Ancient Cuzco

by Brian S. Bauer

  Hernando Pizarro still held de Soto’s original property at Amarucancha when Pizarro was released from prison in Spain in 1561. It was at this time that Garcilaso de la Vega met him. Knowing that he would not be returning to Peru, Hernando Pizarro began selling many of his holdings in Peru. In 1572, de Soto’s daughter, Leonor de Soto, unsuccessfully sued to recover her father’s portion of the palace that she believed to have been seized illegally (Hemming 1970: 564, 571). In the end, Hernando Pizarro sold his portion of Amarucancha to the Jesuits. With the construction of the Jesuit church, the great hall and all of the other interior buildings of Amarucancha were destroyed (Photo 10.12). Today, only parts of its massive enclosure walls have survived (Photo 10.13).

  The Sondorhuaci Tower

  Garcilaso de la Vega states that there was a tower in front of the Amarucancha. Although no other writer mentions this tower, Garcilaso de la Vega provides a detailed description of it:

  There was a very fine round tower, standing alone before the entrance to the house [Amarucancha]. I saw it in my time, and its walls were about four times the height of a man; but its roof, made of excellent timber they used for their royal palaces, was so high that I might say without exaggeration that it equaled any tower I have seen in Spain in height, with the exception of the one at Seville. Its roof was rounded like the walls, and above it, in place of a weathervane—for the Indians did not observe the wind—it had a very tall and thick pole that enhanced its height and beauty. It was more than sixty feet in height inside, and was known as sunturhuasi, “excellent house or room.” There was no other building touching it. In my time it was pulled down so as to clear the square, as it now is; the tower projected into it, though the appearance of the square was not spoiled by having the building on one side, especially as it took up very little of its space. The colossal building of the Holy Society of Jesus now stands on the site, as we have already remarked. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 701 [1609: Pt. 2, Bk. 1, Ch. 32])57

  This account of the Sondorhuaci is interesting for a number of reasons. As noted in the discussion of the Casana, round buildings are rare features in Inca architecture. Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980: 302, 303 [1615: 329 (330), 331 (332)]), however, provides a drawing of a “Suntor Uaci” to illustrate his list of royal palaces of the Inca (see Figure 10.3). In the drawing, the round tower appears to be standing in a large plaza. Since Garcilaso de la Vega states that the Cuzco tower was pulled down before he left Cuzco in 1560, it is possible that Guaman Poma de Ayala saw it or was told about it.58 On the other hand, if this structure was as impressive as Garcilaso de la Vega suggests, one must wonder why it is not mentioned by other writers, and question if there is not some confusion between the Sondorhuaci and the two towers of the Casana. Nevertheless, since Garcilaso de la Vega does provide such a clear and detailed eyewitness account of the building, it is possible that such a structure did exist in Inca Cuzco.59

  PHOTO 10.13. Today, only a few sections of the massive enclosure walls of the Amarucancha have survived.

  The Acllahuaci Compound

  A paved street, now called Loreto, separated the Amarucancha from the next compound on the plaza, the Acllahuaci (House of Chosen [Women]).60 It was within this complex that the mamaconas, women who were selected at a young age to serve the state, lived. Garcilaso de la Vega provides the most detailed description of the Acllahuaci complex. He indicates that the street that separates this compound from the Amarucancha was called the “Street of the Sun”61 and that Francisco Mejía was given the area of the Acllahuaci that bordered the plaza:

  East of Amarucancha across the Street of the Sun is the suburb called Acllahuasi, “the house of the chosen virgins,” where stood the convent of the maidens dedicated to the Sun, . . . The part of the building that still existed in my time was divided between Francisco Mejía62—who was given the part giving onto the square, which also is filled with merchant shops—Pedro del Barco, Licentiate de la Gama, and others whose names I do not remember. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 427 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 7, Ch. 10])63

  Elsewhere Garcilaso de la Vega describes the boundaries of the Acllahuaci, and he provides hints of what was once contained within its great walls:

