Yucay, Last Home of Sayri Tupac
The throne of Uiticos was seized by Titu Cusi. The new Inca seems to have been suspicious of the untimely death of Sayri Tupac, and to have felt that the Spaniards were capable of more foul play. So with his half-brother he stayed quietly in Uilcapampa. Their first visitor, so far as we know, was Diego Rodriguez de Figueroa, who wrote an interesting account of Uiticos and says he gave the Inca a pair of scissors. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to get Titu Cusi to go to Cuzco. In time there came Page 187an Augustinian missionary, Friar Marcos Garcia, who, six years after the death of Sayri Tupac, entered the rough country of Uilcapampa, “a land of moderate wealth, large rivers, and the usual rains,” whose “forested mountains,” says Father Calancha, “are magnificent.” Friar Marcos had a hard journey. The bridges were down, the roads had been destroyed, and the passes blocked up. The few Indians who did occasionally appear in Cuzco from Uilcapampa said the friar could not get there “unless he should be able to change himself into a bird.” However, with that courage and pertinacity which have marked so many missionary enterprises, Friar Marcos finally overcame all difficulties and reached Uiticos.
The missionary chronicler says that Titu Cusi was far from glad to see him and received him angrily. It worried him to find that a Spaniard had succeeded in penetrating his retreat. Besides, the Inca was annoyed to have any one preach against his “idolatries.” Titu Cusi's own story, as written down by Friar Marcos, does not agree with Calancha's. Anyhow, Friar Marcos built a little church in a place called Puquiura, where many of the Inca's people were then living. “He planted crosses in the fields and on the mountains, these being the best things to frighten off devils.” He “suffered many insults at the hands of the chiefs and principal followers of the Inca. Some of them did it to please the Devil, others to flatter the Inca, and many because they disliked his sermons, in which he scolded them for their vices and abominated Page 188among his converts the possession of four or six wives. So they punished him in the matter of food, and forced him to send to Cuzco for victuals. The Convent sent him hard-tack, which was for him a most delicious banquet.”
Within a year or so another Augustinian missionary, Friar Diego Ortiz, left Cuzco alone for Uilcapampa. He suffered much on the road, but finally reached the retreat of the Inca and entered his presence in company with Friar Marcos. “Although the Inca was not too happy to see a new preacher, he was willing to grant him an entrance because the Inca … thought Friar Diego would not vex him nor take the trouble to reprove him. So the Inca gave him a license. They selected the town of Huarancalla, which was populous and well located in the midst of a number of other little towns and villages. There was a distance of two or three days journey from one Convent to the other. Leaving Friar Marcos in Puquiura, Friar Diego went to his new establishment and in a short time built a church, a house for himself, and a hospital,—all poor buildings made in a short time.” He also started a school for children, and became very popular as he went about healing and teaching. He had an easier time than Friar Marcos, who, with less tact and no skill as a physician, was located nearer the center of the Inca cult.
The principal shrine of the Inca is described by Father Calancha as follows: “Close to Vitcos [or Uiticos] in a village called Chuquipalpa, is a House of the Sun, and in it a white rock over a spring of Page 189water where the Devil appears as a visible manifestation and was worshipped by those idolators. This was the principal mochadero of those forested mountains. The word ‘mochadero’2 is the common name which the Indians apply to their places of worship. In other words it is the only place where they practice the sacred ceremony of kissing. The origin of this, the principal part of their ceremonial, is that very practice which Job abominates when he solemnly clears himself of all offences before God and says to Him: ‘Lord, all these punishments and even greater burdens would I have deserved had I done that which the blind Gentiles do when the sun rises resplendent or the moon shines clear and they exult in their hearts and extend their hands toward the sun and throw kisses to it,’ an act of very grave iniquity which is equivalent to denying the true God.”
Thus does the ecclesiastical chronicler refer to the practice in Peru of that particular form of worship of the heavenly bodies which was also widely spread in the East, in Arabia, and Palestine and was inveighed against by Mohammed as well as the ancient Hebrew prophets. Apparently this ceremony “of the most profound resignation and reverence” was practiced in Chuquipalpa, close to Uiticos, in the reign of the Inca Titu Cusi.
Calancha goes on to say: “In this white stone of the aforesaid House of the Sun, which is called Yurac Rumi [meaning, in Quichua, a white rock], Page 190there attends a Devil who is Captain of a legion. He and his legionaries show great kindness to the Indian idolators, but great terrors to the Catholics. They abuse with hideous cruelties the baptized ones who now no longer worship them with kisses, and many of the Indians have died from the horrible frights these devils have given them.”
