The next morning, July 24, the sixth day of their trip,
dawned in a cold drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed inclined to stay in his hut. I offered to pay him well if he would show me the ruins. He demurred and said it was too hard a climb for such a wet day. But when he found that I was willing to pay him a sol [a Peruvian silver dollar], three or four times the ordinary wage in this vicinity, he finally agreed to guide us to the ruins. No one supposed that they would be particularly interesting. And no one cared to go with me. Our Naturalist [Foote] said there were “more butterflies near the river!” and he was reasonably certain he could collect some new varieties. Our Surgeon [Erving] said he had to wash his clothes and mend them. Anyhow it was my job to investigate all reports of ruins and try to find the Inca capital.
Contrary to Bingham’s account, however, Foote’s job was to make collections of insects and mosses, not to look for ruins. The physician, meanwhile, who was in charge of keeping the expedition members healthy, was also working as a physical anthropologist and had been making photographic studies of native physiognomy. He wanted to remain in camp and develop some of the photos that he and other members of the expedition had taken. It was Bingham’s self-appointed job, and Bingham’s alone, to search for lost Inca ruins. Sitting inside his tent on his cot as a light rain fell, Bingham took out his small notebook. At the top of an unmarked page he wrote down “July 24” and below this, two names: “Maccu Picchu” and “Huaynapichu.” These were Bingham’s twin objectives for the day.
Around ten o’clock that morning, Bingham and Arteaga, who wore dark pants, a jacket, and a pointed hat, along with Sergeant Carrasco, who wore a dark military uniform with a row of brass buttons and a wide, flat-topped hat, set out upon the dirt road and then began clambering across a makeshift bridge of four slender logs that spanned the Urubamba River. Arteaga and Carrasco each crossed the bridge “native style,” walking upright, carrying their shoes, and gripping the flexible logs with their bare feet and toes; they then waited patiently on the other side for the North American doctor. Wearing a broad-brimmed hat, khaki trousers, leather boots with knee-high leggings, and a jacket crammed with odds and ends, Bingham didn’t trust his balance on the logs. Instead, the esteemed director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition sheepishly crawled after his companions, crossing the unsteady bridge on his hands and knees.
For the next hour and a half, the three men climbed up a steep foot trail that wound up the side of the mountain through cloud forest vegetation, with low clouds ringing the nearby peaks and with the winding, blue-green Urubamba River becoming smaller and smaller below them. When they finally reached the base of a ridgetop that formed a saddle between two peaks, Bingham was surprised to find the ridge already inhabited by three peasant families, who leased their land, it turned out, from Bingham’s guide.
Shortly after noon, just as we were completely exhausted, we reached a little grass-covered hut where several good-natured Indians, pleasantly surprised at our unexpected arrival, welcomed us with dripping gourds full of cool, delicious water. They then set before us a few cooked sweet potatoes…. Two pleasant Indian farmers, [Anacleto] Richarte and [Toribio] Alvarez, had recently chosen this eagle’s nest for their home. They said they had found plenty of terraces here on which to grow their crops, and they were unusually free from undesirable visitors…. Richarte told us that they had been living here four years. It seems probable that, owing to its inaccessibility, the canyon had been unoccupied for several centuries, but with the completion of the new government road, settlers began once more to occupy this region. In time somebody clambered up the precipices and found on these slopes, at an elevation of 9,000 feet [sic] above the sea, an abundance of rich soil conveniently situated on artificial terraces, in a fine climate. Here the Indians had finally cleared off and burned over a few terraces and planted crops of maize, sweet and white potatoes, sugar cane, beans, peppers, tree tomatoes, and gooseberries.
