The son of Yahuar-huaccac assumed the name of the Deity, and called himself Uira-cocha.[1172] Intervening in a war between the two principal chiefs of the Collas, named Cari and Zapaña, Uira-cocha defeated them in detail, and annexed the whole basin of Lake Titicaca to his dominions. He also conquered the lovely valley of Yucay, on the lower course of the Vilcamayu, whither he retired to end his days. The eldest son of Uira-cocha, named Urco, was incompetent or unworthy, and was either obliged to abdicate[1173] in favor of his brother Yupanqui, the favorite hero of Inca history, or was slain.[1174] It was a moment when the rising empire needed the services of her ablest sons. She was about to engage in a death-struggle with a neighbor as powerful and as civilized as herself. The kingdom of the Chancas, commencing on the banks of the Apurimac, extended far to the east and north, including many of the richest valleys of the Andes. Their warlike king, Uscavilca, had already subdued the Quichuas, who dwelt in the upper valleys of the Apurimac tributaries to the southward, and was advancing on Cuzco, when Yupanqui pushed aside the imbecile Urco, and seized the helm. The fate of the Incas was hanging on a thread. The story is one of thrilling interest as told in the pages of Betanzos, but all authorities dwell more or less on this famous Chanca war. The decisive battle was fought outside the Huaca-puncu, the sacred gate of Cuzco. The result was long doubtful. Suddenly, as the shades of evening were closing over the Yahuar-pampa,—“the field of blood,”—a fresh army fell upon the right flank of the Chanca host, and the Incas won a great victory. So unexpected was this onslaught that the very stones on the mountain sides were believed to have been turned into men. It was the armed array of the insurgent Quichuas who had come by forced marches to the help of their old masters. The memory of this great struggle was fresh in men’s minds when the Spaniards arrived, and as the new conquerors passed over the battlefield, on their way to Cuzco, they saw the stuffed skins of the vanquished Chancas set up as memorials by the roadside.

The subjugation of the Chancas, with their allies the Huancas, led to a vast extension of the Inca empire, which now reached to the shores of the Pacific; and the last years of Yupanqui were passed in the conquest of the alien coast nation, ruled over by a sovereign known as the Chimu. Thus the reign of the Inca Yupanqui marks a great epoch. He beat down all rivals, and converted the Cuzco kingdom into a vast empire. He received the name of Pachacutec, or “he who changes the world,” a name which, according to Montesinos, had on eight previous occasions been conferred upon sovereigns of the more ancient dynasties.

Tupac Inca Yupanqui, the son and successor of Pachacutec, completed the subjugation of the coast valleys, extended his conquests beyond Quito on the north and to Chile as far as the river Maule in the south, besides penetrating far into the eastern forests.

Huayna Ccapac, the son of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, completed and consolidated the conquests of his father. He traversed the valleys of the coast, penetrated to the southern limit of Chile, and fought a memorable battle on the banks of the “lake of blood” (Yahuar-cocha), near the northern frontier of Quito. After a long reign,[1175] the last years of which were passed in Quito, Huayna Ccapac died in November, 1525. His eldest legitimate son, named Huascar, succeeded him at Cuzco. But Atahualpa, his father’s favorite, was at Quito with the most experienced generals. Haughty messages passed between the brothers, which were followed by war. Huascar’s armies were defeated in detail, and eventually the generals of Atahualpa took the legitimate Inca prisoner, entered Cuzco, and massacred the family and adherents of Huascar.[1176] The successful aspirant to the throne was on his way to Cuzco, in the wake of his generals, when he encountered Pizarro and the Spanish invaders at Caxamarca. This war of succession would not, it is probable, have led to any revolutionary change in the general policy of the empire. Atahualpa would have established his power and continued to rule, just as his ancestor Pachacutec did, after the dethronement of his brother Urco.[1177]

The succession of the Incas from Manco Ccapac to Atahualpa was evidently well known to the Amautas, or learned men of the empire, and was recorded in their quipus with precision, together with less certain materials respecting the more ancient dynasties. Many blunders were committed by the Spanish inquirers in putting down the historical information received from the Amautas, but on the whole there is general concurrence among them.[1178] Practically the Spanish authorities agree, and it is clear that the native annalists possessed a single record, while the apparent discrepancies are due to blunders of the Spanish transcribers. The twelve Incas from Manco Ccapac to Huascar may be received as historical personages whose deeds were had in memory at the time of the Spanish invasion, and were narrated to those among the conquerors who sought for information from the Amautas.