One day, when the Inca and his mother and their principal chiefs and counselors were away from Uiticos on a visit to some of their outlying estates, Friar Marcos and Friar Diego decided to make a spectacular attack on this particular Devil, who was at the great “white rock over a spring of water.” The two monks summoned all their converts to gather at Puquiura, in the church or the neighboring plaza, and asked each to bring a stick of firewood in order that they might burn up this Devil who had tormented them. “An innumerable multitude” came together on the day appointed. The converted Indians were most anxious to get even with this Devil who had slain their friends and inflicted wounds on themselves; the doubters were curious to see the result; the Inca priests were there to see their god defeat the Christians'; while, as may readily be imagined, the rest of the population came to see the excitement. Starting out from Pucyura they marched to “the Temple of the Sun, in the village of Chuquipalpa, close to Uiticos.”
Arrived at the sacred palisade, the monks raised the standard of the cross, recited their orisons, surrounded the spring, the white rock and the Temple of the Sun, and piled high the firewood. Then, having Page 191exorcised the locality, they called the Devil by all the vile names they could think of, to show their lack of respect, and finally commanded him never to return to this vicinity. Calling on Christ and the Virgin, they applied fire to the wood. “The poor Devil then fled roaring in a fury, and making the mountains to tremble.”
It took remarkable courage on the part of the two lone monks thus to desecrate the chief shrine of the people among whom they were dwelling. It is almost incredible that in this remote valley, separated from their friends and far from the protecting hand of the Spanish viceroy, they should have dared to commit such an insult to the religion of their hosts. Of course, as soon as the Inca Titu Cusi heard of it, he was greatly annoyed. His mother was furious. They returned immediately to Pucyura. The chiefs wished to “slay the monks and tear them into small pieces,” and undoubtedly would have done so had it not been for the regard in which Friar Diego was held. His skill in curing disease had so endeared him to the Indians that even the Inca himself dared not punish him for the attack on the Temple of the Sun. Friar Marcos, however, who probably originated the plan, and had done little to gain the good will of the Indians, did not fare so well. Calancha says he was stoned out of the province and the Inca threatened to kill him if he ever should return. Friar Diego, particularly beloved by those Indians who came from the fever-stricken jungles in the lower valleys, was allowed to remain, and finally became a trusted friend and adviser of Titu Cusi. Page 192
One day a Spaniard named Romero, an adventurous prospector for gold, was found penetrating the mountain valleys, and succeeded in getting permission from the Inca to see what minerals were there. He was too successful. Both gold and silver were found among the hills and he showed enthusiastic delight at his good fortune. The Inca, fearing that his reports might encourage others to enter Uilcapampa, put the unfortunate prospector to death, notwithstanding the protestations of Friar Diego. Foreigners were not wanted in Uilcapampa.
In the year 1570, ten years after the accession of Titu Cusi to the Inca throne in Uiticos, a new Spanish viceroy came to Cuzco. Unfortunately for the Incas, Don Francisco de Toledo, an indefatigable soldier and administrator, was excessively bigoted, narrow-minded, cruel, and pitiless. Furthermore, Philip II and his Council of the Indies had decided that it would be worth while to make every effort to get the Inca out of Uiticos. For thirty-five years the Spanish conquerors had occupied Cuzco and the major portion of Peru without having been able to secure the submission of the Indians who lived in the province of Uilcapampa. It would be a great feather in the cap of Toledo if he could induce Titu Cusi to come and live where he would always be accessible to Spanish authority.
During the ensuing rainy season, after an unusually lively party, the Inca got soaked, had a chill, and was laid low. In the meantime the viceroy had picked out a Cuzco soldier, one Tilano de Anaya, who was well liked by the Inca, to try to persuade Page 193Titu Cusi to come to Cuzco. Tilano was instructed to go by way of Ollantaytambo and the Chuquichaca bridge. Luck was against him. Titu Cusi's illness was very serious. Friar Diego, his physician, had prescribed the usual remedies. Unfortunately, all the monk's skill was unavailing and his royal patient died. The “remedies” were held by Titu Cusi's mother and her counselors to be responsible. The poor friar had to suffer the penalty of death “for having caused the death of the Inca.”
The third son of Manco, Tupac Amaru, brought up as a playfellow of the Virgins of the Sun in the Temple near Uiticos, and now happily married, was selected to rule the little kingdom. His brows were decked with the Scarlet Fringe of Sovereignty, but, thanks to the jealous fear of his powerful illegitimate brother, his training had not been that of a soldier. He was destined to have a brief, unhappy existence. When the young Inca's counselors heard that a messenger was coming from the viceroy, seven warriors were sent to meet him on the road. Tilano was preparing to spend the night at the Chuquichaca bridge when he was attacked and killed.
The viceroy heard of the murder of his ambassador at the same time that he learned of the martyrdom of Friar Diego. A blow had been struck at the very heart of Spanish domination; if the representatives of the Vice-Regent of Heaven and the messengers of the viceroy of Philip II were not inviolable, then who was safe? On Palm Sunday the energetic Toledo, surrounded by his council, determined to make war on the unfortunate young Tupac Page 194Amaru and give a reward to the soldier who would effect his capture. The council was of the opinion that “many Insurrections might be raised in that Empire by this young Heir.” “Moreover it was alledged,” says Garcilasso …. “That by the Imprisonment of the Inca, all that Treasure might be discovered, which appertained to former kings, together with that Chain of Gold, which Huayna Capac commanded to be made for himself to wear on the great and solemn days of their Festival”! Furthermore, the “Chain of Gold with the remaining Treasure belong'd to his Catholic Majesty by right of Conquest”! Excuses were not wanting. The Incas must be exterminated.