From the hut where they were sitting, Bingham could see no signs of Inca ruins, although the view of the surrounding peaks and distant mountains was stupendous. Clouds hid many of the nearby peaks, alternately revealing and then obscuring the sun. Bingham continued:
Without the slightest expectation of finding anything more interesting than … the ruins of two or three houses such as we had encountered at various places on the road between Ollantaytambo and Torontoy, I finally left the cool shade of the pleasant little hut and climbed farther up the ridge and around a slight promontory. Arteaga had “been here once before,” and decided to rest and gossip with Richarte and Alvarez in the hut. They sent a small boy with me as a “guide.” The Sergeant was in duty bound to follow, but I think he may have been a little curious to see what there was to see. Hardly had we rounded the promontory when the character of the stonework began to improve. A flight of beautifully constructed [stone] terraces, each two hundred yards long and ten feet high, had been recently rescued from the jungle by the Indians. A veritable forest of large trees which had been growing on them for centuries had been chopped down and partly burned to make a clearing for agricultural purposes. The task had been too great for the two Indians so the tree trunks had been allowed to lie as they fell and only the smaller branches removed. But the ancient soil, carefully put in place by the Incas, was still capable of producing rich crops of maize and potatoes. However, there was nothing to be excited about. Similar flights of well-made terraces are to be seen in the upper Urubamba Valley at Pisac and Ollantaytambo, as well as opposite Torontoy.
Bingham knew very well, however, that at both Pisac and Ollantaytambo not only were there “similar flights” of giant terraces, but that extensive and rather spectacular ruins of perfectly cut stones lay nearby. In addition, near the terraces of Torontoy, Bingham had found “another group of interesting ruins, possibly once the residence of an Inca noble.” Bingham had further been told by a number of different sources that there were ruins up here; he must have known, therefore, that significant ruins were probably located nearby.
We scrambled along through the dense undergrowth, climbing over terrace walls and in bamboo thickets where our guide found it easier going than I did…. Then the little boy urged us to climb up a steep hill over what seemed to be a flight of stone steps. Surprise followed surprise in bewildering succession. We came to a great stairway of large granite blocks. Then we walked along a path to a clearing where the Indians had planted a small vegetable garden. Suddenly we found ourselves standing in front of the ruins of two of the finest and most interesting buildings in ancient America. Made of beautiful white granite, the walls contained blocks of Cyclopean size, higher than a man. The sight held me spellbound…. I could scarcely believe my senses as I examined the larger blocks in the lower course, and estimated that they must weigh from ten to fifteen tons each. Would anyone believe what I had found? Fortunately, in this land where accuracy of reporting what one has seen is not a prevailing characteristic of travelers, I had a good camera and the sun was shining.
For the next five hours, Bingham followed the boy along the ridgetop, examining ruin after ruin. With his Kodak camera and the folding camera tripod he had brought along, Bingham began snapping the first photos of the site that would later become a household name: “Machu Picchu,” or “Old Peak.” Always meticulous in his habits, Bingham was careful to jot down notes and descriptions of all of his photos:
Some structures of stone laid in clay. Others nicely squared like Cuzco. Niches nicely made like Ollantaytambo. Cylinders common inside and out. Better fashioned than those at Choq…. Views on both sides. Whole place extremely inaccessible.
Similar to his experience at Choqquequirau, Bingham discovered that he was not the first explorer to visit the ruins at Machu Picchu. On the wall of one of the Inca temples, in fact, Bingham soon discovered that a previous visitor had scrawled his name with what looked to be charcoal, along with a date:
Lizarraga, 1902
Whoever this person Lizarraga was, he had obvious
ly visited the ruins of Machu Picchu nine years earlier. Bingham carefully jotted down the explorer’s name, then continued taking notes, snapping photos, and making a rough sketch of the site. At around five in the afternoon, Bingham, Sergeant Carrasco, and Arteaga left the peasant’s hut and began making their way back down to the valley floor, moving much more rapidly now as they were aided, not hindered, by gravity. Back in camp, Bingham went inside his tent, then came out and paid Arteaga with a shiny silver sol. As the sun sank and the expedition members prepared for dinner, high above them, beside the ruins of an ancient and unknown Inca city, peasant families cooked pots of stew inside their huts, using dried wood for kindling and letting the smoke percolate through the grass roofs of their homes, much as the Incas who had inhabited this ridgetop had done some four centuries earlier.