a.d. 1240—Manco Ccapac. 1260—Sinchi Rocca. 1280—Lloque Yupanqui. 1300—Mayta Ccapac. 1320—Ccapac Yupanqui. 1340—Inca Rocca.

a.d. 1360—Yahuar-huaccac. 1380—Uira-cocha. 1400—Pachacutec Yupanqui. 1440—Tupac Yupanqui. 1480—Huayna Ccapac. 1523—Inti Cusi Hualpa, or Huascar.

The religion of the Incas consisted in the worship of the supreme being of the earlier dynasties, the Illa Ticsi Uira-cocha of the Pirhuas. This simple faith was overlaid by a vast mass of superstition, represented by the cult of ancestors and the cult of natural objects. To this was superadded the belief in the ideals or souls of all animated things, which ruled and guided them, and to which men might pray for help. The exact nature of this belief in ideals, as it presented itself to the people themselves, is not at all clear. It prevailed among the uneducated. Probably it was the idea to which dreams give rise,—the idea of a double nature, of a tangible and a phantom being, the latter mysterious and powerful, and to be propitiated. The belief in this double being was extended to all animated nature, for even the crops had their spiritual doubles, which it was necessary to worship and propitiate.

But the religion of the Incas and of learned men, or Amautas, was a worship of the Supreme Cause of all things, the ancient God of the Titicaca myth, combined with veneration for the sun[1179] as the ancestor of the reigning dynasty, for the other heavenly bodies, and for the malqui, or remains of their forefathers. This feeling of veneration for the sun, closely connected with the beneficent work of the venerated object as displayed in the course of the seasons, led to the growth of an elaborate ritual and to the celebration of periodical festivals.

The weight of evidence is decisively in the direction of a belief on the part of the Incas that a Supreme Being existed, which the sun must obey, as well as all other parts of the universe. This subordination of the sun to the Creator of all things was inculcated by successive Incas. Molina says, “They did not know the sun as their Creator, but as created by the Creator.” Salcamayhua tells us how the Inca Mayta Ccapac taught that the sun and moon were made for the service of men, and that the chief of the Collas, addressing the Inca Uira-cocha, exclaimed, “Thou, O powerful lord of Cuzco, dost worship the teacher of the universe, while I, the chief of the Collas, worship the Sun.” The evidence on the subject of the religion of the Incas, collected by the Viceroy Toledo, showed that they worshipped the Creator of all things, though they also venerated the sun; and Montesinos mentions an edict of the Inca Pachacutec, promulgated with the object of enforcing the worship of the Supreme God above all other deities. The speech of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, showing that the sun was not God, but was obeying laws ordained by God, is recorded by Acosta, Blas Valera, and Balboa, and was evidently deeply impressed on the minds of their Inca informers. This Inca compared the sun to a tethered beast, which always makes the same round; or to a dart, which goes where it is sent, and not where it wishes. The prayers from the Inca ritual, given by Molina, are addressed to the god Ticsi Uira-cocha; the Sun, Moon, and Thunder being occasionally invoked in conjunction with the principal deity.

The worship of this creating God, the Dweller in Space, the Teacher and Ruler of the Universe, was, then, the religion of the Incas which had been inherited from their distant ancestry of the cyclopean age. Around this primitive cult had grown up a supplemental worship of creatures created by the Deity, such as the heavenly bodies, and of objects supposed to represent the first ancestors of ayllus, or tribes, as well as of the prototypes of things on whom man’s welfare depended, such as flocks and animals of the chase, fruit and corn. It has been asserted that the Deity, the Uira-cocha himself, did not generally receive worship, and that there was only one temple in honor of God throughout the empire, at a place called Pachacamac, on the coast. But this is clearly a mistake. The great temple at Cuzco, with its gorgeous display of riches, was called the “Ccuri-cancha Pacha-yachachicpa huasin,” which means “the place of gold, the abode of the Teacher of the Universe.” An elliptical plate of gold was fixed on the wall to represent the Deity, flanked on either side by metal representations of his creatures, the Sun and Moon. The chief festival in the middle of the year, called Ccapac Raymi, was instituted in honor of the supreme Creator, and when, from time to time, his worship began to be neglected by the people, who were apt to run after the numerous local deities, it was again and again enforced by their more enlightened rulers. There were Ccuri-canchas for the service of God, at Vilca and in other centres of vice-regal rule, besides the grand fane of Cuzco.[1180]