  A quarter of the city of Cuzco was called Acllahuasi, “house of the chosen women.” The quarter is between two streets that run from the main square to the convent of St. Dominic, which used to be the house of the Sun. One of those streets goes out of the corner of the square to the left of the cathedral and runs north and south. When I left Cuzco in 1560 this was the main shopping street. The other leaves the middle of the square, where the prison was, and runs parallel towards the same Dominican convent. The front of the house faced the square between these two streets, and its back gave onto a street running across them east and west, so that it occupied an island site between the square and these three streets. Between it and the temple of the Sun there was a large block of houses and a big square which is in front of the temple. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 195 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 4, Ch. 1])64

  A few pages later, Garcilaso de la Vega provides additional details concerning the interior of the Acllahuaci. He emphasizes the fact that the complex contained a large number of rooms:

  I saw this house intact, for only its quarter and that of the temple of the Sun, and four other buildings that had been royal palaces of the Incas were respected by the Indians in their general rebellion against the Spaniards. Because they had been the house of the Sun, their god, and of his women, and of their kings, they did not burn them down as they burnt the rest of the city. Among other notable features of this building there was a narrow passage wide enough for two persons that ran the whole length of the building. The passage had many cells on either side which were used as offices where women worked. At each door were trusted portresses, and in the last apartment at the end of the passage where no one entered were the women of the Sun. The house had a main door as convents do in Spain, but it was only opened to admit the queen or to receive women who were going to be nuns. . . . In the division the Spaniards made of the royal houses of Cuzco to supply themselves with dwellings, half of this convent fell to Pedro del Barco, whom we shall mention later. This was the part of the offices. The other half went to Licentiate de la Gama, whom I met as a child, and after passed to Diego Ortiz de Guzmán, a gentleman from Seville whom I knew. He was still alive when I came to Spain. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 197 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 4, Ch. 2])65

  While describing the burning of the city during Manco Capac’s siege, Garcilaso de la Vega repeats the claim that there were numerous structures within the Acllahuaci as well as four alleyways:

  They shot these [flaming arrows] at all the houses in the city in general without respect for the royal palaces, but only sparing the house and temple of the Sun and all the apartments it contained, and the house of the chosen virgins, and the workshops in the four streets inside the house. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 798 [1609: Pt. 2, Bk. 2, Ch. 24])66

  He also recalls an elaborate set of storage bins for maize that were contained in the Acllahuaci:

  The bins are called pirua. They are made of trodden clay mixed with plenty of straw. In Inca times they were very skillfully constructed. Their size varied in proportion to the height of the walls of the buildings in which they were placed. They were narrow, square, and of one piece, and had to be made with moulds of different sizes. They were of various capacities, some bigger than others, some of thirty fanegas, or fifty, one hundred or two hundred, more or less as they were required. Each size of bin was kept in a special building, which it had been made to fit. They were placed against the four walls, and also in the middle of the building. An alley was left between the rows of bins so that they could be emptied and filled in turn. Once erected they were not moved. In order to empty a bin little holes about an ochava in size were made in the front of it. They were made so that it was possible to tell how many fanegas had been taken out and how many were left without measuring them. In this way it could easily be reckoned fro
m the size of the bins how much maize there was in each barn and each granary, and the small holes showed what had been extracted and what remained in each bin. I have seen some of these bins which survived from Inca times, and they were some of the first, since they were in the house of the chosen virgins, the wives of the Sun, and were made for the use of these women. When I saw them, the house belonged to the children of Pedro del Barco, who were schoolfellows of mine. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 249 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 5. Ch. 5])67

  It is not surprising that the Acllahuaci contained such a granary, since one of the principal tasks of the Chosen Women was to make enormous amounts of chicha for festivals.