The expedition was divided into two parts. One company was sent by way of Limatambo to Curahuasi, to head off the Inca in case he should cross the Apurimac and try to escape by one of the routes which had formerly been used by his father, Manco, in his marauding expeditions. The other company, under General Martin Hurtado and Captain Garcia, marched from Cuzco by way of Yucay and Ollantaytambo. They were more fortunate than Captain Villadiego whose force, thirty-five years before, had been met and destroyed at the pass of Panticalla. That was in the days of the active Inca Manco. Now there was no force defending this important pass. They descended the Lucumayo to its junction with the Urubamba and came to the bridge of Chuquichaca.
The narrow suspension bridge, built of native fibers, sagged deeply in the middle and swayed so Page 195threateningly over the gorge of the Urubamba that only one man could pass it at a time. The rapid river was too deep to be forded. There were no canoes. It would have been a difficult matter to have constructed rafts, for most of the trees that grow here are of hard wood and do not float. On the other side of the Urubamba was young Tupac Amaru, surrounded by his councilors, chiefs, and soldiers. The first hostile forces which in Pizarro's time had endeavored to fight their way into Uilcapampa had never been allowed by Manco to get as far as this. His youngest son, Tupac Amaru, had had no experience in these matters. The chiefs and nobles had failed to defend the pass; and they now failed to destroy the Chuquichaca bridge, apparently relying on their ability to take care of one Spanish soldier at a time and prevent the Spaniards from crossing the narrow, swaying structure. General Hurtado was not taking any such chances. He had brought with him one or two light mountain field pieces, with which the raw troops of the Inca were little acquainted. The sides of the valley at this point rise steeply from the river and the reverberations caused by gun fire would be fairly terrifying to those who had never heard anything like it before. A few volleys from the guns and the arquebuses, and the Indians fled pellmell in every direction, leaving the bridge undefended.
Captain Garcia, who had married the daughter of Sayri Tupac, was sent in pursuit of the Inca. His men found the road “narrow in the ascent, with forest on the right, and on the left a ravine of great Page 196depth.” It was only a footpath, barely wide enough for two men to pass. Garcia, with customary Spanish bravery, marched at the head of his company. Suddenly out of the thick forest an Inca chieftain named Hualpa, endeavoring to protect the flight of Tupac Amaru, sprang on Garcia, held him so that he could not get at his sword and endeavored to hurl him over the cliff. The captain's life was saved by a faithful Indian servant who was following immediately behind him, carrying his sword. Drawing it from the scabbard “with much dexterity and animation,” the Indian killed Hualpa and saved his master's life.
Garcia fought several battles, took some forts and succeeded in capturing many prisoners. From them it was learned that the Inca had “gone inland toward the valley of Simaponte; and that he was flying to the country of the Mañaries Indians, a warlike tribe and his friends, where balsas and canoes were posted to save him and enable him to escape.” Nothing daunted by the dangers of the jungle nor the rapids of the river, Garcia finally managed to construct five rafts, on which he put some of his soldiers. Accompanying them himself, he descended the rapids, escaping death many times by swimming, and finally arrived at a place called Momori, only to find that the Inca, learning of their approach, had gone farther into the woods. Garcia followed hard after, although he and his men were by this time barefooted and suffering from want of food. They finally captured the Inca. Garcilasso says that Tupac Amaru, “considering Page 197that he had not People to make resistance, and that he was not conscious to himself of any Crime, or disturbance he had done or raised, suffered himself to be taken; choosing rather to entrust himself in the hands of the Spaniards, than to perish in those Mountains with Famine, or be drowned in those great Rivers …. The Spaniards in this manner seizing on the Inca, and on all the Indian Men and Women, who were in Company with him, amongst which was his Wife, two Sons, and a Daughter, returned with them in Triumph to Cuzco; to which place the Vice-King went, so soon as he was informed of the imprisonment of the poor Prince.” A mock trial was held. The captured chiefs were tortured to death with fiendish brutality. Tupac Amaru's wife was mangled before his eyes. His own head was cut off and placed on a pole in the Cuzco Plaza. His little boys did not long survive. So perished the last of the Incas, descendants of the wisest Indian rulers America has ever seen.
Brief Summary of the Last Four Incas
1534. The Inca Manco ascends the throne of his fathers.
1536. Manco flees from Cuzco to Uiticos and Uilcapampa.
1542. Promulgation of the “New Laws.”
1545. Murder of Manco and accession of his son Sayri Tupac.
1555. Sayri Tupac goes to Cuzco and Yucay.
1560. Death of Sayri Tupac. His half brother Titu Cusi becomes Inca.
1566. Friar Marcos reaches Uiticos. Settles in Puquiura.
1566. Friar Diego joins him.
1568–9 (?). They burn the House of the Sun at Yurac Rumi in Chuquipalpa.