Although the first and principal invocations were addressed to the Creator, prayers were also offered up to the Sun and Moon, to the Thunder, and to ancestors who were called upon to intercede with the Deity.[1181] The latter worship formed a very distinctive feature in the religious observances of nearly all the Incarial tribes. The Paccarina, or forefather of the ayllu, or lineage, was often some natural object converted into a huaca, or deity. The Paccarina of the Inca family was the Sun; with his sister and spouse, the Moon. A vast hierarchy was set apart to conduct the ceremonies connected with their worship, and hundreds of virgins, called Aclla-cuna, were secluded and devoted to duties relating to the observances in the Sun temples. Worship was also offered to the actual bodies of the ancestors, called malqui, which were preserved with the greatest care, in caves called machay. On solemn festivals each ayllu assembled with its malqui. The bodies of the Incas were all preserved, clothed as when alive, and surrounded by their special furniture and utensils. Three of these Inca mummies, with two mummies of queens, were discovered by Polo de Ondegardo, then corregidor of Cuzco, in 1559, and were sent by him to Lima for interment. Those who saw them[1182] reported that they were so well preserved that they appeared to be alive; that they were in a sitting posture; that the eyes were made of gold, and that they were arrayed in the insignia of their rank.[1183] The Paccarina, or founder of the family, and the malquis, or mummies of ancestors, thus formed the objects of a distinct belief and religion, based undoubtedly on the conviction that every human being has a spiritual as well as a corporeal existence; that the former is immortal, and that it is represented by the malqui. The appearance of the departed in dreams and visions was not an unreasonable ground for this belief, which certainly was the most deeply rooted of all the religious ideas of the Peruvian people. The paccarina, or ancestral deities, were innumerable. There was one or more that received worship in every tribe, and was represented by a rock, or some other natural object. Many were believed to be oracles. Some, such as Catequilla, or Apu-catequilla,[1184] the oracle of the Conchucu tribe, have been brought into undue prominence through being mentioned by Spanish writers.

Religious ceremonials were closely connected with the daily life of the people, and especially with the course of the seasons and the succession of months, as they affected the operations of agriculture. It was important to fix the equinoxes and solstices, and astronomical knowledge was a part of the priestly office. There were names for many of the stars; their motions were watched as well as those of the sun and moon; and though a record of the extent of the astronomical knowledge of the Incas has not been preserved, it is certain that they watched the time of the solstices and equinoxes with great care, and that they distinguished between the lunar and solar years. Pillars were erected to determine the time of the solstices, eight on the east and eight on the west side of Cuzco, in double rows, four and four, two low between two higher ones, twenty feet apart. They were called Sucanca, from suca, a ridge or furrow, the alternate light and shade between the pillars appearing like furrows. A stone column in the centre of a level platform, called Inti-huatana, was used to ascertain the time of the equinoxes. A line was drawn across the platform from east to west, and watch was kept to observe when the shadow of the pillar was on this line from sunrise to sunset, and there was no shadow at noon. The principal Inti-huatana was in the square before the great temple at Cuzco; but there are several others in different parts of Peru. The most perfect of these observatories is at Pissac, in the valley of Vilcamayu.[1185] There is another at Ollantay-tampu, a fourth near Abancay, and a fifth at Sillustani in the Collao.

There is reason to believe that the Incas used a zodiac with twelve signs, corresponding with the months of their solar year. The gold plates which they wore on their breasts were stamped with features representing the sun, surrounded by a border of what are probably either zodiacal signs or signs for the months. Whether the ecliptic, or huatana, was thus divided or not, it is certain that the sun’s motion was observed with great care, and that the calendar was thus fixed with some approach to accuracy.[1186] The year, or Huata, was divided into twelve Quilla, or moon revolutions, and these were made to correspond with the solar year by adding five days, which were divided among the twelve months. A further correction was made every fourth year. Solar observations were taken and recorded every month.

