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While Pachacamac, without temple or rite, was reckoned the Creator, we must understand that Sun-worship and ancestor-worship were the practical elements of the Inca cult.
Two days after the arrival of Giron in the valley of Pachacamac, a party of his army went out to skirmish with the enemy, on which occasion Diego de Selva and four others of considerable reputation deserted to the judges. For several days afterwards his men continued to abandon him at every opportunity, twenty or thirty of them going over at a time to the royal army.
"As to my having decreed an alteration in your religion, I did so because when I came among you I found you to be idolaters, worshippers of the Sun, which is but one of the many beneficent gifts which Pachacamac whom I call God has given to His children.
Meanwhile, Hernando Pizarro with a small troop had set out to make sure that the country round was really quiet, and, finding that it was, he continued his march to the town of Pachacamac, to secure the treasures of its famous temple before they could be hidden by its priests.
But the Spanish commander was not so absorbed in his spiritual labors as not to have an eye to those temporal concerns for which he came into this quarter. He now found, to his chagrin, that he had come somewhat too late; and that the priests of Pachacamac, being advised of his mission, had secured much the greater part of the gold, and decamped with it before his arrival.
The critic who can find in the ruins at Gran Chimu and Pachacamac only "communal houses" inhabited by "groups of families" on the method of the Iroquois, in the vast isolated structures of Tiahuanuco the remains of "an Indian pueblo after the ordinary form," and in the enormous and elaborate fortifications of Cuzco and Ollantay-tambo the works of village communities and petty tribes, is not only bent on the support of a theory at whatever cost of truth and sense, but predetermined, one would say, to hold it as a monopoly.
Kari shuddered at this blasphemy, then having once more scanned that silver pathway on the waters, but without avail for the great fish or drifting tree or whatever he had seen, was gone, prayed after his fashion at night, to Pachacamac, Spirit of the Universe, or to the Sun his servant, god of the world, I know not which, and rolling himself in his rug of skins, crept into our little hut to sleep.
Evidently the good Pachacamac approved whatever suggestions the royal priest communicated, for he rose to his feet with a solemn grin and strutted majestically to the rear, facing the frame of quipos. It was evident that he no longer had faith in Desiree's interpretation of the divine will of the great Pachacamac. It is a royal privilege to be able to judge your own enemies.
I shall want them, for possibly there may be some chambers underground into which we shall have to penetrate. We may take it as certain that, whether the old people hid a great treasure from the Incas, or the Incas hid one from the Spaniards, they did not leave it about in rooms, but stowed it away in vaults like those we saw at Pachacamac, and these will certainly want a lot of looking for."
At sound of my voice she awoke and sat up, rubbing her eyes; then, as I assured her that all was quiet, she fell back again on her rude bed. I have never understood the delay of the Incas at this juncture; possibly they took time to consult the great Pachacamac and found his advice difficult to understand.
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