!” and to menace me with his lance. Next another captain entered named Cusi Puma, with about fifty archers, who are Antis eating human flesh. Presently all these warriors took off their plumes of feathers and put down their lances. With their daggers of bronze and their shields of silver, or leather, or of feathers, each one came to do reverence to the Inca who was seated, and then returned to their places.

‘Presently he sent for me, and passing through that multitude of Indians, I took off my hat and made a speech to him. I said that I had come from Cuzco solely to know and serve him. If I
wore a sword and dagger it was to serve him with them and not to offend him. To this he answered that it was for men to bear arms and not for women or cowards, and he did not, therefore, hold me in more esteem for that. But he said he was pleased at the trouble I had taken to come from such a distance to him, adding that he had come forty leagues only to see and converse with me. Then he gave me a cup of
chicha
, asking me to drink it for his service. I drank a quarter of it, and then began to make faces and wipe my mouth with a handkerchief. He began to laugh, understanding that I did not know that liquor.

‘The Inca was a man of forty years of age, of middle height, and with some marks of smallpox on his face. His mien rather severe and manly. He wore a shirt of blue damask, and a mantle of very fine cloth. He is served on silver, and there are also twenty or thirty good-looking women, waiting behind him. He sent for me to eat where he was with his women and his governor. The food consisted of maize, potatoes, small beans, and the other products of the country, except that there was very little meat, and what there was consisted of venison, fowls, macaws, and monkeys, both boiled and roasted. When night came on he asked me whether I had made the acquaintance of his captains. I replied in the affirmative and he then took leave of me. He went to the house that had been prepared for him, in exactly the same order as when he arrived, with music of silver flutes and trumpets. That night there was a guard of a hundred Indians who were divided into watches, and flutes and drums were played to call each watch. They placed a guard of fifteen Indians over me with their lances, I being in a house outside the village. I calculate that all the Indians who came with the Inca, and those of the village numbered 450.

‘In the morning of the 15th of May the Inca sent for me to his house, for it was raining. The greater part of his troops were seated round a large fire. The Inca was seated, dressed in a shirt of crimson velvet, with a mantle of the same. All his captains had taken off the masks they wore on the day before.

‘As daylight was now appearing, and they had all drunk freely, I asked permission of the Inca to return to my lodging and get
something to eat, and that another day I would state frankly what I had come for. So I departed, leaving them to boast loudly, but all much disturbed in their minds.

‘Soon afterwards they sent me a sheep of Castille [evidently, the result of a successful raid on a Spanish colonial sheep ranch], many fowls and partridges, and other food which their country produces. To those who brought them I gave some trinkets, needles, and other Spanish things. Presently the Inca sent for me. I went there, and was there until night, without a word being spoken, when I returned to my lodging. The reason for this appeared to be that too much
chicha
had been drunk.’ (Even today the Quichuas are noticeably not talkative after consuming much
chicha
.)

Rodriguez had brought presents for the Inca, silver bracelets, crystals, and pearls. With the Inca’s permission, he delivered a discourse on Christianity and suggested the propriety of setting up crosses as evidence of faith. This pleased the Inca not at all and he said he had a good mind to order the intruder to be killed.