No one dared to look upon the Inca, as he radiated the light of his divine Sun-father. He lived and ruled as a deity, representative of God, supreme arbiter of all creatures breathing the air or living in the water. “The very birds will suspend their flight if I command it,” Atahualpa once said. His person being holy, his body after death, preserved in its living likeness, was still worshipped. Carried about on a golden litter, the Prince Powerful in Riches moved from palace to palace, and his feet never touched any but sacred ground, consecrated by his contact, if not previously hallowed. To carry his person was so singular an honor that his weight was not a burden, as cultivating his fields was a labor performed with hymns of joy. This Sun of Cheerfulness passed beneath flower-covered arches, while his bearers crushed out sweet odors from flowers beneath their feet. Indeed, “the shouts of the multitude as he passed along caused the birds flying over to fall to the ground!”
If these “facts” seem more like romance than truth, they have at least masqueraded under the guise of history for more than three hundred years.
The Inca was clothed in garments made of the silky hair of the vicuña, which lives above the line of perpetual snow. Woven as they were to be worn, from threads of invisible fineness, the soft garments were made by cloistered Virgins of the Sun. They were enriched with bits of gold, silver, emeralds, a fringe of gorgeous feathers, and with mother-of-pearl. Pearls were not used, as their “search endangered the lives of the seekers.” The Inca wore a suit but twice, then conferring it upon some person of royal blood. These were the garments taken as sumptuous gifts to the monarchs of Spain.
Many were the Incas’ marks of distinction. Their heads were shorn, all but one lock, as Manco Ccapac had ordained. The “shearing” was done by means of a sharp flint. Another distinction was enlarging the velvet of the ear by inserting ornaments, so that it reached the shoulder, suggesting the Spanish title, Orejones.
The peculiar badge of the Inca was a fringe encircling his brow, called the llautu, “the mark whereby he took possession of the realm, a red roll of wool more fine than silk, which hung in the midst of his forehead.” And his chief distinction, worn in his colored wreath and pointing upward, were the two long pinions of the corequenque, that mysterious pair of birds which, isolated in a snowy desert beside a little lake, lived at the foot of an inaccessible mountain. Though there are other snowy deserts and other little lakes and other inaccessible mountains, no similar pair of birds could ever be found. In fact, there never were but two alive at the same time—symbol of the two original parents. They recall the screaming oo, a blackbird of the Hawaiian Islands, famed for concealing under each wing a single yellow feather, used in making those magical feather cloaks for the kings on ceremonial occasions.
Each Inca must have new pinions, as each must have his new palace, for the apartments of a dead sovereign were closed at death; his golden utensils, jewels, and treasure were buried with him. Men and women, practised in the art of lamentation, cried for one year after his death, when his account was closed. Then the heir “bound his head with the colored wreath” and started forth through his dominions.
With the rainbow as their emblem, even Inca facts had distinctive colors and were interwoven with facts of other colors, ideas being expressed directly without the technique of words. Knots in a parti-colored twist were their hieroglyphics, the famous quipus, and the Officers of the Knots were their historians. They intertwined the bright filaments of different sizes as well as colors, and tied into remembrance everything from laws and army supplies to ballads of the poets, sung on days of triumph.
Such a Sovereign-deity as the Inca could force the equality of all his people, commanding them to be happy. Here was a whole nation moved by sameness of will—desire to please their sovereign. Observance of law was natural to these industrious subjects, who were treated with absolute justice by an absolute despot. Each was just as well fed, just as well clothed, just as well housed, just as well amused, as his neighbor. Emissaries from the king inspected his neighbor to see that it should remain so. All persons had to allow messengers from the Inca to inspect what they were doing at any time. Such as were found commendable were praised in public. Such as were idle and slovenly were scourged on the arms and legs. One punishment was whipping by a deformed Indian with a lash of nettles.
“There never could be any scarcity or famine, for, if a man failed to take his turn at the water for irrigation, he received publicly three or four thumps on the back with a stone ... shamed with the disgraceful term of ... mizqui tullu, being a word compounded of mizqui, which signifies sweet, and tullu, which is bones.”
As labor was the only tribute, the rich were not taxed more than the poor. The blind were required to cleanse cotton of seeds and rub maize from the ears. “The old men and women were set to affright away the birds from the corn, and thereby gained their bread and clothing.” No one, however impotent, could