  Garcilaso de la Vega mentions that Pedro del Barco,68 who was one of the founders of Spanish Cuzco, owned part of the Acllahuaci.69 He states this several times and indicates that a treasure was found in Barco’s house lot by the next owner:

  And in the part of the house of the chosen women which fell to Pedro del Barco and was later owned by an apothecary, one Hernando de Segovia whom I knew, this Segovia70 happened to dig part of a foundation and found a treasure of 72,000 ducats. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 749 [1609: Pt. 2, Bk. 2, Ch. 7])71

  Part of the Acllahuaci was destroyed during the siege of Cuzco, and the rest was largely leveled in 1605 when Dominican nuns founded the convent of Santa Catalina (Burns 1999).72 Intriguingly, this convent, the second to be built in the city, was constructed near to, and perhaps even over, part of the former Acllahuaci. Cobo, who was in Cuzco while Santa Catalina was being built, describes the destruction of the Inca walls within this area in his account of Inca stone masonry:

  [One example] is an entire section of a wall that still remains in the city of Cuzco, in the Convent of Santa Catalina. These walls were not made vertical, but slightly inclined inward. The stones are perfectly squared, but in such a way that they come to have the same shape and workmanship as a stone for a ring of the sort that jewelers call “faceted.” The stones have two sets of faces and corners, so that a groove is formed between the lesser faces of the fitted stones, separating the faces in relief. Another skillfully made feature of this work is that all of the stones are not of the same size, but the stones of each course are uniform in size, and the stones are progressively smaller as they get higher. Thus the stones of the second course are smaller than those of the first, and the stones of the third course are also smaller than those of the second, and in this way the size of the stones diminishes proportionately as the wall becomes higher. Thus the above-mentioned wall of the structure, which remains standing to this day, has a lower course of ashlar blocks of more than one cubit in diameter, while the stones of the upper course are the size of azulejos [ornamental tile]. This wall is two or three estados high. It is the most skillfully made of all the Inca structures that I have seen. We said that the Indians did not use mortar in these buildings, that all of them were made of dry stone. . . . But this does not mean that the stones were not joined together on the inside with some type of mortar; in fact it was used to fill up space and made the stones fit. What they put in the empty space was a certain type of sticky, red clay that they call llanca, which is quite abundant in the whole Cuzco region. I was able to see this for myself while watching as part of that wall of the Convent of Santa Catalina was being torn down for the construction of the church that is there now. (Cobo 1990: 228–229 [1653: Bk. 14, Ch. 12])73

  The west side of the Acllahuaci is still well preserved and can be seen along Loreto Street (formerly called the Street of the Sun; Photo 10.14). The north side, which faces the plaza and was once owned by Mejía, remains, but it has been severely altered by the creation of shops (Photo 10.15). The east side is poorly preserved, although the magnificent exterior corner described by Cobo can be seen beside Santa Catalina (Photos 10.16 and 10.17, Figure 10.7). Almost nothing has survived of the numerous rooms and buildings that once filled the compound. Today only a few small segments of Inca walls remain within the convent itself.

  The Hatuncancha Compound

  The earliest chroniclers of Cuzco wrote of a large enclosed compound near the southwest corner of the plaza called the Hatuncancha (Great Enclosure) that had a single large entrance. Pedro Pizarro indicates that the Hatuncancha was beside the Acllahuaci, and he states that a number of Spaniards lodged in it when they first entered the imperial city:

  And the rest of the soldiers were quartered in a large galpón which was near the plaza, and in Atun Cancha which was a huge enclosed area, with but one entrance. On the plaza side this enclosure was [a house of] mamaconas, and there were in it many rooms. In these [buildings] which I mention were lodged all the Spaniards. (Pedro Pizarro 1921: 250 [1571])74

  PHOTO 10.14. The Street of the Sun, now called Loreto, divided the Acllahuaci (right) from the Amarucancha (left). It is the best-preserved Inca street in Cuzco.

  PHOTO 10.15. The plaza side of the Acllahuaci remains, but it has been severely altered by the creation of shops.

  PHOTO 10.16. The southeast corner of the Acllahuaci has long held visitors’ attention. It is described in detail by Cobo and centuries later was photographed by Squier. (Courtesy of the Latin American Library, Tulane University; photograph by E. George Squier, 1865)

  PHOTO 10.17. The southeast corner of the Acllahuaci today

  FIGURE 10.7. The southeast corner of the Acllahuaci (Squier 1877: 446). Compare this etching to Photo 10.16.