1571. Titu Cusi dies. Friar Diego suffers martyrdom. Tupac Amaru becomes Inca.
1572. Expedition of General Martin Hurtado and Captain Garcia de Loyola. Execution of Tupac Amaru. Page 198
1 Another version of this event is that the quarrel was over a game of chess between the Inca and Diego Mendez, another of the refugees, who lost his temper and called the Inca a dog. Angered at the tone and language of his guest, the Inca gave him a blow with his fist. Diego Mendez thereupon drew a dagger and killed him. A totally different account from the one obtained by Garcilasso from his informants is that in a volume purporting to have been dictated to Friar Marcos by Manco's son, Titu Cusi, twenty years after the event. I quote from Sir Clements Markham's translation:
“After these Spaniards had been with my Father for several years in the said town of Viticos they were one day, with much good fellowship, playing at quoits with him; only them, my Father and me, who was then a boy [ten years old]. Without having any suspicion, although an Indian woman, named Banba, had said that the Spaniards wanted to murder the Inca, my Father was playing with them as usual. In this game, just as my Father was raising the quoit to throw, they all rushed upon him with knives, daggers and some swords. My Father, feeling himself wounded, strove to make some defence, but he was one and unarmed, and they were seven fully armed; he fell to the ground covered with wounds, and they left him for dead. I, being a little boy, and seeing my Father treated in this manner, wanted to go where he was to help him. But they turned Page 183nfuriously upon me, and hurled a lance which only just failed to kill me also. I was terrified and fled amongst some bushes. They looked for me, but could not find me. The Spaniards, seeing that my Father had ceased to breathe, went out of the gate, in high spirits, saying, ‘Now that we have killed the Inca we have nothing to fear.’ But at this moment the captain Rimachi Yupanqui arrived with some Antis, and presently chased them in such sort that, before they could get very far along a difficult road, they were caught and pulled from their horses. They all had to suffer very cruel deaths and some were burnt. Notwithstanding his wounds my Father lived for three days.”
Another version is given by Montesinos in his Anales. It is more like Titu Cusi's.
2 A Spanish derivative from the Quichua mucha, “a kiss.” Muchani means “to adore, to reverence, to kiss the hands.”
Chapter X
Searching for the Last Inca Capital
The events described in the preceding chapter happened, for the most part, in Uiticos1 and Uilcapampa, northwest of Ollantaytambo, about one hundred miles away from the Cuzco palace of the Spanish viceroy, in what Prescott calls “the remote fastnesses of the Andes.” One looks in vain for Uiticos on modern maps of Peru, although several of the older maps give it. In 1625 “Viticos” is marked on de Laet's map of Peru as a mountainous province northeast of Lima and three hundred and fifty miles northwest of Vilcabamba! This error was copied by some later cartographers, including Mercator, until about 1740, when “Viticos” disappeared from all maps of Peru. The map makers had learned that there was no such place in that vicinity. Its real location was lost about three hundred years ago. A map published at Nuremberg in 1599 gives “Pincos” in the “Andes” mountains, a small range west of “Cusco.” This does not seem to have been adopted by other cartographers; although a Palls map of 1739 gives “Picos” in about the same place. Nearly all the cartographers of the eighteenth century who give “Viticos” supposed it to be the name of a tribe, e.g., “Los Viticos” or “Les Viticos.”
Part of the Nuremberg Map of 1599, Showing Pincos and the Andes Mountains
The largest official map of Peru, the work of that remarkable explorer, Raimondi, who spent his life crossing and recrossing Peru, does not contain the word Uiticos nor any of its numerous spellings, Viticos, Vitcos, Pitcos, or Biticos. Incidentally, it may seem strange that Uiticos could ever be written “Biticos.” The Quichua language has no sound of V. The early Spanish writers, however, wrote the capital letter U exactly like a capital V. In official documents and letters Uiticos became Viticos. The official readers, who had never heard the word pronounced, naturally used the V sound instead of the U sound. Both V and P easily become B. So Uiticos became Biticos and Uilcapampa became Vilcabamba.
Raimondi's marvelous energy led him to penetrate to more out-of-the-way Peruvian villages than any one had ever done before or is likely to do again. He stopped at nothing in the way of natural obstacles. In 1865 he went deep into the heart of Uilcapampa; yet found no Uiticos. He believed that the ruins of Choqquequirau represented the residence of the last Incas. This view had been held by the French explorer, Count de Sartiges, in 1834, who believed that Choqquequirau was abandoned when Sayri Tupac, Manco's oldest son, went to live in Yucay. Raimondi's view was also held by the leading Peruvian geographers, including Paz Soldan in 1877, and by Prefect Nuñez and his friends in 1909, at the time of my visit to Choqquequirau.2 The only dissenter was the learned Peruvian historian, Page 200Don Carlos Romero, who insisted that the last Inca capital must be found elsewhere. He urged the importance of searching for Uiticos in the valleys of the rivers now called Vilcabamba and Urubamba. It was to be the work of the Yale Peruvian Expedition of 1911 to collect the geographical evidence which would meet the requirements of the chronicles and establish the whereabouts of the long-lost Inca capital.
