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Updated: June 27, 2025
The word choqquequirau means "cradle of gold" and this lent color to the legend that Manco had carried off with him from Cuzco great quantities of gold utensils and much treasure, which he deposited in his new capital. Raimondi, knowing that Manco had "retired to Uilcapampa," visited both the present villages of Vilcabamba and Pucyura and saw nothing of any ruins.
Since the historical Uilcapampa is not geographically identical with the modern Vilcabamba, the name applied to this river and the old Spanish town at its source, I shall distinguish between the two by using the correct, official spelling for the river and town, viz., Vilcabamba; and the phonetic spelling, Uilcapampa, for the place referred to in the contemporary histories of the Inca Manco.
If this were the "Puquiura" of Friar Marcos, then Uiticos must be near by, for he and Friar Diego walked with their famous procession of converts from "Puquiura" to the House of the Sun and the "white rock" which was "close to Uiticos." Crossing the Vilcabamba on a footbridge that afternoon, we came immediately upon some old ruins that were not Incaic.
On the other hand the only place which bears this name on the maps of Peru is near the source of the Vilcabamba River, not more than three or four leagues from Pucyura. We determined to visit it. We found the town to lie on the edge of bleak upland pastures, 11,750 feet above the sea. Instead of Inca walls or ruins Vilcabamba has threescore solidly built Spanish houses.
Safford has pointed out, among the artifacts discovered at Machu Picchu was a "snuffing tube" intended for use with the narcotic snuff which was employed by the priests and necromancers to induce a hypnotic state. This seems to me to furnish additional evidence of the identity of Machu Picchu with Calancha's "Vilcabamba."
When the worship of the sun actually ceased on the heights of Machu Picchu no one can tell. That the secret of its existence was so well kept is one of the marvels of Andean history. Unless one accepts the theories of its identity with "Tampu-tocco" and "Vilcabamba Viejo," there is no clear reference to Machu Picchu until 1875, when Charles Wiener heard about it.
The latter, who related his tales at Santa Fe, at Venezuela, and perhaps at Porto Rico, must have combined what he had heard from the Caribs with what he had learned from the Spaniards respecting the town of the Omaguas seen by Huten; of the gilded man who sacrificed in a lake, and of the flight of the family of Atahualpa into the forests of Vilcabamba, and the eastern Cordillera of the Andes.
We might now have proceeded to follow Garcia's tracks up the Vilcabamba had we not been anxious to see the proprietor of the plantation of Santa Ana, Don Pedro Duque, reputed to be the wisest and ablest man in this whole province. We felt he would be able to offer us advice of prime importance in our search.
In the interesting account of the last Incas purporting to be by Titu Cusi, but actually written in excellent Spanish by Friar Marcos, he says that his father, Manco, fleeing from Cuzco went first "to Vilcabamba, the head of all that province."
Fatalities have been known even in recent years. In this mountainous province Manco could be sure of finding not only security from his Spanish enemies, but any climate that he desired and an abundance of food for his followers. There seems to be no reason to doubt that the retired region around the modern town of Pucyura in the upper Vilcabamba Valley was once called Uiticos. Vilcabamba
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