Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (16 page)

‘From the top of a rising ground’, says Rodriguez, ‘I saw the festivities made for the Inca, and heard the songs. The dances were war dances with spears in their hands, throwing them from one to another. I believe that they did such things by reason of the quantity of
chicha
they had drunk.

‘The Inca sent for me late in the afternoon and I went against my will. He told me to sit down and began to boast, saying that he could himself kill fifty Spaniards and that he was going to have all the Spaniards in the kingdom put to death. He took a lance in his hand and a shield and began to act a valiant man, shouting “Go at once and bring me all the people that are behind those mountains; for I want to go and fight the Spaniards and to kill them all, and I want the wild Indians to eat them.”

‘Then there marched up about 600 or 700 Antis Indians, all with bows and arrows, clubs and axes. They advanced in good order, making reverence to the sun and to the Inca and took their positions. Then the Inca again began to brandish his lance, and said that he could raise all the Indians in Peru, he had only
to give the order and they would fly to arms. Then all those Antis made an offer to the Inca that, if he wished it, they would eat me raw. They said to him, “What are you doing with this little bearded one here, who is trying to deceive you? It is better that we should eat him at once.” Then two renegade Inca
orejones
came straight to me with spears in their hands, flourishing their weapons and saying, “The bearded ones! Our enemies.” I laughed at this, but at the same time commended myself to God. I asked the Inca to have mercy and protect me, and so he delivered me from them, and hid me until morning.’ Apparently Titu Cusi was a little afraid his nobles might go too far in their desire to take revenge on one of the hated Spaniards.

‘On the morning of the 16th of May the Inca sent for me to come to the open square which he entered in the same order as before, and as I came in I saluted the Inca and sat down. The Inca and all the captains then began to laugh heartily at what had happened the day before, and they asked me what I thought of yesterday’s festival. I replied that I thought it rather exceptional, and that to have treated me so was wrong, seeing that I had come on serious business. They explained that it was only their fun, and that they could not give it up.’

Apparently to please his visitor, Titu Cusi permitted a cross to be set up near where he was staying. Then Rodriguez told Titu Cusi of the might and power of Charles V of Spain.

‘To this he replied that the power of the king was great, and though he had so many nations, as well black men as Moors, subject to him, yet he, the Inca, like Manco Inca his father before him, knew how to defend himself in those mountains. Presently he sent to Vilcapampa for more men.’ The first lot of soldiers had apparently come up the Pampaconas valley from the warm jungles and were savages with bows and arrows. Now, to impress Rodriguez, Titu Cusi sent to the ancient sanctuary, his other capital called Vilcapampa, for some highland warriors.

‘On the 25th of May one of his generals arrived with 300 men, armed with lances, who entered the open place where the rest were drawn up, and made obeisance to the sun and to the Inca.
Then a hundred captains of those who came from Vilcapampa went to where Yamqui Mayta was standing and asked why he had consented to have the cross planted in their land, seeing that it had not been set up in the time of Manco Inca. Why then was it there now? If I had persuaded the Inca to do this, they intended to kill me. The Inca replied that it was done by his order, and that it was well that they should accept the cross of the creator of all things. Having received this answer they went to their seats, and the festival proceeded.’

Rodriguez was a man of courage and profound convictions and carried himself with so much bravery and tact that he succeeded to a large extent in arousing the Inca’s admiration and respect and made him almost willing to assent to the proposal that he follow in the footsteps of Sayri Tupac, leaving Vitcos and going to Yucay to live in comfort, surrounded with all due honour.

Sufficient progress was reported by Rodriguez to encourage another ambassador, accompanied by thirty Spanish soldiers and a number of Indian guards, to reach the key bridge at Chuquichaca. The sight of this armed force, which included twenty harquebusiers, so alarmed Titu Cusi, however, that he caused the bridge to be torn down, sent Rodriguez and all the Spanish envoys back to Cuzco, and retired to Vitcos. Nevertheless he appears to have kept as his secretary a
mestizo
, one Martin Pando, who probably spoke both Spanish and Quichua.