That there were undescribed and unidentified ruins to be found in the Urubamba Valley was known to a few people in Cuzco, mostly wealthy planters who had large estates in the province of Convencion. One told us that he went to Santa Ana every year and was acquainted with a muleteer who had told him of some interesting ruins near the San Miguel bridge. Knowing the propensity of his countrymen to exaggerate, however, he placed little confidence in the story and, shrugging his shoulders, had crossed the bridge a score of times without taking the trouble to look into the matter. Another, Señor Pancorbo, whose plantation was in the Vilcabamba Valley, said that he had heard vague rumors of ruins in the valley above his plantation, particularly near Pucyura. If his story should prove to be correct, then it was likely that this might be the very Puquiura where Friar Marcos had established the first church in the “province of Uilcapampa.” But that was “near” Uiticos and near a village called Chuquipalpa, where should be found the ruins of a Temple of the Sun, and in these ruins a “white rock over a spring of water.” Yet neither these friendly Page 201planters nor the friends among whom they inquired had ever heard of Uiticos or a place called Chuquipalpa, or of such an interesting rock; nor had they themselves seen the ruins of which they had heard.
One of Señor Lomellini's friends, a talkative old fellow who had spent a large part of his life in prospecting for mines in the department of Cuzco, said that he had seen ruins “finer than Choqquequirau” at a place called Huayna Picchu; but he had never been to Choqquequirau. Those who knew him best shrugged their shoulders and did not seem to place much confidence in his word. Too often he had been over-enthusiastic about mines which did not “pan out.” Yet his report resembled that of Charles Wiener, a French explorer, who, about 1875, in the course of his wanderings in the Andes, visited Ollantaytambo. While there he was told that there were fine ruins down the Urubamba Valley at a place called “Huaina-Picchu or Matcho-Picchu.” He decided to go down the valley and look for these ruins. According to his text he crossed the Pass of Panticalla, descended the Lucumayo River to the bridge of Choqquechacca, and visited the lower Urubamba, returning by the same route. He published a detailed map of the valley. To one of its peaks he gives the name “Huaynapicchu, ele. 1815 m.” and to another “Matchopicchu, ele. 1720 m.” His interest in Inca ruins was very keen. He devotes pages to Ollantaytambo. He failed to reach Machu Picchu or to find any ruins of importance in the Urubamba or Vilcabamba valleys. Could we hope to be any more successful? Would the rumors Page 202that had reached us “pan out” as badly as those to which Wiener had listened so eagerly? Since his day, to be sure, the Peruvian Government had actually finished a road which led past Machu Picchu. On the other hand, a Harvard Anthropological Expedition, under the leadership of Dr. William C. Farrabee, had recently been over this road without reporting any ruins of importance. They were looking for savages and not ruins. Nevertheless, if Machu Picchu was “finer than Choqquequirau” why had no one pointed it out to them?
Peruvian Expedition of 1915
To most of our friends in Cuzco the idea that there could be anything finer than Choqquequirau seemed, absurd. They regarded that “cradle of gold” as “the most remarkable archeological discovery of recent times.” They assured us there was nothing half so good. They even assumed that we were secretly planning to return thither to dig for buried treasure! Denials were of no avail. To a people whose ancestors made fortunes out of lucky “strikes,” and who themselves have been brought up on stories of enormous wealth still remaining to be discovered by some fortunate excavator, the question of tesoro—treasure, wealth, riches—is an ever-present source of conversation. Even the prefect of Cuzco was quite unable to conceive of my doing anything for the love of discovery. He was convinced that I should find great riches at Choqquequirau—and that I was in receipt of a very large salary! He refused to believe that the members of the Expedition received no more than their expenses. He told me confidentially that Professor Foote Page 203would sell his collection of insects for at least $10,000! Peruvians have not been accustomed to see any one do scientific work except as he was paid by the government or employed by a railroad or mining company. We have frequently found our work misunderstood and regarded with suspicion, even by the Cuzco Historical Society.