Despite his later claims that he had immediately recognized the significance of the ruins at Machu Picchu, Bingham was actually disappointed that the ruins he had just discovered were not the ones he had been searching for. Comparing what he had seen up on the ridgetop of Machu Picchu with the various clues he had culled from the chronicles of Calancha, Ocampo, and Titu Cusi, Bingham found little in common between the ruins he had just visited and the chroniclers’ descriptions of Manco Inca’s two lost cities.
When I first saw the remarkable citadel of Machu Picchu perched on a narrow ridge two thousand feet above the river, I wondered if it could be the place to which that old soldier, Baltasar de Ocampo, a member of Captain Garcia’s [de Loyola’s 1572] expedition, was referring when he said: “The Inca Tupac Amaru was there in the fortress of Pitcos [Vitcos], which is on a very high mountain, whence the view commanded a great part of the province of Vilcapampa. Here there was an extensive level space, with very sumptuous and majestic buildings, erected with great skill and art, all the lintels of the doors, the principal as well as the ordinary ones, being of marble, elaborately carved.” Could it be that “Picchu” was the modern variant of “Pitcos”? To be sure, the white granite of which the temples and palaces of Machu Picchu are constructed might easily pass for marble. The difficulty about fitting Ocampo’s description to Machu Picchu, however, was that there was no difference between the lintels of the doors and the walls themselves. Furthermore, there is no “white rock over a spring of water” which Calancha says was “near Viticos [Vitcos].” There is no Pucyura in this neighborhood. In fact, the canyon of the Urubamba does not satisfy the geographical requirements of Viticos. Although containing ruins of surpassing interest, Machu Picchu did not represent that last Inca capital for which we were searching. We had not yet found Manco’s palace.
The very next day, in fact, Bingham and his team decided to move on, with Bingham intent on continuing the search for Vitcos and for the white rock located over a natural spring. If he could find those two sites, Bingham believed, then he was certain that Vilcabamba must be nearby. As Bingham waited impatiently for his Peruvian assistants to break camp, he ironically had no idea whatsoever that, on only his sixth day out of Cuzco, he had already found the ruins that would forever link his name with one of the most famous lost cities in the world. So slight seemed to be his level of excitement, in fact, that Bingham’s friend Harry Foote had written in his diary the day after Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu “No special things to note.”
For the next week, Bingham, Foote, and Carrasco continued their search for Vitcos and for Vilcabamba, paying local guides who claimed they knew the whereabouts of nearby ruins but discovering very little in the process. The three men spent days clambering up the slopes of nearby mountains, yet virtually every time they returned empty-handed. Gradually, the explorers made their way down the Urubamba River as far as the hacienda of Santa Ana, fully aware now that they were on the edge of the upper Amazon Basin. Here, they no doubt saw troops of thickly furred woolly monkeys in the jungle-covered hills, while along the muddy riverbanks they must have encountered abundant tracks of tapirs and peccaries. As vividly colored macaws squawked and flew overhead in flocks and pairs, in a relatively short distance they had traveled from the high, snowy peaks of the Andes all the way down to the Amazon Basin. The Amazon stretched for nearly two thousand miles more, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Bingham was certain, however, that somewhere amid the rugged eastern foothills of this massive mountain chain must be hidden the two lost cities he was looking for.
Heading up the Urubamba River again, Bingham and his party eventually came to a bridge that they had passed earlier and that they had learned from the locals was called Chuquichaca. Bingham had immediately recognized that this was one of the ancient place names that he had been seeking, as he knew that the sixteenth-century Spanish captain Baltasar de Ocampo had written “They [the Incas] guarded the bridge of Chuqi-chaca, over the Vilcamayu [Urubamba] River, which is the key to the province of Vilcapampa.” Ocampo had also written that the Spanish general Martín Hurtado de Arbieto—who had led the final 1572 campaign that had sacked Vilcabamba and captured Tupac Amaru—had “marched from Cusco down the valley by Yucay and Ollantay-tampu to the bridge of Chuqui-chaca and the province of Vilcapampa.”
