[86] Cap. xxxviii, in which he refers his reader to this second part. He observes that the Yncas were very intelligent and learned, without having letters, which had not been invented in the Indies.—See p. 136 of my Translation.
[87] Caman is a particle which, when added to a noun, denotes a task or occupation. Nocap-camay means “my task”; Campa-camayqui, “your task”. It also means fitness, as Apupac-caman, “fit to be a chief”. Camayoc is a word attached to offices and occupations. Siray-camayoc, “a tailor”; Llacta-camayoc, “a village officer”. Pucara-camayoc, “a castellan”.
[88] A farm.
[89] In August 1550.
[90] Quipu-camayoc, the officer in charge of the records.
[91] Taqui is “music”; Taquiz, “a song”. The taquis was an assembly to hear the legendary songs.
[92] It was the mummified body, as will be seen presently.
[93] Twenty years after this was written, the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo discovered where five of these figures were concealed, which proved to be the actual mummies of the Yncas and their wives, dressed in their clothes. Ondegardo, who was corregidor of Cuzco, showed them to Garcilasso de la Vega in 1570. One mummy was that of the Ynca Uira-ccocha; the second of Tupac Ynca Yupanqui; the third of Huayna Ccapac; the fourth of Mama Runtu, queen of Uira-ccocha; the fifth of Ccoya Mama Ocllo, mother of Huayna Ccapac. They were perfect, wanting neither hair, nor eye-lashes, and were dressed in the clothes they wore when alive, with the llautu or fringe. They were seated with the arms crossed on the breast, and eyes cast down.
Acosta, who also saw them, says that the eyes were made of small pellets of gold, “so well imitated that no one would have missed the real ones”. The mummies were taken to Lima by order of the Viceroy Marquis of Cañete, and eventually interred there, at the hospital of San Andres.
[94] See Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico (i, p. 83), where the Aztec system of notation and arithmetic is explained.