The Last Days of the Incas

by KIM MACQUARRIE

  * The Tambo Valley is now known as the Sacred, or Vilcanota, Valley.

  * Tawantin in the Inca language, Quechua, means a group of four things (tawa means four with the suffix-ntin, which names a group; and suyu, which means “part”).

  * This description of Huascar comes down to us from Juan de Betanzos, a Spaniard who married Atahualpa’s sister. The description, therefore, is probably a biased one.

  * Aleixo Garcia, the Portuguese adventurer, was actually the first European to climb into the Andes.

  * The Incas more than likely called their language runasimi, from runa, which means “people,” and simi, which means “speech.” It wasn’t until 1560 that the term Quechua first appeared in a Spanish document referring to the Incas’ language. The name Quechua was probably derived from a misunderstanding by the conquistadors of the term qheswa-simi. Qheswa means “valley” and simi means speech. By 1560, the Spaniards were using the word Quechua—a garbled version of the Inca word Qheswa, or “valley,” to refer to the official language of the Inca Empire.

  * The imaginary line designated by the pope in the Treaty of Tordesillas was located at 46 degrees, 37 minutes western longitude, or about 1,270 statute miles west of the Cape Verde Islands off the African coast.

  * Quipus were knotted cords that used a positional decimal system to keep track of quantities of things such as taxes, livestock, populations, and goods as well as serving as memory prompts for stories about history and other subjects. A type of primitive computer, quipus were created and deciphered by specialists called quipucamayocs, or “knot authorities.” The intricately knotted quipus contained much of the vast quantity of information needed to help tie together the enormous and complex Inca Empire.

  * “Santiago” is the Spanish translation of the patron saint, St. James (known in Galician language as Sant Iago), one of the twelve apostles of Christ. This was the traditional war cry Spanish troops had used since the twelfth century, while expelling the Islamic infidels, the Moors, from the Iberian peninsula.

  * Some of these, of course, had simply been trampled to death.

  * The Spanish corruption of the word Antis—a name given by the Incas to one of the ethnic groups (probably today’s Machiguenga) in the eastern quarter of their empire, the Anti-suyu, is thought to be where the name Andes derived from.

  † † The Spanish chronicles are not quite clear as to whether Atahualpa made his offer with the idea of offering Pizarro a large tribute, which was standard procedure for tribes conquered by the Incas, or whether he offered it as a ransom in return for his release, a concept the Spaniards were more familiar with. Even if Atahualpa offered the silver and gold to Pizarro as a tribute, however, because of the Incas’ ingrained notion of reciprocity the emperor surely expected something in return.

  * Lawyers, no more popular in the sixteenth-century kingdoms of Spain than in modern times, were in fact banned by the crown from entering Peru in an agreement signed with Pizarro in 1529, even before the conquest of Peru began. The king apparently wished to avoid the perceived negative effects of Spanish litigation. With distances so great, however, the crown was unable to enforce the order; hence the first Spanish lawyers began to enter Peru by 1534. Lawsuits began to pour out of Spain’s new colony soon afterward and continue to proliferate to this day.

  * All wild potatoes contain toxic glycoalkaloids, giving them a bitter taste. Those that grow at elevations of more than nine thousand feet and are frost-resistant have even higher concentrations of them. The Incas and their ancestors freeze-dried potatoes, a process of alternately freezing, crushing, and then drying potatoes that served to break down the glycoalkaloids and also made their storage easier. The Incas called the finished, freeze-dried product chuño; it was and still is an essential ingredient in traditional Andean stews.

  * Related to the camel, both alpacas and llamas were domesticated from wild guanacos at least five thousand years before the appearance of the Incas. Alpacas were used primarily for their fine wool, while llamas were used more as beasts of burden, as offerings to the gods, and for their meat, hides, and manure pellets, which were used as fuel. The average llama stands five to six feet in height, weighs around 250 to 450 pounds, and can carry pack loads of from fifty to eighty pounds.

  * At the time of the conquest, chivalric novels were all the vogue, one of the most popular being Amadis de Gaula, the story of a knight errant who dons armor and travels to the far ends of the earth. There he battles giants, monsters, and other fantastic creatures, all the while remaining faithful to his beautiful lady. Novels such as Amadis were considered so morally corrupting, however, that beginning in 1531—while Pizarro and his men were already headed south from Panama—the Spanish crown banned them from being transported to the New World; the Spanish authorities apparently feared that such suggestive literature might morally corrupt both the immigrants and the New World’s impressionable natives. Contraband novels were smuggled into the New World anyway, and it is probable that every group of conquistadors carried at least one or two dog-eared copies of their favorite books, reading them by firelight in the midst of fantastic mountains and exotic scenery every bit as strange and wondrous as those depicted in their outlawed fiction.