Encouraged by the fact that they had located “the key to the province” of Vilcabamba, Bingham and his team now began to slowly head up into the Vilcabamba River Valley, one mule step at a time. By now, Bingham had developed a simple yet effective strategy for locating lost Inca ruins: first, he asked the people who lived in the area and who had walked and clambered over most of the surrounding hills and trails. If the locals claimed they knew of nearby ruins, then Bingham offered them a monetary reward if they would take him there. Second, Bingham always sought linguistic help, either from Sergeant Carrasco, who spoke Quechua in addition to Spanish, or from the local officials and landowners, who often spoke both languages as well. Bingham had quickly learned that the locals in the area were often much more fluent in the Incas’ ancient Quechua language than in Spanish. To obtain the maximum amount of information, then, Bingham always tried to question his informants in the language they were most fluent in. Now, entering the Vilcabamba Valley, Bingham soon put his strategy to good use.
Our next stop was at Lucma, the home of Teniente Gobernador [Evaristo] Mogrovejo. We offered to pay him a gratificacion of a sol, or Peruvian silver dollar, for every ruin to which he would take us and double that amount if the locality should prove to contain particularly interesting ruins. This aroused all his business instincts. He summoned his alcaldes [local mayors] and other well-informed Indians to appear and be interviewed. They told us there were “many ruins” hereabouts! Being a practical man himself, Mogrovejo had never taken any interest in ruins. Now he saw the chance not only to make money out of the ancient sites, but also to gain official favor by carrying out with unexampled vigor the orders of his superior, the sub-prefect of Quillabamba. So he exerted himself to the utmost in our behalf.
Two days later, on August 8, some fifteen days after discovering Machu Picchu, Bingham left with several guides while Harry Foote went off collecting insects.
We … forded the Vilcabamba River and soon had an uninterrupted view up the valley to a high truncated hill, its top partly covered with a scrubby growth of trees and bushes, its sides steep and rocky. We were told that the name of the hill was “Rosaspata,” a word of modern hybrid origin—pata being Quichua for “hill,” while rosas is the Spanish word for “roses.” Mogrovejo said his Indians told him that on the “Hill of Roses” there were more ruins. We hoped it might be true, especially as we now learned that the village at the foot of the hill, and across the river, was called Puquiura. … It was to a Puquiura that Friar Marcos [García] came in 1566 [sic]. If this were his Puquiura, then Vitcos must be nearby, for he and Friar Diego [Ortiz] walked with their famous procession of converts from Puquiura to the “House of the Sun,” which was “close to Vitcos.”
Following his guides up the hill, Bingham soon discovered an extensive level area on top, and also an ancient square, with the remains of large, ruined, Inca-style b
uildings flanking it. One building, which Bingham noted was “indeed a residence fit for a royal Inca,” was 245 feet long by forty-three feet wide and had thirty trapezoidal doorways perforating it. While the walls of the buildings were not of the classic imperial-style Inca stonework, many of the doorways nevertheless were cut from white blocks of granite and were finished with all of the Incas’ finest stoneworking techniques. From this hilltop vantage point, Bingham could look out over the entire Vilcabamba Valley; he couldn’t help now but compare the ruins of Rosaspata with how Captain Baltasar de Ocampo had described Vitcos more than three hundred years earlier:
the fortress of Pitcos [Vitcos], which is on a very high mountain whence the view commanded a great part of the province of Vilcapampa. Here there was an extensive level space, with very sumptuous and majestic buildings, erected with great skill and art, all the lintels of the doors, as well the principal as the ordinary ones, being of marble, elaborately carved.
The Last Days of the Incas Page 46