The year commenced on the 22d of June, with the winter solstice, and there were four great festivals at the occurrence of the solstices and equinoxes.[1187]

The celebrations of the solar year and of the seasons, in their bearings on agriculture, were identical with the chief religious observances. The Raymi, or festival of the winter solstice, in the first month, when the granaries were filled after harvest, was established in special honor of the Sun. Sacrifices of llamas and lambs, and of the first-fruits of the earth, were offered up to the images of the Supreme Being, of the Sun, and of Thunder, which were placed in the open space in front of the great temple; as well as to the huaca, or stone representing the brother of Manco Ccapac, on the hill of Huanacauri. There was also a procession of the priests and people as far as the pass of Vilcañota, leading into the basin of Lake Titicaca, sacrifices being offered up at various spots on the road. The sacrifices were accompanied by prayers, and concluded with songs, called huayllina, and dancing. Then followed the ploughing month, when it is said that the Inca himself opened the season by ploughing a furrow with a golden plough in the field behind the Colcampata palace, on the height above Cuzco.

The question here arises whether human sacrifices were offered up, in the Inca ritual. This has been stated by Molina, Cieza de Leon, Montesinos, Balboa, Ondegardo, and Acosta, and indignantly denied by Garcilasso de la Vega. Cieza de Leon admits that there were occasional human sacrifices, but adds that their numbers and the frequency of such offerings have been grossly exaggerated by the Spaniards. If the sacrifices had been offered under the idea of atonement or expiation, it might well be expected that human sacrifices would be included. Under such ideas, men offered up what they valued most, just as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, as Jephthah dedicated his daughter as a burnt-offering to Jehovah, and as the king of Moab sacrificed his eldest son to Chemosh.[1188] But, except in the Situa, when the idea was to efface sins by washing, the sacrifices of the Incas were offerings of thanksgiving, not of expiation or atonement. The mistake of the five writers who supposed that the Incas offered human sacrifices was due to their ignorance of the language.[1189] The perpetration of human sacrifice was opposed to the religious ideas of the ancient Peruvians, and formed no part of their ceremonial worship. Their ritual was almost exclusively devoted to thanksgiving and rejoicings over the beneficence of their Deity. The notion of expiation formed no part of their creed, while the destruction involved in such a system was opposed to their economic and carefully regulated civil polity.[1190]

The second great festival, called Situa, was celebrated at the vernal equinox. This was the commencement of the rainy season, when sickness prevailed, and the object of the ceremony was to pray to the Creator to drive diseases and evils from the land. In the centre of the great square of Cuzco a body of four hundred warriors was assembled, fully armed for war. One hundred faced towards the Chincha-suyu road, one hundred faced towards Anti-suyu, one hundred towards Colla-suyu, and one hundred towards Cunti-suyu,—the four great divisions of the empire. The Inca and the high-priest, with their attendants, then came from the temple, and shouted, “Go forth all evils!” On the instant the warriors ran at great speed towards the four quarters, shouting the same sentence as they went, until they each came to another party, which took up the cry, and the last parties reached the banks of great rivers, the Apurimac or Vilcamayu, where they bathed and washed their arms. The rivers were supposed to carry the evils away to the ocean. As the warriors ran through the streets of Cuzco, all the people came to their doors, shaking their clothes, and shouting, “Let the evils be gone!” In the evening they all bathed; then they lighted great torches of straw, called pancurcu, and, marching in procession out of the city, they threw them into the rivers, believing that thus nocturnal evils were banished. At night, each family partook of a supper consisting of pudding made of coarsely ground maize, called sancu, which was also smeared over their faces and the lintels of their doorways, then washed off and thrown into the rivers with the cry, “May we be free from sickness, and may no maladies enter our houses!” The huacas and malquis were also bathed at the feast of Situa. In the following days all the malquis were paraded, and there were sacrifices, with feasting and dancing. A stone fountain, plated with gold, stood in the great square of Cuzco, and the Inca, on this and other solemn festivals, poured chicha into it from a golden vase, which was conducted by subterranean pipes to the temple.