Martin Pando seems to have lived in Vitcos or the neighbouring village of Puquiura for the next five years and to have won the confidence of Titu Cusi to such an extent that the Inca decided to carry on a correspondence with the Spanish authorities. It may have been due to his influence that, about three years later, Titu Cusi apparently became convinced that he might be better off if he adopted the religion of the conquerors.

One cannot help wondering whether the news of the abdication of Charles and the accession of his intensely zealous and intolerant son Philip II to the throne of Spain and the Indies in 1565 may not have penetrated to Vitcos and led some of Titu Cusi’s advisers – and possibly his relatives in Cuzco – to suggest
the wisdom of his adopting the forms of Christianity, welcoming the monks, and finally appealing to Philip II to recognize his right to sit on his father’s throne and wear the sacred fringe of Inca sovereignty. At all events, in a letter to Don Lopez Garcia de Castro, the Governor of Cuzco and a Member of the Council of the Indies, in which it certainly looks as though they were trying to please that bigoted monarch, Titu Cusi said:

‘Having received letters from your Lordship, asking me to become a Christian and saying that it would conduce to the security of the country, I inquired of Diego Rodriguez and Martin de Pando, as to who was the principal monk among those who were in Cuzco, and who were the most approved and of most weight among the religious orders. They replied that the most flourishing were those of St Augustine, and their Prior was the most important priest in Cuzco. Having heard this, I became more attached to the order of St Augustine than any other. I wrote letters to the Prior, requesting him to come in person to baptize me, because I would rather be baptized by him than by anyone else. He took the trouble to come to my country and to baptize me, bringing with him another monk, and Gonzalo Perez de Vivero and Atilano de Anaya who arrived at Rayangalla [Huarancalque?] on the 12th of August, 1568, whither I came from Vilcapampa to receive baptism. There, in that village of Rayangalla, were the said Prior named Juan de Vivero and his companions. I was instructed in the things of the faith for a fortnight, at the end of which time, on the day of the famous St Augustine, the Prior baptized me.’ He was given the name of Diego, and the family name of Governor de Castro. ‘My godfather was Gonzalo Perez de Vivero and my godmother Dona Angelina Zica Ocllo. After I was baptized the Prior remained for eight days to instruct me in the Holy Catholic Church and to initiate me into its mysteries. He then departed with Gonzalo Perez de Vivero, leaving me a companion named Friar Marcos Garcia, that he might little by little instil into my mind what the Prior had taught, that I might not forget, and also to teach the word of God to the people of my land. Before he departed I explained to my followers the reason why I had been baptized,
and had brought these people into my land. All replied that they rejoiced at my baptism, and that the friar should remain. In effect the friar did remain with me.’

How two Augustinian Friars almost got inside the walls of the great Inca sanctuary then called Vilcapampa is told in Father Calancha’s long
Moralizing Chronicle of the activities of the Order in Peru
. From occasional sentences in its hundreds of folio pages has been gathered a story which throws an interesting light on some of the things that took place behind the snowy passes of the Cordillera Vilcabamba during the reign of Titu Cusi.

Father Calancha was chiefly interested in providing material for the sermons preached by his fellow monks, so more than nine-tenths of his Chronicle is taken up with references to the lives of the Saints and their teachings. Consequently it has not been reprinted since 1639, and probably never will be.

Of the ‘Province of Vilcabamba’ he says: ‘It is a hot country of the Andes and is mountainous and includes parts that are very cold, intemperate bleak uplands. It has hills of silver from which some quantity has been taken and it produces gold of which in those days much was found. It is a land of moderate comfort, large rivers and almost ordinary rains.’ (!) As a matter of fact, it is far more rainy than most of the Peruvian cities.

‘To these Andes and highlands came the Father Friar Marcos Garcia in the year 1566 after he had been a missionary for three years in the city and valley of Capinota.’ Capinota does not appear on any map but it may have been the town now called Qquente or Patallacta and the valley variously known as Pampacahuana or Chamana, a few miles down the Urubamba valley below Ollantaytambo, where there are a large number of ruined sites. While there, he would have been likely to have heard about the Inca Sanctuary at Vilcapampa. At all events, Calancha says that the results of Friar Marcos’ work in Capinota ‘fired him with the desire to seek souls where not a single preacher had entered and where the gospel message had not been heard.

