Peru: a land of contrast

by Millicent Todd Bingham

III

So they had come at last, the very image of the god himself, strange little Uiracochas in beards and ruffs; worthy of worship indeed, for they let loose thunder and lightning, the proper arms of the Sun, from instruments held in their hands, and rode about on amazing beasts. (The Indians’ fear of horses persisting to this day, they are used only as infantry.) Were the Uiracochas insensible of hunger and thirst; did they need sleep after toil and repose after labor? Were they made of flesh and bones, or had they incorruptible bodies like those of the Sun and the Moon?

So the grisly conquerors came, half heroes, half wild beasts, who did not grow exhausted by fighting, nor discouraged by wounds and the horrors of mountain-sickness.

So they came, these few poor adventurers who fell upon a roomful of gold given them by a people in ransom for the sovereign-deity whom this handful of men had imprisoned. Miracles in their favor seemed to spring up at each step; and madly stimulated, the peaks of the cordillera blazing above them, their imaginations limitless, they strode through the empire in the guise of gods and scraped the sacred gold from the City of the Sun. They ripped the plate from the walls of its temples. They destroyed the idols. It is said that the Jesuits

WOLFENBÜTTEL-SPANISH MAP, CIRCA 1529.

Courtesy of Dr. E. L. Stevenson.

One of the first maps to show Pizarro’s discoveries along the Peruvian coast.

had to employ thirty persons for three days to break up a single carved stone huaco (idol). They dug up the treasures buried with the dead and pillaged the towns, and they brought back to greedy European sovereigns news of a land of gold. Having, as it seemed to them, found infinitely, they hoped infinitely and infinitely dared.