Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

The Inca deities were the Sun and Moon. The Sun they regarded as God the Father and the Moon (believed to be the Sun-God’s sister and wife) as the Goddess-Mother. The people called themselves Children of the Sun. The reigning Inca was at once the Chief Priest and absolute temporal ruler. Following their conception of the divine relationship, he could marry only his sister of the full blood and only their eldest son could inherit the throne. If no son was born of this first incestuous marriage, or if he died and no other was born, the Inca married the next sister, and so on until there was one capable of inheriting. But there were morganatic marriages, as a result of which each of the reigning Incas left numerous sons and daughters, whose descendants constituted a privileged class, and in the course of ages the throne came to be surrounded by thousands of men of the royal blood who were devoted from their birth to warfare, learning, and state-craft. A subject, however, could have more than one wife only by favor of the Inca. The government, though exercised in a kindly spirit, as we are told by the ancient chroniclers, was in form a military despotism.

There was no money or other medium of exchange; gold and silver were used only for purposes of adornment; such trade as there was, was by barter. Every man was obliged to work for the common good at some form of industry or occupation suitable to his strength and age and, if able, to take his turn at the maintenance and extension of the irrigation systems, which in that way were brought to such a state of perfection that modern Peru still lives on the half-ruined fragments of their canals and conduits and reservoirs. Hardly a spot of arable soil was left uncultivated. Whole mountains were terraced for thousands of feet up their sides.

Private ownership in land did not exist; it belonged to the communes. The custom was to divide it into tracts, each large enough to support a family, and parcel it out; for every child born there was an additional allotment, and, at intervals, a general revision and redistribution. The produce was divided into three parts: one for the Inca and his establishment, one for the priesthood, and one for the commune. When one section of the country was impoverished by war or some other casualty, its needs were supplied by assessments levied on the others. The occupations of the women, both in town and country, were essentially domestic. Some were brought up from childhood and specially educated to serve in the religious rites and in the household of the reigning Inca. These were known as Virgins of the Sun.

The capital, Cuzco, was located in a valley about two hundred miles northwest of Lake Titicaca and at a lower elevation, yet still more than two miles up above the level of the sea. A colossal, massive-walled citadel loomed over it from the heights of Sacsahuaman above the town. Strong walls and towers inclosed it on every side. In its midst was a great square, from which started the remarkable roads leading to the four corners of the empire, referred to by Hawthorne. One whole side was occupied by the temple, and near by were the dwellings of the priests and the palaces of the Inca and the Virgins of the Sun. This sacred space was a citadel in itself, protected by five heavy walls.

Describing the temple, the historian of the conquest, Garcilaso de la Vega (and there was no one better qualified to write on the subject, for he was himself, on the maternal side, a grandson of one of the last of the Inca kings), says that “All the four walls were covered from roof to floor with plates and slabs of gold. In the side, where we should place the altar, they placed a figure of the Sun, made of a plate of gold of a thickness double that of the other plates which covered the walls. The figure was made with a circular face and rays of fire issuing from it, all of one piece, just as the sun is represented by painters. It was so large as to occupy one side of the temple from one wall to the other.” Even the doorposts were of gold. One door, encased in silver, led to a hall dedicated to the Moon-Goddess, where the images and furnishings were all of silver, as were also the decorations of the mummies of the Incas’ wives.

“The walls of their palaces,” Markham says, “were built of stone, of a dark slate color, with recesses and doors at certain intervals, the sides of the doors approaching each other” (narrowing toward the top) “and supporting huge stone lintels. The side walls were pierced with small square windows, as in the ruins of Manco Capac’s palace, and the roofs were thatched with the ycha, or long grass of the Andes. The interior consisted of several spacious halls, with smaller rooms opening into them, and the interior walls were adorned with golden animals and flowers, executed with much skill and taste. Mirrors of a hard stone, highly polished, hung on stone pegs, while in the numerous recesses were utensils and conopas (household gods) of gold and silver, fantastically designed. The couches were of vicuna cloth of the softest and finest texture.”

Of the palaces of the Incas, Francisco Lopez de Gomara tells us that “all the service of their house, table and kitchen, was of gold and silver, or at least of silver and copper. The Inca had in his chamber hollow statues of gold, which appeared like giants, and others naturally imitated from animals, birds, and trees, from plants produced by the land and from such fish as are yielded by the waters of the kingdom. He also had ropes, baskets and hampers of gold and silver and piles of golden sticks to imitate fuel prepared for burning. In short, there was nothing that his territory produced that he had not got imitated in gold.”

Cieza de Leon says of the magnificence of the harvest festivals celebrated in the great plaza of the temple: “We hold it to be very certain that neither in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Persia, nor in any other part of the world, was such wealth of gold and silver and precious stones collected together.” In his later years, while living in Spain, Garcilaso de la Vega, who had been just as enthusiastic in his description, and seemed to fear that he might be suspected of romancing, took occasion to write that “this is not hard for those to believe who have since seen so much gold and silver arrive here from that land. In the year 1595 alone, within the space of eight months, thirty-five millions of gold and silver crossed the bar of San Lucar in three cargoes.”

“Many generations of culture and Inca rule had produced men of a very different physical type,” Markham tells us, “from the Peruvian Indian of to-day. We see the Incas in the pictures at the church of Santa Ana at Cuzco,” he continues.

“The color of the skin was many shades lighter than that of the downtrodden descendants of their subjects. The forehead was high, the nose slightly aquiline, the chin and mouth firm, the whole face majestic, refined, and intellectual. The hair was gracefully arranged, and around the head was the llantu, the sign of sovereignty. The llantu appears to have been a short piece of red fringe on the forehead, fastened around the head by two bands. It was habitually worn, but, when praying, the Inca took it off and put it on the ground beside him. The ceremonial headdress was the mascapaycha, a golden semicircular miter on the forehead, to which the llantu was fastened. Bright colored feathers were fixed on the sides and the plume” (of black and white falcon feathers, he says in another place) “rose over the summit. Long golden eardrops came down to the shoulders. The tunic and mantel varied in color and were made of the finest vicuna wool. On the breast the Incas wore a golden semicircular breastplate, representing the sun, with a border of signs for the months.