Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of PeruBingham, Hiram
History
Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru
Bingham, Hiram
Incas; Peru -- Antiquities; Peru -- Description and travel
It would be easier to adopt Paccaritampu as the site of Tampu-tocco
were it not for the legal records of an inquiry made by Toledo at the
time when he put the last Inca to death. Fifteen Indians, descended
from those who used to live near Las Salinas, the important salt works
near Cuzco, on being questioned, agreed that they had heard their
fathers and grandfathers repeat the tradition that when the first Inca,
Manco Ccapac, captured their lands, he came from Tampu-tocco. They did
not say that the first Inca came from Paccaritampu, which, it seems
to me, would have been a most natural thing for them to have said if
this were the general belief of the natives. In addition there is the
still older testimony of some Indians born before the arrival of the
first Spaniards, who were examined at a legal investigation in 1570. A
chief, aged ninety-two, testified that Manco Ccapac came out of a cave
called Tocco, and that he was lord of the town near that cave. Not
one of the witnesses stated that Manco Ccapac came from Paccaritampu,
although it is difficult to imagine why they should not have done
so if, as the contemporary historians believed, this was really the
original Tampu-tocco. The chroniclers were willing enough to accept
the interesting cave near Paccaritampu as the place where Manco
Ccapac was born, and from which he came to conquer Cuzco. Why were
the sworn witnesses so reticent? It seems hardly possible that they
should have forgotten where Tampu-tocco was supposed to have been. Was
their reticence due to the fact that its actual whereabouts had been
successfully kept secret? Manco Ccapac's home was that Tampu-tocco
to which the followers of Pachacuti VI fled with his body after the
overthrow of the old régime, a very secluded and holy place. Did they
know it was in the same fastnesses of the Andes to which in the days
of Pizarro the young Inca Manco had fled from Cuzco? Was this the
cause of their reticence?
Certainly the requirements of Tampu-tocco are met at Machu Picchu. The
splendid natural defenses of the Grand Canyon of the Urubamba made it
an ideal refuge for the descendants of the Amautas during the centuries
of lawlessness and confusion which succeeded the barbarian invasions
from the plains to the east and south. The scarcity of violent
earthquakes and also its healthfulness, both marked characteristics
of Tampu-tocco, are met at Machu Picchu. It is worth noting that the
existence of Machu Picchu might easily have been concealed from the
common people. At the time of the Spanish Conquest its location might
have been known only to the Inca and his priests.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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