The third great festival at the summer solstice, called Huaracu, was the occasion on which the youths of the empire were admitted to a rank equivalent to knighthood, after passing through a severe ordeal. The Inca and his court were assembled in front of the temple. Thither the youths were conducted by their relations, with heads closely shorn, and attired in shirts of fine yellow wool edged with black, and white mantles fastened round their necks by woollen cords with red tassels. They made their reverences to the Inca, offered up prayers, and each presented a llama for sacrifice.[1191] Proceeding thence to the hill of Huanacauri, where the venerated huaca to Ayar Uchu was erected, they there received huaras, or breeches made of aloe fibres, from the priest. This completed their manly attire, and they returned home to prepare for the ordeal. A few days afterwards they were assembled in the great square, received a spear, called yauri, and usutas or sandals, and were severely whipped to prove their endurance. The young candidates were then sent forth to pass the night in a desert about a league from Cuzco. Next day they had to run a race. At the farther end of the course young girls were stationed, called ñusta-calli-sapa,[1192] with jars of chicha, who cried, “Come quickly, youths, for we are waiting!” but the course was a long one, and many fell before they reached the goal. They also had to rival each other in assaults and feats of arms. Finally their ears were bored, and they received ear-pieces of gold and other marks of distinction from the Inca. The last ceremony was that of bathing in the fountain called Calli-puquio. About eight hundred youths annually passed through this ordeal, and became adult warriors, at Cuzco, and similar ceremonies were performed in all the provinces of the empire.

In the month following on the summer solstice, there was a curious religious ceremony known as the water sacrifice. The cinders and ashes of all the numerous sacrifices throughout the year were preserved. Dams were constructed across the rivers which flow through Cuzco, in order that the water might rush down with great force when they were taken away. Prayers and sacrifices were offered up, and then a little after sunset all the ashes were thrown into the rivers and the dams were removed. Then the burnt-sacrifices were hurried down with the stream, closely followed by crowds of people on either bank, with blazing torches, as far as the bridge at Ollantay-tampu. There two bags of coca were offered up by being hurled into the river, and thence the sacrifices were allowed to flow onwards to the sea. This curious ceremony seems to have been intended not only as a thank-offering to the Deity, but as an acknowledgment of his omnipresence. As the offerings flowed with the stream, they knew not whither, yet went to Him, so his pervading spirit was everywhere, alike in parts unknown as in the visible world of the Incas.

A sacred fire was kept alive throughout the year by the virgins of the sun, and the ceremony of its annual renewal at the autumnal equinox was the fourth great festival, called Mosoc-nina, or the “new fire.” Fire was produced by collecting the sun’s rays on a burnished metal mirror, and the ceremony was the occasion of prayers and sacrifices. The year ended with the rejoicing of the harvest months, accompanied by songs, dances, and other festivities.

Besides the periodical festivals, there were also religious observances which entered into the life of each family. Every household had one or more lares, called Conopa, representing maize, fruit, a llama, or other object on which its welfare depended. The belief in divination and soothsaying, the practice of fasting followed by confession, and worship of the family malqui, all gave employment to the priesthood.

The complicated religious ceremonies connected with the periodical festivals, the daily worship, and the requirements of private families gave rise to the growth of a very numerous caste of priests and diviners. The pope of this hierarchy, the chief pontiff, was called Uillac Umu, words meaning “The head which gives counsel,” he who repeats to the people the utterances of the Deity. He was the most learned and virtuous of the priestly caste, always a member of the reigning family, and next in rank to the Inca. The Villcas, equivalent to the bishops of a Christian hierarchy, were the chief priests in the provinces, and during the greatest extension of the empire they numbered ten. The ordinary ministers of religion were divided into sacrificers, worshippers and confessors, diviners, and recluses.[1193] It was indeed inevitable that, with a complicated ritual and a gorgeous ceremonial worship, a populous class of priests and their assistants, of numerous grades and callings, should come into existence.[1194]