The valley of the Urubamba, or Uilcamayu, as it used to be called, may be reached from Cuzco in several ways. The usual route for those going to Yucay is northwest from the city, over the great Andean highway, past the slopes of Mt. Sencca. At Ttica-Ttica (12,000 ft.) the road crosses the lowest pass at the western end of the Cuzco Basin. At the last point from which one can see the city of Cuzco, all true Indians, whether on their way out of the valley or into it, pause, turn toward the east, facing the city, remove their hats and mutter a prayer. I believe that the words they use now are those of the “Ave Maria,” or some other familiar orison of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the custom undoubtedly goes far back of the advent of the first Spanish missionaries. It is probably a relic of the ancient habit of worshiping the rising sun. During the centuries immediately preceding the conquest, the city of Cuzco was the residence of the Inca himself, that divine individual who was at once the head of Church and State. Nothing would have been more natural than for persons coming in sight of his residence to perform an act of veneration. This in turn might have led those leaving the Page 204city to fall into the same habit at the same point in the road. I have watched hundreds of travelers pass this point. None of those whose European costume proclaimed a white or mixed ancestry stopped to pray or make obeisance. On the other hand, all those, without exception, who were clothed in a native costume, which betokened that they considered themselves to be Indians rather than whites, paused for a moment, gazing at the ancient city, removed their hats, and said a short prayer.
Leaving Ttica-Ttica, we went northward for several leagues, passed the town of Chincheros, with its old Inca walls, and came at length to the edge of the wonderful valley of Yucay. In its bottom are great level terraces rescued from the Urubamba River by the untiring energy of the ancient folk. On both sides of the valley the steep slopes bear many remains of narrow terraces, some of which are still in use. Above them are “temporales,” fields of grain, resting like a patch-work quilt on slopes so steep it seems incredible they could be cultivated. Still higher up, their heads above the clouds, are the jagged snow-capped peaks. The whole offers a marvelous picture, rich in contrast, majestic in proportion. In Yucay once dwelt the Inca Manco's oldest son, Sayri Tupac, after he had accepted the viceroy's invitation to come under Spanish protection. Here he lived three years and here, in 1560, he died an untimely death under circumstances which led his brothers, Titu Cusi and Tupac Amaru, to think that they would be safer in Uiticos. We spent the night in Urubamba, the modern capital of the province, Page 205much favored by Peruvians of to-day because of its abundant water supply, delightful climate, and rich fruits. Cuzco, 11,000 feet, is too high to have charming surroundings, but two thousand feet lower, in the Urubamba Valley, there is everything to please the eye and delight the horticulturist.
Speaking of horticulturists reminds me of their enemies. Uru is the Quichua word for caterpillars or grubs, pampa means flat land. Urubamba is “flat-land-where-there-are-grubs-or-caterpillars.” Had it been named by people who came up from a warm region where insects abound, it would hardly have been so denominated. Only people not accustomed to land where caterpillars and grubs flourished would have been struck by such a circumstance. Consequently, the valley was probably named by plateau dwellers who were working their way down into a warm region where butterflies and moths are more common. Notwithstanding its celebrated caterpillars, Urubamba's gardens of to-day are full of roses, lilies, and other brilliant flowers. There are orchards of peaches, pears, and apples; there are fields where luscious strawberries are raised for the Cuzco market. Apparently, the grubs do not get everything.
The next day down the valley brought us to romantic Ollantaytambo, described in glowing terms by Castelnau, Marcou, Wiener, and Squier many years ago. It has lost none of its charm, even though Marcou's drawings are imaginary and Squier's are exaggerated. Here, as at Urubamba, there are flower gardens and highly cultivated green Page 206fields. The brooks are shaded by willows and poplars. Above them are magnificent precipices crowned by snow-capped peaks. The village itself was once the capital of an ancient principality whose history is shrouded in mystery. There are ruins of curious gabled buildings, storehouses, “prisons,” or “monasteries,” perched here and there on well-nigh inaccessible crags above the village. Below are broad terraces of unbelievable extent where abundant crops are still harvested; terraces which will stand for ages to come as monuments to the energy and skill of a bygone race. The “fortress” is on a little hill, surrounded by steep cliffs, high walls, and hanging gardens so as to be difficult of access. Centuries ago, when the tribe which cultivated the rich fields in this valley lived in fear and terror of their savage neighbors, this hill offered a place of refuge to which they could retire. It may have been fortified at that time. As centuries passed in which the land came under the control of the Incas, whose chief interest was the peaceful promotion of agriculture, it is likely that this fortress became a royal garden. The six great ashlars of reddish granite weighing fifteen or twenty tons each, and placed in line on the summit of the hill, were brought from a quarry several miles away with an immense amount of labor and pains. They were probably intended to be a record of the magnificence of an able ruler. Not only could he command the services of a sufficient number of men to extract these rocks from the quarry and carry them up an inclined plane from the bottom of the valley to the summit of the hill; he had to Page 207supply the men with food. The building of such a monument meant taking five hundred Indians away from their ordinary occupations as agriculturists. He must have been a very good administrator. To his people the magnificent megaliths were doubtless a source of pride. To his enemies they were a symbol of his power and might.
