Atahualpa’s atrocities had come to pass. For the first time civil war had decimated the empire of the Lover of the Poor, the Deliverer of the Oppressed. Such conduct had earned its reward. Was it not to be expected that the dawn-heroes of fair complexion, absent for a season, should reappear? Their vengeance was commissioned by the Light-god.
What greater dramatic climax ever focused? What authority was ever more solidly founded? What identity of hero-gods more tangibly proven? A first appearance which further facts continued to corroborate.
II
Lured by rumors of a descendant of the Sun in a city of gold, the first lean, poor adventurer, worn with uncertainty and suffering, stepped upon the shore of Peru. Pedro de Candia was his name, who, having burned ten cities, had dedicated in expiation ten lamps to the Virgin. His “coat of mail reached to his knees, his helmet of the best and bravest sort, his sword girt by his side. He took a target of steel in his left hand, and in his right a wooden cross a yard and a half long,” advancing toward the Indians. Two fierce jaguars, “beholding the cross,” fawned upon him and cast themselves at his feet. Taking courage at the sight, he laid it upon their backs and dared to stroke their heads. By virtue of that symbol a miracle had happened. Pedro de Candia and the Indians were equally dumbfounded.
They followed him to the temples and palaces furnished and plated with gold and silver, all awed to silence, he at such magnificence in an undiscovered country, they at the sight of the tall, fair man, whose long beard hung down over his iron dress; all were convinced by this first encounter, the Indians of the divinity of the Spaniards, the Spaniards of God’s patronage. “Being abundantly satisfied with what he had seen, he returned with all joy imaginable to his companions, taking much larger steps back than his gravity allowed him in his march toward the people.”
Eye-witnesses have described the Spaniards’ first glimpse of Atahualpa, the red fringe shining on his forehead, when Hernando de Soto, the most daring of all Pizarro’s followers, caracoled upon his miraculous beast into the very lap of the dignified monarch. They feasted and drank chicha from goblets of gold which young girls presented to them, sitting upon seats of gold like the emperor’s own. Two historians were present “who with their quipus (knots) made certain ciphers describing ... all the passages of that audience.”
In Cajamarca, the Country of Frost, Atahualpa returned the visit. He came in full regalia, facing the pomp of a gorgeous sunset, and the Spaniards, “brandishing their pennants toward the flaring west, saluted with a great shout the Setting of the Sun!”
First came multitudes of people clearing the way of stones and sweeping the road, then singers and dancers in three divisions, many richly dressed courtiers, and the guards, divided into four squadrons of eight thousand men, one before, one on each side of the Inca, and one in the rear. High on the shoulders of distinguished chiefs he rode upon a golden litter lined with brilliant feathers. His proud head, too large for his body, was encircled by the red fringe hanging above his wild and bloodshot eyes. Atahualpa, that courageous fiend who bragged that no bird flew in the air, no leaf fluttered on a tree without his permission, who though ransomed with a roomful of gold was taken prisoner in the midst of his own army by a handful of insolent adventurers, baptized in the Christian faith “Don Juan,” bound to a post, and throttled like a common criminal! Pizarro put himself into mourning.
The legend which had lured the Spaniards was proven true: that the land of a powerful king lay toward the south, where immeasurable treasure was amassed. It took a month to melt up the gold plaques and plates, brackets and moldings, statues of men, animals and plants, drinking and eating utensils, jars and jewelry of all sorts that filled Atahualpa’s room of ransom.
A huge quantity of gold, carried by eleven thousand llamas and intended for the ransom, never arrived. It is said to lie buried near Jauja, and is only one of the countless masses of hidden treasure, both along the coast and in the mountains, even into Ecuador. The Spanish messengers who were carried in hammocks to inspect that caravan on its journey toward Cajamarca were almost blinded by a mountain seeming to shine from base to crest with gold. The eleven thousand llamas had laid themselves down to rest.