But the intellectual movement and vigor of the Incas were not confined to the priesthood. The Amautas or learned men, the poets and reciters of history, the musical and dramatic composers, the Quipu-camayoc, or recorders and accountants, were not necessarily, nor indeed generally, of the priestly caste. It is probable that the Amautas, or men of learning, formed a separate caste devoted to the cultivation of literature and the extension of the language. Our knowledge of their progress and of the character of their traditions and poetic culture is very limited, owing to the destruction of records and the loss of oral testimony. The language has been preserved, and that will tell us much; but only a few literary compositions have been saved from the wreck of the Inca empire. Quichua was the name given to the general language of the Incas by Friar Domingo de San Tomas, the first Spaniard who studied it grammatically, possibly owing to his having acquired it from people belonging to the Quichua tribe. The name continued to be used, and has been generally adopted.[1195] Garcilasso de la Vega speaks of a separate court language of the Incas, but the eleven words he gives as belonging to it are ordinary Quichua words, and I concur with Hervas and William von Humboldt in the conclusion that this court language of Garcilasso had no real existence.[1196] It is not mentioned by any other authority.

It was the custom for the Yaravecs or Bards to recite the deeds of former Incas on public occasions, and these rhythmical narratives were orally preserved and handed down by the learned men. Cieza de Leon tells us that “by this plan, from the mouths of one generation the succeeding one was taught, and they could relate what took place five hundred years ago as if only ten years had passed. This was the order that was taken to prevent the great events of the empire from falling into oblivion.” These historical recitations and songs must have formed the most important part of Inca literature. One specimen of imaginative poetry has been preserved by Blas Valero, in which the thunder, followed by rain, is likened to a brother breaking his sister’s pitcher; just as in the Scandinavian mythology the legend which is the original source of our nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill employs the same imagery. Pastoral duties are embodied in some of the later Quichuan dramatic literature, and numerous love songs and yaravies, or elegies, have been handed down orally, or preserved in old manuscripts. The dances were numerous and complicated, and the Incas had many musical instruments.[1197] Dramatic representations, both of a tragic and comic character, were performed before the Inca court. The statement of Garcilasso de la Vega to this effect is supported by the independent evidence of Cieza de Leon and of Salcamayhua, and is placed beyond a doubt by the sentence of the judge, Areche, in 1781, who prohibited the celebration of these dramas by the Indians. Father Iteri also speaks of the “Quichua dramas transmitted to this day (1790) by an unbroken tradition.” But only one such drama has been handed down to our own time. It is entitled Ollantay, and records an historical event of the time of Yupanqui Pachacutec. In its present form, as regards division into scenes and stage directions, it shows later Spanish manipulation. The question of its antiquity has been much discussed; but the final result is that Quichua scholars believe most of its dialogues and speeches and all the songs to be remnants of the Inca period.

The system of record by the use of quipus, or knots, was primarily a method of numeration and of keeping accounts. To cords of various colors smaller lines were attached in the form of fringe, on which there were knots in an almost infinite variety of combination. The Quipu-camayoc, or accountant, could by this means keep records under numerous heads, and preserve the accounts of the empire. The quipus represented a far better system of keeping accounts than the exchequer tallies which were used in England for the same purpose as late as the early part of the present century. But the question of the extent to which historical events could be recorded by this system of knots is a difficult one. We have the direct assertions of Montesinos, Salcamayhua, the anonymous Jesuit, Blas Valera, and others, that not only narratives, but songs, were preserved by means of the quipus. Von Tschudi believed that by dint of the uninterrupted studies of experts during several generations, the power of expression became developed more and more, and that eventually the art of the Quipu-camayoc reached a high state of perfection. It may reasonably be assumed that with some help from oral commentary, codes of laws, historical events, and even poems were preserved in the quipus. It was through this substitute for writing that Montesinos and the anonymous Jesuit received their lists of ancient dynasties, and Blas Valera distinctly says that the poem he has preserved was taken from quipus. Still it must have been rather a system of mnemonics than of complete record. Molina tells us that the events in the reigns of all the Incas, as well as early traditions, were represented by paintings on boards, in a temple near Cuzco, called Poquen cancha.