Mt. Veronica and Salapunco, the Gateway to Uilcapampa
A league below Ollantaytambo the road forks. The right branch ascends a steep valley and crosses the pass of Panticalla near snow-covered Mt. Veronica. Near the pass are two groups of ruins. One of them, extravagantly referred to by Wiener as a “granite palace, whose appearance [appareil] resembles the more beautiful parts of Ollantaytambo,” was only a storehouse. The other was probably a tampu, or inn, for the benefit of official travelers. All travelers in Inca times, even the bearers of burdens, were acting under official orders. Commercial business was unknown. The rights of personal property were not understood. No one had anything to sell; no one had any money to buy it with. On the other hand, the Incas had an elaborate system of tax collecting. Two thirds of the produce raised by their subjects was claimed by the civil and religious rulers. It was a reasonable provision of the benevolent despotism of the Incas that inhospitable regions like the Panticalla Pass near Mt. Veronica should be provided with suitable rest houses and storehouses. Polo de Ondegardo, an able and accomplished statesman, who was in office in Cuzco in 1560, says that the food of the chasquis, Inca post runners, was provided from official storehouses; Page 208“those who worked for the Inca's service, or for religion, never ate at their own expense.” In Manco's day these buildings at Havaspampa probably sheltered the outpost which defeated Captain Villadiego.
Before the completion of the river road, about 1895, travelers from Cuzco to the lower Urubamba had a choice of two routes, one by way of the pass of Panticalla, followed by Captain Garcia in 1571, by General Miller in 1835, Castelnau in 1842, and Wiener in 1875; and one by way of the pass between Mts. Salcantay and Soray, along the Salcantay River to Huadquiña, followed by the Count de Sartiges in 1834 and Raimondi in 1865. Both of these routes avoid the highlands between Mt. Salcantay and Mt. Veronica and the lowlands between the villages of Piri and Huadquiña. This region was in 1911 undescribed in the geographical literature of southern Peru. We decided not to use either pass, but to go straight down the Urubamba river road. It led us into a fascinating country.
Two leagues beyond Piri, at Salapunco, the road skirts the base of precipitous cliffs, the beginnings of a wonderful mass of granite mountains which have made Uilcapampa more difficult of access than the surrounding highlands which are composed of schists, conglomerates, and limestone. Salapunco is the natural gateway to the ancient province, but it was closed for centuries by the combined efforts of nature and man. The Urubamba River, in cutting its way through the granite range, forms rapids too dangerous to be passable and precipices which can be scaled only with great effort Page 209and considerable peril. At one time a footpath probably ran near the river, where the Indians, by crawling along the face of the cliff and sometimes swinging from one ledge to another on hanging vines, were able to make their way to any of the alluvial terraces down the valley. Another path may have gone over the cliffs above the fortress, where we noticed, in various inaccessible places, the remains of walls built on narrow ledges. They were too narrow and too irregular to have been intended to support agricultural terraces. They may have been built to make the cliff more precipitous. They probably represent the foundations of an old trail. To defend these ancient paths we found that prehistoric man had built, at the foot of the precipices, close to the river, a small but powerful fortress whose ruins now pass by the name of Salapunco; sala = ruins; punco = gateway. Fashioned after famous Sacsahuaman and resembling it in the irregular character of the large ashlars and also by reason of the salients and reëntrant angles which enabled its defenders to prevent the walls being successfully scaled, it presents an interesting problem.
Commanding as it does the entrance to the valley of Torontoy, Salapunco may have been built by some ancient chief to enable him to levy tribute on all who passed. My first impression was that the fortress was placed here, at the end of the temperate zone, to defend the valleys of Urubamba and Ollantaytambo against savage enemies coming up from the forests of the Amazon. On the other hand, it is possible that Salapunco was built by the tribes Page 210occupying the fastnesses of Uilcapampa as an outpost to defend them against enemies coming down the valley from the direction of Ollantaytambo. They could easily have held it against a considerable force, for it is powerfully built and constructed with skill. Supplies from the plantations of Torontoy, lower down the river, might have reached it along the path which antedated the present government road. Salapunco may have been occupied by the troops of the Inca Manco when he established himself in Uiticos and ruled over Uilcapampa. He could hardly, however, have built a megalithic work of this kind. It is more likely that he would have destroyed the narrow trails than have attempted to hold the fort against the soldiers of Pizarro. Furthermore, its style and character seem to date it with the well-known megalithic structures of Cuzco and Ollantaytambo. This makes it seem all the more extraordinary that Salapunco could ever have been built as a defense against Ollantaytambo, unless it was built by folk who once occupied Cuzco and who later found a retreat in the canyons below here.
Grosvenor Glacier and Mt. Salcantay
When we first visited Salapunco no megalithic remains had been reported as far down the valley as this. It never occurred to us that, in hunting for the remains of such comparatively recent structures as the Inca Manco had the force and time to build, we were to discover remains of a far more remote past. Yet we were soon to find ruins enough to explain why such a fortress as Salapunco might possibly have been built so as to defend Uilcapampa against Ollantaytambo and Cuzco and not those well-known Page 211Inca cities against the savages of the Amazon jungles.
