Introduction

By the time the Spanish had completed their conquest of the Incan Empire in 1572, the indigenous population of the region had declined drastically. The local peoples, along with their cultural and religious practices, had been virtually annihilated. After the death of the Incan emperor and the destruction of Cusco, their capital city, the Spanish immediately began to assert their dominance by forcing the survivors into slavery, razing and destroying cities, and beginning a process of mass conversion (sometimes by force) to Catholicism. Because the Incan people had no way of writing down their stories, many of their myths and legends were passed down orally, a tradition which the Conquistadors and their accompanying priests disrupted and nearly brought to an end. Luckily, by an ironic twist of fate, many of these same Spanish missionaries also meticulously documented these stories and tales, so that even today they continue to persist.

The ancient legends of the Inca begin, like many mythologies, with a creation story, which gives reason to the existence of the earth and the people who inhabit it. For the Inca, the Emperor was seen as a direct descendent of the sun god and his offspring, Manco Capac. Manco Capac had descended from the sky and planted a golden wedge in the ground in a sacred location, which would later be known as Cusco. From there, the first Incans sprang out of the earth. Each successive Emperor was then treated as deity, with their word being both law and scripture, their desires being both imperative and divine mandates. Therefore the central figure in Incan religious and political life was the Emperor.

It was in this context that the Spanish defeat and kidnapping of the Incan emperor Atahualpa in 1572 struck such a heavy and demoralizing blow to the Incan empire. With his subsequent death, the empire quickly collapsed and the victorious Spanish moved to spread their own system of government and cultural dominion. Although the Incans did not use a written language, their traditions endured far longer than one might have suspected. Despite the best efforts of the Spanish conquistadores, many of the beliefs and stories of the Incan Empire continued to persist throughout the region, and even eventually affected the Catholic traditions in the area. Even today, many of the underlying ideas of the Incans and beliefs live on in the hearts and tongues of rural Peruvians, many of whom I came to know personally while I lived in Peru.

Note: In this portfolio I will share a couple of stories based in Incan mythology, but they will deviate somewhat from "canonical legends". This is because finding authentic stories can be quite difficult. There are a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that the Inca no longer walk the earth, but another issue is that even when they did, their own mythologies and legends contradicted each other. With that in mind, I took a number of artistic liberties as I rewrote the stories found on this site. They are all based originally in actual tales from the Inca, but most of the details have been imagined by me.

A Note on the Images: All photographs found on this site are original photographs taken by me while I travelled across Peru. The photograph above is of a recently painted untitled mural found in a small town high up in the Andes, near a series of Incan ruins. It probably depicts some form of the Inca as they worshipped the sun god, Inti.