The diviners used certain incantations to cure the sick, but the healing art among the Incas was really in the hands of learned men. Those Amautas who devoted themselves to the study of medicine had, as Acosta bears testimony, a knowledge of the properties of many plants. The febrifuge virtues of the precious quinquina were, it is true, unknown, or only locally known. But the Amautas used plants with tonic properties for curing fevers; and they were provided with these and other drugs by an itinerant caste, called Calahuayas or Charisanis, who went into the forests to procure them. The descendants of these itinerant doctors still wander over South America, selling drugs.[1198] The discovery of a skull in a cemetery at Yucay, which exhibits clear evidence of a case of trepanning before death, proves the marvellous advances made by the Incas in surgical science.

The sovereign was the centre of all civilization and all knowledge. All literary culture, all the religious ceremonial which had grown up with the extension of the empire, had the Inca for their centre, as well as all the military operations and all laws connected with civil administration. Originally but the Sinchi, or chief of a small ayllu, the greatness of successive Incas grew with the extension of their power, until at last they were looked upon almost as deities by their subjects. The greatest lords entered their presence in a stooping position and with a small burden on their backs. The imperial family rapidly increased. Each Inca left behind him numerous younger sons, whose descendants formed an ayllu, so that the later sovereigns were surrounded by a numerous following of their own kindred, from among whom able public servants were selected. The sovereign was the “Sapallan Inca,” the sole and sovereign lord, and with good reason he was called Huaccha-cuyac, or friend of the poor.

Enormous wealth was sent to Cuzco as tribute from all parts of the empire, for the service of the court and of the temples. The special insignia of the sovereign were the llautu, or crimson fringe round the forehead, the wing feathers (black and white) of the alcamari, an Andean vulture, on the head, forming together the suntu paucar or sacred head-dress; the huaman champi, or mace, and the ccapac-yauri, or sceptre. His dress consisted of shirts of cotton, tunics of dyed cotton in patterns, with borders of small gold and silver plates or feathers, and mantles of fine vicuña wool woven and dyed. The Incas, as represented in the pictures at Cuzco,[1199] painted soon after the conquest, wore golden breastplates suspended round their necks, with the image of the sun stamped upon them;[1200] and the Ccoya, or queen, wore a large golden topu, or pin, with figures engraved on the head, which secured her lliclla, or mantle. All the utensils of the palace were of gold; and so exclusively was that precious metal used in the service of the court and the temple that a garden outside the Ccuri-cancha was planted with models of leaves, fruit, and stalks made of pure gold.[1201]

Two styles are discernible in Inca architecture. The earliest is an imitation of the cyclopean works of their ancestors on a smaller scale. The walls were built with polygonal-shaped stones with rough surfaces, but the stones were much reduced in size. Rows of doorways with slanting sides and monolithic lintels adorn the façades; while recesses for huacas, shaped like the doorways, occur in the interior walls. Part of the palace called the Collcampata, at the foot of the Cuzco fortress, the buildings which were added to the cyclopean work at Ollantay tampu, the older portion of the Ccuri-cancha temple at Cuzco, the palaces at Chinchero and Rimac-tampu, are in this earlier style. The later style is seen mainly at Cuzco, where the stones are laid in regular courses. No one has described this superb masonry better than Squier.[1202] No cement or mortar of any kind was used, the edifices depending entirely on the accuracy of their stone-fitting for their stability. The palaces and temples were built round a court-yard, and a hall of vast dimensions, large enough for ceremonies on an extensive scale, was included in the plan of most of the edifices. These halls were 200 paces long by 50 to 60 broad. The dimensions of the Ccuri-cancha temple were 296 feet by 52, and the southwest end was apsidal. Serpents are carved in relief on some of the stones and lintels of the Cuzco palaces. Hence the palace of Huayna Ccapac is called Amaru-cancha.[1203] At Hatun-colla, near Lake Titicaca, there are two sandstone pillars, probably of Inca origin, which are very richly carved. They are covered with figures of serpents, lizards, and frogs, and with elaborate geometrical patterns. The height of the walls of the Cuzco edifices was from 35 to 40 feet, and the roofs were thatched. One specimen of the admirable thatching of the Incas is still preserved at Azangaro.