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
Furthermore, as Mr. Safford has pointed out, among the artifacts
discovered at Machu Picchu was a "snuffing tube" intended for use with
the narcotic snuff which was employed by the priests and necromancers
to induce a hypnotic state. This powder was made from the seeds of
the tree which the Incas called huilca or uilca, which, as has been
pointed out in Chapter XI, grows near these ruins. This seems to me
to furnish additional evidence of the identity of Machu Picchu with
Calancha's "Vilcabamba."
It cannot be denied that the ruins of Machu Picchu satisfy the
requirements of "the largest city, in which was the University of
Idolatry." Until some one can find the ruins of another important place
within three days' journey of Pucyura which was an important religious
center and whose skeletal remains are chiefly those of women, I am
inclined to believe that this was the "Vilcabamba Viejo" of Calancha,
just as Espiritu Pampa was the "Vilcabamba Viejo" of Ocampo.
In the interesting account of the last Incas purporting to be by Titu
Cusi, but actually written in excellent Spanish by Friar Marcos,
he says that his father, Manco, fleeing from Cuzco went first "to
Vilcabamba, the head of all that province."
In the "Anales del Peru" Montesinos says that Francisco Pizarro,
thinking that the Inca Manco wished to make peace with him, tried
to please the Inca by sending him a present of a very fine pony and
a mulatto to take care of it. In place of rewarding the messenger,
the Inca killed both man and beast. When Pizarro was informed of this,
he took revenge on Manco by cruelly abusing the Inca's favorite wife,
and putting her to death. She begged of her attendants that "when she
should be dead they would put her remains in a basket and let it float
down the Yucay [or Urubamba] River, that the current might take it
to her husband, the Inca." She must have believed that at that time
Manco was near this river. Machu Picchu is on its banks. Espiritu
Pampa is not.
We have already seen how Manco finally established himself at Uiticos,
where he restored in some degree the fortunes of his house. Surrounded
by fertile valleys, not too far removed from the great highway which
the Spaniards were obliged to use in passing from Lima to Cuzco, he
could readily attack them. At Machu Picchu he would not have been
so conveniently located for robbing the Spanish caravans nor for
supplying his followers with arable lands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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