Peru: a land of contrast

by Millicent Todd Bingham

So well did most of the surrounding tribes realize this, that messages of submission came before the conquerors had even turned in their direction. If it happened that because of ignorance they held out against the benefits an indulgent sovereign was waiting to bestow, the Inca’s messengers informed them of his exact intentions. All good gifts would be theirs, provided only they would renounce their independence, their language and religion, and send their chief god as an hostage of submission to the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco. Honored servants of the Inca would come to them in return to acquaint them more in particular with the new benefits they were about to receive. Skilled workmen would teach them the arts. The sons of their cacique (chieftain) would be sent to Cuzco to receive instruction. Moreover, the Inca would confer upon them the garments worn by his own gracious person.

Nearly all perceived the wisdom of such a course at once. But if in blindness any still rebelled, messengers brought word that “the Inca pitied their folly which had so unnecessarily betrayed them to the last extremity of want and famine.” For enlightened they were to be, in spite of themselves.

Wonderful are the tales of these victorious campaigns, for the Inca’s army never knew defeat. The soldiers were as plentifully supplied from vast granaries as if in Cuzco. If the march led through lowlands, the entire army was relieved every two months. Though the Indians of the mountain-tops did not object to cold, they succumbed to fevers soon after descending into the comfortable valleys. When a new province had been incorporated, the gracious Inca “confirmed the right of possession to the natives of it.”

The empire extended from the Chibchas and Caras of Ecuador, beyond the Chilean deserts. Only one region dared defiance; that was the primeval jungle. The armies might skirmish about upon its edges, and exact exotic tribute of the savages who ventured forth. But within its grim interior they were secure.

In the provinces of Antis, people “killed one another as they casually met,” and worshipped a jaguar, the original lord of the jungle. They sacrificed hearts and blood of men to huge snakes “thicker than a man’s thigh.” They made war only to eat the flesh of their enemies. They were called “nose of iron” because they bored the bridge between the nostrils to hang in it a jewel or long piece of gold or silver. With a handful of men, Yupanqui visited these savages below the Andes and imposed worship of the Sun. With a handful of men, the Spaniards wiped the great organization of the Empire of the Sun off the face of the earth and established upon its ruins a Christian civilization.

The people in the Valley of Palta bound tablets upon the head of a new-born child and tightened them each day for three years, until the skull was elongated, in order to fit the pointed woolen cap which it was the fashion to wear.

The Chachapoyas wore a black binder about their heads, stitched with white flies, and instead of a feather, the tip of a deer’s horn. Their chief weapons were slings bound about their heads, and they adored the condor as their principal god.

The Chancas were the most dangerous opponents of Cuzco, a powerful race owing their origin to a jaguar, who dressed in skins of their god and carried effigies of jaguars with a man’s head to their sacrifices of children, by whose eyes they prognosticated.

The caciques of all dependent tribes were obliged to appear once a year at court, or if they lived very far away, once in two years. They brought with them gold and silver from their mines, for all such things were devoted to worship of the Inca. Failing these, they presented jaguars, droll monkeys, parrots, wondrous condors, and giant toads and snakes that were very fierce, kept in dens for the grandeur of the court. People from all climates presented indigenous gifts, the most beautiful or the most curious of any creature or plant within their domains. Any known thing preëminent in any way added the name of its peculiar excellence to the titles of the Inca. His court in Cuzco consisted of more than eight thousand persons, nobles who traced descent from the Sun, and representatives of all the fantastic tribes blest by the Inca’s clemency. Even the greatest lords carried bundles in his presence.

The noble city of Cuzco, where the children of Inti first stopped with their wedge of gold, was itself worshipped. Those who lived in Cuzco had a certain superiority. Divisions of the city were the Terrace of Flowers, the Lion Picket with the dens of pumas, the Field of Speech, the Quarter of the Great Serpents, the Scarlet Cantut—the flower of the Inca—the Holy Gate, the Shoulder Blade, the Seaweed Bridge, and so on, bounded by small streams and long, somber walls of perfectly fitted stones.