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Updated: June 19, 2025
Leaving the boulder and the ruins of what possibly had been the house of its attendant priest, we followed the little water course past a large number of very handsomely built agricultural terraces, the first we had seen since leaving Machu Picchu and the most important ones in the valley.
It is small wonder that the occasional stories about Machu Picchu which had drifted into Cuzco had never elicited any enthusiasm nor even provoked investigation on the part of those professors and students in the University of Cuzco who were interested in visiting the remains of Inca civilization.
In the ten days while they were at the ruins they were able to secure data from which Mr. Tucker afterwards prepared a map which told better than could any words of mine the importance of this site and the necessity for further investigation. With the possible exception of one mining prospector, no one in Cuzco had seen the ruins of Machu Picchu or appreciated their importance.
If it became an important city, then the surrounding region might be named Uilcapampa after it. This seems to me to be the most probable origin of the name of the province. Anyhow it is worth noting the fact that denizens of Cuzco and Ollantaytambo, coming down the river in search of this highly prized narcotic, must have found the first trees not far from Machu Picchu.
Surrounded by fertile valleys, not too far removed from the great highway which the Spaniards were obliged to use in passing from Lima to Cuzco, he could readily attack them. At Machu Picchu he would not have been so conveniently located for robbing the Spanish caravans nor for supplying his followers with arable lands.
The thought will already have occurred to the reader that the Temple of the Three Windows at Machu Picchu fits the words of that native writer who had "heard from a child the most ancient traditions and histories," including the story already quoted from Sir Clements Markham's translation that Manco Ccapac, the first Inca, "ordered works to be executed at the place of his birth; consisting of a masonry wall with three windows, which were emblems of the house of his fathers whence he descended.
The Origin of Machu Picchu Some other day I hope to tell of the work of clearing and excavating Machu Picchu, of the life lived by its citizens, and of the ancient towns of which it was the most important. At present I must rest content with a discussion of its probable identity.
Until further light can be thrown on this fascinating problem it seems reasonable to conclude that at Machu Picchu we have the ruins of Tampu-tocco, the birthplace of the first Inca, Manco Ccapac, and also the ruins of a sacred city of the last Incas.
For them and their attendants Manco probably built many of the newer buildings and repaired some of the older ones. Here they lived out their days, secure in the knowledge that no Indians would ever breathe to the conquistadores the secret of their sacred refuge. The Gorges, Opening Wide Apart, Reveal Uilcapampa's Granite Citadel, the Crown of Inca Land: Machu Picchu
This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have visited Machu Picchu long before that; because in 1875, as has been said, the French explorer Charles Wiener heard in Ollantaytambo of there being ruins at "Huaina-Picchu or Matcho-Picchu." He tried to find them.
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