Passing Salapunco, we skirted granite cliffs and precipices and entered a most interesting region, where we were surprised and charmed by the extent of the ancient terraces, their length and height, the presence of many Inca ruins, the beauty of the deep, narrow valleys, and the grandeur of the snow-clad mountains which towered above them. Across the river, near Qquente, on top of a series of terraces, we saw the extensive ruins of Patallacta (pata = height or terrace; llacta = town or city), an Inca town of great importance. It was not known to Raimondi or Paz Soldan, but is indicated on Wiener's map, although he does not appear to have visited it. We have been unable to find any reference to it in the chronicles. We spent several months here in 1915 excavating and determining the character of the ruins. In another volume I hope to tell more of the antiquities of this region. At present it must suffice to remark that our explorations near Patallacta disclosed no “white rock over a spring of water.” None of the place names in this vicinity fit in with the accounts of Uiticos. Their identity remains a puzzle, although the symmetry of the buildings, their architectural idiosyncrasies such as niches, stone roof-pegs, bar-holds, and eye-bonders, indicate an Inca origin. At what date these towns and villages flourished, who built them, why they were deserted, we do not yet know; and the Indians who live hereabouts are ignorant, or silent, as to their history.
At Torontoy, the end of the cultivated temperate Page 212valley, we found another group of interesting ruins, possibly once the residence of an Inca chief. In a cave near by we secured some mummies. The ancient wrappings had been consumed by the natives in an effort to smoke out the vampire bats that lived in the cave. On the opposite side of the river are extensive terraces and above them, on a hilltop, other ruins first visited by Messrs. Tucker and Hendriksen in 1911. One of their Indian bearers, attempting to ford the rapids here with a large surveying instrument, was carried off his feet, swept away by the strong current, and drowned before help could reach him.
Near Torontoy is a densely wooded valley called the Pampa Ccahua. In 1915 rumors of Andean or “spectacled” bears having been seen here and of damage having been done by them to some of the higher crops, led us to go and investigate. We found no bears, but at an elevation of 12,000 feet were some very old trees, heavily covered with flowering moss not hitherto known to science. Above them I was so fortunate as to find a wild potato plant, the source from which the early Peruvians first developed many varieties of what we incorrectly call the Irish potato. The tubers were as large as peas.
Mr. Heller found here a strange little cousin of the kangaroo, a near relative of the cœnolestes. It turned out to be new to science. To find a new genus of mammalian quadrupeds was an event which delighted Mr. Heller far more than shooting a dozen bears.3 Page 213
Torontoy is at the beginning of the Grand Canyon of the Urubamba, and such a canyon! The river “road” runs recklessly up and down rock stairways, blasts its way beneath overhanging precipices, spans chasms on frail bridges propped on rustic brackets against granite cliffs. Under dense forests, wherever the encroaching precipices permitted it, the land between them and the river was once terraced and cultivated. We found ourselves unexpectedly in a veritable wonderland. Emotions came thick and fast. We marveled at the exquisite pains with which the ancient folk had rescued incredibly narrow strips of arable land from the tumbling rapids. How could they ever have managed to build a retaining wall of heavy stones along the very edge of the dangerous river, which it is death to attempt to cross! On one sightly bend near a foaming waterfall some Inca chief built a temple, whose walls tantalize the traveler. He must pass by within pistol shot of the interesting ruins, unable to ford the intervening rapids. High up on the side of the canyon, five thousand feet above this temple, are the ruins of Corihuayrachina (kori = “gold”; huayara = “wind”; huayrachina = “a threshing-floor where winnowing takes place.” Possibly this was an ancient gold mine of the Incas. Half a mile above us on another steep slope, some modern pioneer had recently cleared the jungle from a fine series of ancient artificial terraces.
Page 214On the afternoon of July 23d we reached a hut called “La Maquina,” where travelers frequently stop for the night. The name comes from the presence here of some large iron wheels, parts of a “machine” destined never to overcome the difficulties of being transported all the way to a sugar estate in the lower valley, and years ago left here to rust in the jungle. There was little fodder, and there was no good place for us to pitch our camp, so we pushed on over the very difficult road, which had been carved out of the face of a great granite cliff. Part of the cliff had slid off into the river and the breach thus made in the road had been repaired by means of a frail-looking rustic bridge built on a bracket composed of rough logs, branches, and reeds, tied together and surmounted by a few inches of earth and pebbles to make it seem sufficiently safe to the cautious cargo mules who picked their way gingerly across it. No wonder “the machine” rested where it did and gave its name to that part of the valley.
Dusk falls early in this deep canyon, the sides of which are considerably over a mile in height. It was almost dark when we passed a little sandy plain two or three acres in extent, which in this land of steep mountains is called a pampa. Were the dwellers on the pampas of Argentina—where a railroad can go for 250 miles in a straight line, except for the curvature of the earth—to see this little bit of flood-plain called Mandor Pampa, they would think some one had been joking or else grossly misusing a word which means to them illimitable space with not a Page 215hill in sight. However, to the ancient dwellers in this valley, where level land was so scarce that it was worth while to build high stone-faced terraces so as to enable two rows of corn to grow where none grew before, any little natural breathing space in the bottom of the canyon is called a pampa.