  The substantial size of this compound is also highlighted in Pedro Pizarro’s account of the siege of Cuzco:

  Hernando Pizarro and his captains assembled many times to discuss what they should do, and some said that we ought to desert the town and leave it in flight; others said that we ought to establish ourselves in Hatuncancha, which was a great enclosure where we might all be, and which, as I have already said, had but one doorway and a very high wall of stone masonry. (Pedro Pizarro 1921: 306–307 [1571])75

  Estete (1924: 45 [ca. 1535]) also mentions the complex and emphasizes the fact that the Hatuncancha was near to, and perhaps even included, the Acllahuaci with its mamacona:

  In the plaza there was a door where there was a monastery that was called Atuncancha, totally enclosed by a very beautiful stone wall, within which there were a little more than a hundred houses, where resided the priests and ministers of the temple and the women who lived in chastity, according to their religion, who were called by name mamaconas, of which there were a great many.76 (Translation by author)

  Garcilaso de la Vega provides additional information on the area of the Hatuncancha. He indicates that it was across the street from the cathedral and that Diego Maldonado owned much of it.77 Garcilaso de la Vega also suggests that the Hatuncancha contained the palace of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui:

  To the south of the cathedral, and across the street, stand the main shops of the wealthier merchants. . . . Behind the chief shops are the houses that used to belong to Diego Maldonado, called “the rich,” for he was wealthier than anyone else in Peru: he was one of the first conquerors. In Inca times the place was called Hatuncancha, “big ward.” It had been the site of the palace of one of the kings called Inca Yupanqui. (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966: 424 [1609: Pt. 1, Bk. 7, Ch. 9])78

  This reference to the house of Diego Maldonado as being within the confines of the Hatuncancha is important, because Maldonado’s house is used as a landmark by Cobo as he describes the former locations of various shrines in Inca Cuzco. For example, Cobo indicates that there were two sacred springs, one inside and one outside Maldonado’s house:

  [Ch-3:2] The second guaca was called Canchapacha. It was a fountain which was in the street of Diego Maldonado, to which they made sacrifice on account of certain stories that the Indians tell.

  [Ch-3:3] The third guaca was another fountain named Ticicocha, which is inside the house that belonged to the said Diego Maldonado. This fountain belonged to the coya or queen, Mama Ocllo.79 In it were made very great and ordinary sacrifices, especially when they wanted to ask something of the said Mama Ocllo, who wa
s the most venerated woman there was among these Indians. (Cobo 1990: 55 [1653: Bk. 13, Ch. 13])80

  A nearby shrine related to sleep was also worshiped by the Inca. Cobo writes:

  [Ch-4:2] The second guaca was named Puñui; it was in a small flat place next to the house of Diego Maldonado. It was a very solemn shrine because it was held to be the cause of sleep; they offered every kind of sacrifice to it. They went to it with two petitions, one to pray for those who were unable to sleep, and the other that they might not die in their sleep. (Cobo 1990: 56 [1653: Bk. 13, Ch. 13])81

  PHOTO 10.18. The small plaza area in front of Santa Catalina may have been a shrine of the Cuzco ceque system during Inca times.

  This flat place may be the small plaza that separated the Hatuncancha, the Acllahuaci, and the Pucamarca and is now called the Plaza of Santa Catalina (Photo 10.18).

  Polo de Ondegardo also provides information on what seems to have been the discovery of a shaft tomb within the house of Maldonado.

  Similarly they relate that the Inca would order, when some woman whom he had loved greatly would die in Cuzco, that earth from her homeland be brought for the burial. I also satisfied myself that this was the case, because they declared that in the houses of Captain Diego Maldonado there was a grave made of masonry below the ground, where a wife of the Inca, one of the Yungas, was buried, which we found to be quite deep and all worked of three courses of very fine masonry and about twelve feet square, and they asserted that that sand was from the sea coast, and, when the sand was removed, there was found below only a corpse in a certain hollow which there was at one side of the sepulcher, which seems to prove what had been said, . . . (Polo de Ondegardo 1965: 121 [1571])82