  * Like the Spaniards, the Incas believed in an afterlife. Virtuous individuals—those who were generous and hardworking—traveled off to live with the Sun God in the pleasant “upper world,” or hanac-paca, where food and warmth abounded. Individuals without virtue, meanwhile—those who lied, stole, or were ungenerous or lazy—were sent off to the feared “interior world,” okho-paca, a place of unending cold where the only food available was an assortment of inedible rocks.

  * Ruiz de Arce had good reason to be upset. With the loss of his horse he had now been automatically demoted to a foot soldier, was more apt to be wounded due to having to fight on the ground, would receive a smaller share of any future booty, and had just lost an irreplaceable military weapon. Due to the infiated prices in Peru, a horse now cost as much as an average house in Spain.

  * The coronation quoted here was actually that of Tupac Huallpa, whom Pizarro and his men elevated to the position of Inca emperor the day after they had killed Atahualpa. Tupac Huallpa died two months later, however. Manco’s coronation, which was described by a number of contemporary chroniclers, closely resembled that of Tupac Huallpa’s, which had taken place just two months earlier.

  † † After his death in Quito of what was probably an introduced epidemic of smallpox, Huayna Capac had been embalmed and transported back to Cuzco, his dead body presumably still covered at the time with the contagious smallpox spores.

  * The llautu was a headband created from many woven braids wrapped around the head. An opulent one would have been worn only by Inca nobles or royalty.

  * Although the Spaniards always wore helmets, few wore visors, as these tended to impede their vision.

  * Armor imported from Spain was expensive. The wealthier a Spaniard was, the more protective armor he could afford. The corollary was that the poorer Spaniards were often exposed to the greatest danger. Slaves more than likely wore confiscated native cotton armor, which afforded far less protection than steel armor or chain mail.

  * Juan Pizarro was later buried in Cuzco’s Dominican Monastery of Santo Domingo, built atop the Qoricancha, the Incas’ temple of the sun.

  * Puma is one of many Quechua (or runasimi ) words that have entered the English language. Others are: condor, guano, gaucho, jerky, Inca, llama, pampa, potato, quinoa, vicuña, and coca.

  * Pascual de Andagoya was the same explorer who had originally brought back rumors to Panama of a wealthy land called Piru in 1522, rumors that only Francisco Pizarro followed up on.

  * The Yucay/Vilcanota River was called the Willcamayu River by the Incas.

  * Amaru Cancha, in Quechua, means “Snake House”; among the Incas the snake was a symbol of knowledge and learning.

  * Bowls is a game played outside using heavy metal balls to hit a stationary target
and is what the French call pétanque. Pelota was presumably a sixteenth-century version of jai-alai, a game that is similar to handball but which uses a long wooden device strapped to the arm with which to fling the ball at a higher velocity.

  * After his capture at Vitcos, Titu Cusi had been taken to Cuzco. He later escaped with his mother.

  * Humboldt traveled to South America, fittingly enough, on a ship called the Pizarro.

  * The university is called the universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cuzco and was founded in 1692.

  * The Rodadero Foote referred to is a rocky knoll across the plain from the fortress of Saqsaywaman. The Incas carved a variety of shapes into the various outcroppings of the Rodadero, including “throne-like” seats similar to those they carved into the great stone of Chuquipalta.

  * Douglas Sharon ultimately went on to earn a Ph.D. in anthropology and is currently the director of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Antonio Santander was in his early sixties at the time and had previously lost an eye while searching for the lost city of Paititi.

  * The friar Martín de Murúa’s chronicle was not published in its entirety until 1922 (in Lima), 332 years after it was completed and ten years after Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu. Although the chronicle was edited by Carlos Romero, the same Peruvian historian who had helped Bingham locate Espíritu Pampa, it was the English historian John Hemming who later drew attention to how Murúa’s description of Vilcabamba supported Savoy’s identification of Vilcabamba and not Bingham’s.

  * Machu Picchu is believed to have been built between 1450 and 1470. Recent excavations at Vilcabamba indicate that the latter city was also constructed during the fifteenth century.

  * Archaeologists recognize eighteen different types of stone walls and building styles at Machu Picchu, including the imperial style.

  * The architect Vincent Lee believes that Vitcos was built as another of Pachacuti’s royal estates.

  * The anthropologist and Inca specialist John H. Rowe believed that a Spaniard named Gabriel Xuárez may have visited Machu Picchu in 1568, for Xuárez had purchased lands near the site. However, no concrete documentation of an actual visit by a European to the site prior to the twentieth century currently exists.

  * Lizarraga died in 1912, the year after Bingham’s first visit.

  * Bingham sent numerous crates of artifacts excavated at Machu Picchu, estimated by the Peruvian government to contain over five thousand items, to Yale University’s Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1912 and 1916 for their scientific study. Although Bingham did so with the permission of the Peruvian government at the time, the executive decrees agreed to by Bingham and Yale stipulated that the artifacts must be returned to Peru upon Peru’s request. Beginning with an official request in 1920, Peru has been trying to secure their return ever since. Many feel that by the one hundredth anniversary of Machu Picchu’s rediscovery—in 2011—that these artifacts should be returned to Peru.