‘He communicated his holy impulse to the worthy Father Friar Juan de Vivero who was the Prior of the Augustinian Monastery in Cuzco and the Supervisor of those territories. The
Prior approved his plan, gave him the authority of a direct mandate, as well as the sacred vestments and whatever he needed for his journey, and sent him to convert those infidels. He found the journey full of difficulties because the Inca had cut the bridges, walled up the passes, and flooded the roads. When Friar Marcos asked directions as to the road from passing Indians they replied either that they did not know – which was what they had been instructed by the King to say – or else they said that they believed the route was practically impassable and the difficulties so great as to leave no hope of using it “unless one had the wings of a bird”.’ However, he arrived, after many trials, in the presence of the Inca ‘who received him badly and was vexed and grieved to see that Spaniards had been able to penetrate his retreat, particularly to see one arrive to preach against his idolatries in his own towns.’

This, it will be noticed, is quite a different story from the one told by Titu Cusi himself in his letter to the Governor of Cuzco, in which he says that he invited the Prior of the Monastery to come to ‘Rayangalla’, where Juan de Vivero baptized him and then departed, leaving Friar Marcos as his chaplain.

Calancha’s story naturally differs from the version which Titu Cusi wanted the authorities to believe. Nevertheless, Father Marcos gained the good will of the Inca and secured licence to preach. Accordingly ‘he abandoned caution and unfurled the standard of the cross’. He built a church in Puquiura, ‘two long days’ journeys from Vilcapampa’. Puquiura was a town ‘in which the Inca King held his court and his armies’. Friar Marcos was disappointed to find it so far from the great sanctuary. Nevertheless, ‘he set up crosses in the land and in the forests’.

Finally it was decided by the Cuzco Prior to send Friar Diego to join Friar Marcos in the valley of the Vilcabamba river. He made his journey alone, ‘suffering much on the way, not so much because of leagues and distances – for from Cuzco to the first lands of Vilcabamba it is little more than ten leagues’ (actually about 40 miles), as because of having to find detours and ‘having no guides for entering the mountains; and because the
rivers had no bridges, and the roads shifted in position with every freshet’. He penetrated into the Inca’s retreats, and accompanied by Friar Marcos entered his presence. If the Inca was not overjoyed to see the new preacher, he at least was pleased because he knew that Friar Marcos wished to return to Cuzco and he thought that Friar Diego, ‘would not try to reprimand him’. Father Marcos was a crusading preacher who was angry at his inability to make much of an impression on Titu Cusi.

Friar Diego, a gentler soul, a medical missionary, much liked by the Indians, ‘within a few days, so gained the Inca’s good will that he gave him a feast whenever the father visited him, saying that he loved him like a brother’. He sent him presents of fowls and food from his own stores (though this was done in order to make Friar Marcos envious). ‘However, as the spirit of this blessed man was not seeking of gifts, but the winning of souls and dissemination of the faith, he asked the Inca’s permission to found another church and to indoctrinate another different pueblo.’ Titu Cusi granted him the permission, and he chose the pueblo of Guarancalla, probably the village of Huarancalque. ‘It was a distance of two or three days’ travel from one convent to the other.’ Friar Diego built a church, a dwelling, and arranged a hospital, ‘all of them being poor edifices which the Indians, with love and ardour, completed quickly. He went about the country erecting tall crosses, and those sacred trees were planted throughout the mountains and on the [heathen] temples, the idols being thrown down. The sorcerers [
echizeros
] raged, but the other Indians rejoiced at his actions, for they loved him devotedly influenced not so much by the virtues which they recognized in him, as by the continuous benefactions with which he won them, curing them, clothing them, teaching them. He assembled many children and became their schoolmaster, their numbers increasing every day; and many of both sexes and all ages asked for baptism. The Christian community increased gloriously within a few months, the blessed Friar Diego bringing Indians from the depths of the forest jungles, attracting them with kindness, controlling them by prayer, and holding
them by his benefactions.’ Huarancalque is near a pass which leads down into the warm valley of the Pampaconas, still the abode of savage Indians.